My god’s name is Love — some say “Lehovah.”
But though nômen ômen est, a word’s
not in the sound but in the speaking;
not in the letters but the reading.
And Moses stuttered.
‘ou gar eisin duo ê polloi synagomenoi eis
to emon onoma, ekei eimi en mesôi autôn
[4 December 1999]
There are two points of deep contact between the Jewish and Christian calendars. The first is Easter, which feels to us an amplified and distorted echo of our Passover. The second is Christmas, which… well, perhaps I should have written that there are on the Christian calendar two deep points of contact with Judaism. Because while both are characterized by Christianity’s anchoring itself in our shared past, neither is characterized by a corresponding reach from the Jewish side. Christmas derives nothing recognizable from the Jewish calendar; it echoes a longing for Judaean sovereignty, which has become as complicated for us in our way as what Christianity has done with it, but which for us has never had a particular season.
Both Easter and Christmas are strewn with broken bits of Judaica, recited like half-remembered passwords. Cultural trends in the United States have rendered Easter short and sharp while marching Christmastide relentlessly to the very doorstep of Halloween. Both processes have involved uneven attempts at cutting loose the anchor. There have been significant supporting roles for Jews in these attempts with respect to Christmas (sorry!) mainly in the area of music, so much so that the voice of secular Christmas includes a veiled Yiddish accent. Ironically, though I am a fan of secular Christmas, its music mostly leaves me cold. What I most enjoy hearing or humming along is the old stuff, the early-modern and the mediaeval. But the more of that I seek out or happen across, the more I’m confronted with the mumble-jumble: Yihudoh, Yisroel, Dovid, Imonu El, Beys Lechem, Yirusholayim, Moshiach, Pesach. Eloihiy, lomoh? Omein, Hallelu Yoh.
The blunt fact of this confrontation isn’t a surprise to me anymore, though a new example will sometimes show itself. So I sat through the first third or so of the Heartland Men’s Chorus “Kansas City Christmas” this past Saturday night, with its mix of English and Latin studded with Hebrew, and thoroughly enjoyed the music and the performance of it without giving it much thought of any depth — not even “The First Noël” with its relentless assertion that “born is the ki~ing of I~is-Rah-Yell”.
And then the men began chanting “Oiseh Sholem.”*
Some readers will have come this far and at several points asked me in absentia, “What about Hanukah?” I haven’t mentioned Hanukah because it hasn’t been relevant. Christmas isn’t to Hanukah as Easter is to Passover. Christianity depends on Christmas, while Judaism could mislay Hanukah tomorrow and barely notice. Their suspicious coincidence is most likely due to separate pagan influence on each than to either influencing the other. Their themes, too, only overlap where both touch the deeper springs of Midwinter, in the value of light in dark times and joy at the renewal of the sun.
Because what else is Christmas about? The birth of the one who saves humanity from Hell, yes, but that tends to be left for Easter to emphasize. Christmas emphasizes Jesus’ role as the Prince of Peace. Doxa en ‘upsistois Theôi kai epi gês eirênê en anthrôpois eudokia, Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra pax in hominibus bonae voluntatis: Honor in the highest to God, and on earth peace, among humanity goodwill. (Luke 2:14)
Shorn of a Judaean nationalism inappropriate to Christian universalism, what remains for Christmas is the utopia which Jewish prophets had attached to a someday-somehow perfect restoration of Judah’s monarchy and priesthood: the proxy-enthronement of God on earth, and the establishment of global peace through global justice.
Hanukah is about a military victory. Sure, it was a kind of Judaean “war for independence” from an empire. But its status as a milestone in the history of political or religious freedom is tainted by it also having been a kind of Judaean civil war between factions partly distinguished by religious positions — and the victors did not share the freedom they had won with the other faction. The victory resulted in a century-long restoration of an independent monarchy and priesthood, but not at all built along the lines the prophets had called for. The regime stands as an embarrassment in Jewish history, which is why “the Hanukah Story” always ends with the victory, and is probably partly why the holiday is minor.
So the impulse to ease the psychallergic reaction many Jews have to Christmas by puffing up Hanukah is something I’ve long resisted, whether done by Christians or Jews. It misunderstands Hanukah, it misunderstands difference, it misunderstands inclusion. I didn’t go to “Kansas City Christmas” with any expectation of Hanukah and, depending on the selection, might have been baffled or bothered had it been there.
But “Oiseh Sholem”… “Oiseh Sholem” isn’t Hanukah. It’s every day, repeatedly. Oiseh sholem bimroimov, hu ya’aseh sholem oleynu v’al kol Yisroel (v’imru omein): [who] makes peace in his high place, may he make peace on us and on all Israel (and we say “truly!”)
The line closes most versions of the “Kadish” prayer (including some daily ones) though that requires the presence of nine others to recite. It also closes the “Amidah” which means there are Jews saying it at least three times a day. And it stands alone as a popular all-purpose song.
It isn’t Hanukah. But it isn’t at all a random choice. There’s a distant dialogue available between it and the “Gloria,” between bimroimov and en ‘upsistois.
I wrote that the men began chanting, not because the style of their vocalization was particularly chant-like but because it was repetitive, at first repeating just those first two words. A soloist stepped forward to sing the line in its entirety, after which the whole chorus took up various longer pieces of it to repeat.
The arrangement was both immediately familiar and strange, so that I’m left with the vivid impression that I remember it clearly but when I reach for the memory almost nothing is there — except a brief invocation of the melody used for Hatikvah, which struck me at the time as one of few overtly Jewish touches in music that otherwise wasn’t out of place in a to-that-point very traditional Christmas collection.
Possibly I was too busy suddenly thinking hard, about Hebrew, about Christmas, about boundaries and what grammarians call deixis: the means available to a language for designating either side of a boundary.
Because when Jews call for peace “on us and on all Israel,” the words mean “on us [Jews here] and on all [other] Jews”. I’m not a universalist, but I am a humanist. The “Oiseh Sholem” is among a host of lines in the liturgy that call benediction for us to the exclusion of — and, indeed, sometimes in opposition to — others. I’ve been bothered by them since I understood the language clearly enough, and I have my habits of substitution: ha’oilom, for instance, “the universe”, instead of Israel. And I’m not alone in this, as I’ve more recently discovered a shared practice of adding or substituting kol yoishvey seiveil, “all dwellers of the world.”
But I was listening to a chorus of gay men, composed primarily not of Jews. The same “on us and on all Israel” from their mouths means “on us and on […] Jews”. The unaltered traditional words, quite altered in meaning. Not as blown-out “everybody over here, everybody over there” as I and others have attempted to be in our devotions, but a startling inclusion of Jews in a prayer for peace, at Christmas, letting our own language speak without getting bogged down in counter-claims about revelation and interpretation and possession.
I have no way of knowing how much of this, if any, was in mind when the song was chosen or sung, but I was touched. The Christian gaze intermittently aimed at Jews as Jews is often blind, sometimes obsessive, and usually uncomfortable at best. This was nice: both welcoming and a welcome reminder that we all need to do better. As I said, I’m not a universalist. Our benedictions for ourselves and for each other should be as different as our needs are, and matched by striving to understand and to meet those differences on their own terms. But no one should be left out of that understanding, including those whose modes don’t include prayer. Next year, kol yoishvey seiveil.
*Note: with a few exceptions, I’ve transliterated Hebrew in this post on the basis of Yiddish (aka Ashkenazi) pronunciation. It started as a way to render the words at the end of the second paragraph less familiar to the eye.
“You must vote for my candidate so that my candidate’s opponent won’t win!”
The danger posed by any one of your candidate’s opponents, should that opponent win election, is in itself no premise in favor of your candidate’s election. It rather points directly to an over-investment of power in the contested office, and indirectly to the distortion imposed by an electoral system which provides (or privileges) only two choices.
“But, we can’t solve those systemic problems by participating in the election!”
If that were true, it still wouldn’t in itself argue in favor of your candidate. (Though it pains me to say, it would argue — albeit weakly — against participation altogether.)
But it isn’t true. Though outside parties and independent candidates operate at tremendous disadvantage, they aren’t illegal and they do exist and some of them are serious and deliberate and worthy of consideration and support. Their disadvantages should be removed — or, to put it in proper perspective, the privilege assigned to two parties should cease. Likewise, the concentration of power in certain offices and agencies should be dispersed, and the incentives to abdicate accountable power in exchange for privilege (political or otherwise) should cease.
None of this can be the direct result of voting in any number of contests under the present system. But the only electoral means available to weaken the power which results from, and which maintains, the privilege is to vote against both privileged parties; that should therefore be done whenever an agreeable outside or independent candidate presents herself (and, logically, also whenever there are no agreeable candidates at all). In tandem, other-than-electoral means should also be employed.
“That will take forever and could go horribly wrong. Besides, long before we got wherever you imagine us going, my candidate’s opponent would be in power!”
This is essentially applying the fallacious “too big to fail” standard to politics.
“Anyway, I agree with and applaud [all? the preponderance? most? certain?] of my party’s/candidate’s principles, platform, past performance, persona/e to the exclusion of any else.”
You must vote for your candidate, because you have good reason to do so. I don’t have good reason to vote for your candidate; in fact, I have good reason not to do so; I mustn’t vote for your candidate. We can trust or compare each other’s judgement as to the goodness of our reasons. To mistrust each other’s judgement as to the goodness of our reasons without having compared it is groundless.
“Some of your reasons not to vote for my candidate are things my candidate’s opponent asserts.”
I don’t pay much attention to the claims candidates or parties make about each other: I assume they include bias or are designed to induce bias. There may well be some overlap between my reasons and claims made by your candidate’s opponent[s]. My reasons are my reasons because I have judged them good. I do invite your comparison and critique, as my judgement must be imperfect.
“You wouldn’t be so critical if my candidate weren’t a member of Set S. Previous candidates and elects have done some of the things for which you criticize my candidate, and you didn’t criticize them so vociferously: you even voted for some of them. The only difference between them and my candidate is that my candidate is a member of Set S and those others aren’t. You despise members of Set S and want them excluded from politics and power.”
I don’t doubt that there are some people about whom all these assertions are true. The only one of them to which there is some truth in my case is expressed by the second sentence. I willingly own my previous failures to adequately criticize and oppose the faults of those others, whether those failures resulted from poor judgement or inattention. But no one’s (or everyone’s) failure to hold someone to account in the past can excuse that one or another from account in the present. And being deprived of a vote or an election isn’t, properly, a punishment.
The suggestion that I single your candidate out for criticism for any other reason than your candidate’s own deeds and your candidate’s present candidacy and your candidate’s occasional appeal to my principles is beneath my attention except to note the insult (to me and to your candidate and to Set S). I will say this, though. A future without oppression requires that those who have been oppressed also forego any opportunity to oppress others. This may seem unfair in some analyses. But at the very least the generational nature of the human condition renders any more superficially satisfying balance a vicious cycle.
We are brought tidings of comfort and joy. We are promised salvation from a peril which is, however drawn from Jewish and other predecessors or transmitted to Islam and other successors, in precise terms only recognized by Christianity in the first place. I leave it to Christians, with my blessing (and heartfelt contrition regarding the relevant predecessors).
We are also promised peace, a much more nearly universal longing and concern. Leaving aside for the moment the question of purely human capacity to achieve a durable global peace (as opposed to divine capacity to provide) consider what a durable global peace means to you. What does it look like? Continue reading A Christmas Meditation
In my town of Prairie Village, where Cherokee Lane completes its winding climb up from Tomahawk Creek to 75th Street, there stands in a median an unintended shrine. Two unnamed goddesses, though I think of them as Demeter and Persephone, flank a large plaque naming the neighborhood behind them (Prairie Hills) all surrounded by a bit of garden. Until yesterday, behind the plaque stood an enormous conical evergreen, which some years someone arranged to have lit for Christmas. Seeing the tree gone, I thought how outliving anything is a mark of longevity but also a notice. The bell tolls for all yall. Continue reading Ain’t that a Great Saying
This is the season for weddings. I have been to one this year and will, gods also willing, be to another a month from now: a fit cap to the month named for Juno Pronuba. I have word of others going on around me, and that is well. I also have word of others of the United States (though not yet mine) being told by judges that states may not grant civil marriage recognition to some couples and not others. That too is well. I stand with you, who uniquely yearn, in Love’s House. Continue reading The Far Shores of the Day