The New Jew & Mundoweiss: Jewish Christmas Thoughts

The New Jew: Blogging Jewish Philanthropy (http://thenewjew.wordpress.com) and Mundoweiss (http://www.philipweiss.org)  have been discussing Jews and Christmas.

 

The former published  What Were They Thinking? Jewish Community Federation Publishes Pro-Christmas Article.

 

The latter published I'm Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas.

 

The JCF article can be found at: http://www.sfjcf.org/aboutjcf/press/newsletters/emmis/2007/december2007.asp#1 .

 

Here is my initial comment on the New Jew article.

Christmas and Hanukkah are essentially the same Festival of Lights.

 

You can read a very brief summary of my thoughts on the issue at:

 

http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/01/connecting-hanukkah-christmas-and-idu-l.html.

 

To the first approximation, the modern American celebration of Christmas was created by Jewish department store and studio owners out of a mishmash of Jewish perceptions of Eastern European Christian celebrations of Christmas. Very little remains today of traditional Anglo-Saxon, German, or African American celebrations of Christmas.

 

As far as I am concerned, modern American Christmas celebration should be considered Jewish, the hostile reaction to the article from the JCF of SF strikes me as at the very least as prejudiced and xenophobic — albeit not atypical for I remember that fellow students at Harvard and Yale would complain at Hillel sessions that they felt alienated from American Christmas celebrations.

I could have extended the list to include other traditional celebrations of Christmas like those of Irish and Italians.  

 

Anyway, I added another comment.

Christopher Noxon deals with the Christmas issue in a recent Salon article.

 

Please take a look at http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/12/22/irving_the_snowchicken/index.html?source=rss&aim=/mwt/feature .

The discussion then focused somewhat more on intermarriage and I posted the following comment.

Here are two articles of interest to a discussion of intermarriage.

 

http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/blog-SY's.htm (Syrian Jewish view of intermarriage)

 

http://www.forward.com/articles/11308/ (The Noah Feldman Case)

 

Here is my response to R' Lamm.

 

Dear Rabbi Norman Lamm,

 

Rosenblatt in Jewish Week understood Feldman's anguish far more than you did. All during his education at Maimonides School in Brookline, Feldman's teachers told him there was no contradiction between Orthodox Jewish values and American values. They lied in a way that teachers at a comparable Roman Catholic prep school would not have.

 

The reason lies in the Zionist orientation of Maimonides School and of Rabbi Soloveitchik, who founded it. Boston Zionists are some of the most extreme in asserting the equivalence of American values and Zionist values. It ain't true. And not all American values are Jewish values or even Catholic values. The Brothers and Nuns at a Catholic prep school would have been honest, but Boston Jewish leaders are afraid that honesty would make it possible for the larger public to open a discussion whether American and Israeli interests are identical.

 

I have to assume R' Lamm is just being purposefully obtuse about the issue of treating non-Jews on Sabbath, for Feldman's point was crystal clear. If he had wanted to bring scorn on Jewish people, there are far nastier issues in Jewish law. Feldman was pointing out that the Rabbis found reasoning to permit such treatment. Similarly today, modern Orthodox leaders could find logic to avoid such total rejection of Feldman and his family.

 

And Feldman is completely right. I have studied Geniza texts. In the twelveth and thirteenth century in Egypt, people like Feldman were not excluded from the Jewish community. But those were Jews, who were Arabs and not Eastern Europeans, and that fact is a problem because the essentialist and primordialist myths of modern Jews are crafted to support the idea that a single unchanging Jewish people has existed for three thousand years so that today's Jews can believe that they committed ethnic cleansing and stole Palestine from the native population with perfect justice.

 

Guess what. This perverted train of thought turns Judaism into a fossil and justifies all the nasty things Toynbee ever said about Jews.

 

Best,

 

Joachim Martillo

To find out more about Noah Feldman and read some of the original articles, use the following URL:

http://eaazi.blogspot.com/search?q=%22Noah+Feldman%22 .

http://eaazi.blogspot.com is my blog for Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel.

MacDonald's article above deals only with prescriptive issues of intermarriage.

I have noticed disjunction between Syrian Jewish prescription and practice with regard to conversion and intermarriage.

When I was researching the origins of the 1967 war, I discovered an interesting case of a marriage between a Syrian Jewish rabbi (Hakham — I guess) trained in Lakewood and a young Egyptian woman of crypto-Jewish background. Just as money whitens in Brazil, wealth seems to correct questionable lineages among Syrian Jews.

One of the other commenters (Shai) tried to argue that Hanukkah has always been a minor holiday like St. Patrick's Day. Obviously Shai does not live in a very Irish neighbor as I do in Dorchester, but I replied anyway.

The importance of Hanukkah and Christmas have waxed and waned over history. Saadyah Gaon considered Hanukkah as particularly important almost treated Megillat Antiokhos as part of the ktuvim.

 

From the standpoint of the most evolved form of the sacred king myths, it really does not make much difference whether the sacred king is Jesus, who harrows hell and frees mankind from death by dying on the cross, or Judah Maccabee, who dies in battle against unsurmountable odds in order to liberate Judea and to put his brother (tanist) on the throne.

 

While there was already an independent tendency to secularize Christmas from the 19th through the early 20th century (e.g., A Christmas Carol and "The Gift of the Magi"), the commercialization and merchandising of American Christmas is unprecedented in comparison with the UK, France and Germany.

 

To deny that American Jews have a special role in the development of American Christmas celebration is like denying that Jews have a role in the development of Hollywood. Both histories are well-documented and interconnected.

 

We can also compare the American history of Christmas celebration with the sovietization of New Year's after establishment of the Soviet Union.

 

If there is anything sinister in discussing the history of the evolution of the winter holidays, it is the attempt to conceal the role of Jews (or more correctly secular ethnic Ashkenazim) in these historical developments.

Shai's reply is rather interesting and touches one of Philip Weiss's  main issues -- I think.

Joachim

 

Your ideas regarding "sacred king" myths is, I can fairly presume, from an Ashkenazi Jew by the name of Claude Levi Strauss (1955 - The Structural Study of Myth). Since you can't stand "secular ethnic Ashkenazi Jews" (of whom Struass is one), and find them completely without credibility in any other aspect of their existence, perhaps the ethical thing to do would be to stop using their work or work based on their discoveries and ideas.

 

Regarding Sadya Gaon, he lived 1000 years after the events of Chanuka and 500 years after the redaction of the Gemara. The canon was fixed well before he was born. Therefore, it wouldn't have made a difference then what he thought about Migilat Antiocus (which by the way, he dated to prior to the destruction of the Temple - incorrectly), the fact is as I stated, Chanuka is and always was a minor holiday - oddly enough, celibrated in great pomp today by many Jews who are the ideological descendants of the Hellenists, whose defeat by the ultra-Orthodox of the day forms the basis for a Chanuka celebration. Chanuka is not about freedom of belief, it's about freedom to believe the "correct" belief (orthodoxy), and that there IS a "correct" belief rather than one that adjusts for each era and civilization. Not quite as sexy that way as an American Jewish holiday, but that's what's been made of it. And you know what? It's OK by me. The idea of freedom of belief is, I think, a good one.

 

Regarding what you claim as an "attempt to conceal the role of Jews" in making Christmas what it was, your claim is tendentious, as I said previously. You make no such similar claim about the likes of Walt Disney, Charlie Chaplin, or other non-Jews who were just as involved in advancing the melting-pot assimilationist approach that caused Hanuka and Christmas to merge into an "American" seasonal holiday period, where the message of both holidays has been lost. Why focus only on Jews?

 

I said before in a previous comment that you would do well to analyze the surrounding cultural milieu within which this assimilation occurred - it was not sinister, and certainly did not have Jews playing an overarching role that, without their participation, would have changed anything. The melting pot idea was an attempt to make one country of a myriad of immigrant groups of which Jews were only one part. The idea had its origin well before the immigration of Jews to America (late 1700's). It wasn't a bad idea (well I don't think so anyway). Heck, it even gave your own family a safe haven, if your last name is to be a measure. I bet there weren't any Martillo's on the Mayflower, Joachim.

 

Look - fair people can argue about whether the melting pot idea is the best one. But it was a good idea for its time, and aside from helping American citizens of different backgrounds to join hands and bring America to victory in WWII, it literally saved the lives of millions of Jews escaping for their lives from Europe. Same is true for Irish, Italian, German and Mexican Americans. Jews feel "hakarat hatov" (recognition of the good) for America and for the chance it gave them to live free, safe lives - they want to be part of it in every respect, as Americans, to feel fully a part of it without having their loyalty questioned any more than a person of Italian or Mexican or Irish descent when they are involved. I think that should be respected.

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I will put my reply in my next blog entry.

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