Latkes And Caviar, Doughnuts With Champagne!

Instead of making our kids “feel Jewish” by requiring them to glumly sit out the biggest holiday extravaganza of the year—or, worse, taking part in it—let us relearn the wisdom of the rabbis and reinvent our own midwinter holiday.

“Daddy, can we hang lights for Hanukkah?”

“No, of course not! That’s a Christmas custom.”

“What if we use only blue and white?”

“No, absolutely not. It’s just not Jewish.”

“So why do they call it, ‘The Festival of Lights?’”

Game, set and match to the kids. (Again.)

Like nearly half of all Jewish Americans, I married a non-Jew. Two years into our marriage, my wife converted, and we have been trying to raise a Jewish family ever since.

It’s turned out that one of the biggest impediments to success has been my inadequate knowledge and understanding. Again like many Jewish Americans, I had often defined my Jewishness more by what I don’t do than by what I do do.

Some of these self-prohibitions do preserve genuine Jewish ways and Jewish ethics. Many Jews who remember almost nothing else from their tradition remember the supreme importance of charity, of learning and of a loving family life. They may not know the texts that command these ethics and folkways, but they honor them as much as any scholar.

At other times, however, discussions of what is “Jewish” and what is not “Jewish” remind me of that Lenny Bruce routine about which food is Jewish and which is goyish: “All Drake’s cakes are goyish. Pumpernickel is Jewish. White bread is very goyish. Instant potatoes—goyish. Black cherry soda is very Jewish. Macaroons are very Jewish—very Jewish cake. Fruit salad is Jewish. Lime jello is goyish. Lime soda is very goyish.”

Shifting uneasily during the invocation before the Big Game: Jewish.

Wincing a little when a politician says “God Bless America:” Jewish.

Going to the movies and eating Chinese food on Christmas Day: Very Jewish!

Yes, dissenting from the prevailing norms and customs is essential to the Jewish condition. But it can’t be the whole of it—especially not at this season of the year.

The end of December is a time of celebration for almost all Northern Hemisphere cultures. The modern American Christmas is an amalgam of ancient pagan practices. “Yule” was the name of the winter solstice holiday of the ancient Germans. Mistletoe and holly symbolized the immortality of Norse gods. And Santa Claus or Father Christmas originated from the “lord of misrule” who presided over the Roman midwinter holiday, Saturnalia.

Jewish culture, too, adapts. The rabbis accepted the need for a midwinter holiday. Ancient Jews had no concept of anniversaries. They did not even celebrate birthdays.

While Hanukkah commemorates an indubitably historical event, the miracle of the lamp in the dead of winter is a pious fiction to justify fixing Hanukkah in the winter month of Kislev.

We teach our children that hamantashen were inspired by Haman’s tricorn hat—as if this fictitious ancient Persian vizier dressed himself in the fashions of colonial Williamsburg. In fact, hamantashen preserve the ancient Canaanite custom of baking cakes in the shape of female pudenda in honor of the fertility goddess. See Jeremiah 44:19: “And, said the women, ‘when we were burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and were pouring out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands that we made for her sacrificial cakes in her image and poured out drink offerings to her?’” Later religious authorities, though, seem to have decided that if you can’t beat them, join them, and invented a respectable origin for the custom.

Instead of making our kids “feel Jewish” by requiring them to glumly sit out the biggest holiday extravaganza of the year—or, worse, taking part in it—let us relearn the wisdom of the rabbis and reinvent our own midwinter holiday. Let us have presents...and latkes with caviar...and, yes, blue and white house lights.

Drive to Krispy Kreme at midnight for hot doughnuts. Open that bottle of champagne you have been saving.

They have Handel’s Messiah? Well, Handel also wrote an oratorio to honor Judah Maccabee—that’s the work from which we get the tune “See, the Conq’ring Hero Comes.” And, while you are listening to this great piece of English music, tell your children the amazing story of Operation Maccabee, the 1948 military campaign that secured safe passage along the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway. (If you don’t know the story already, learn it from Benny Morris’ definitive account of Israel’s war for independence.)

Hanukkah: Fried food, gifts, lights, the Fourth of July and V-E-Day all rolled into one. Surely we can get our children excited about that! We are, after all, the people who invented show business.

Published in the November/December 2008 issue of Moment Magazine.