Shnei Goyim Be-Vitnech: Let’s REALLY Vive La Difference!
For a long time, the arrival of this month presented Jews with the “December dilemma.” At no time of the year does a Jew living in America feel his minority status more than during these weeks leading up to Christmas. Sure, we have Chanukah, but our lights and songs pale in comparison to the Christmas environment that envelops all of us at this time of the year.
Recently, something new has come to the rescue of many American Jews, “Chrismukah.” According to the Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press, Chrismukah got its start with the TV program “The O.C.,” where one of the characters has a Protestant mother and a Jewish father. Asked what holiday he observes, he replied, “Chrismukah.” The combination holiday now has its own website and a line of holiday greeting cards depicting images of the menorah filled with candy canes, a Christmas tree decorated with draidels and messages such as: “Merry mazel tov!” and “Oy joy!”
The idea of mixing the two holidays is not as new as it might seem. In 1990, Andrew Greeley, the Roman Catholic priest and author, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times entitled: “Chanukah, Christmas – In The Same Light.” He began with the words: “Tonight, Roman Catholic priest that I am, I will light the menorah.” From the good Father’s perspective, the two holidays were cut from the same mold, winter festivals celebrating renewal, light and life.
Those who link Chanukah and Christmas like the writers for the O.C. and those who have followed their lead fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the “Judeo-Christian heritage.” For all that we seem to find common values with Christians, we must always remember what our matriarch, Rebecca, was told when she was pregnant: “Shnei goyim b’vitnaich u’shnai l’umim mimaich yiporaidu – two nations are in thy womb and two peoples shall be separated from thy bowels.” Jacob and Esau were not just two different children, they were to be the forerunners of divergent nations.
Chrismukah, while well intentioned, performs an injustice to both nations by blurring their important differences. In fact, the holidays carry messages appropriate to their religion but not the other. Chanukah commemorates a victory that allowed Jews to practice Jewish law; Christmas’ celebration of the birth of Jesus, marks the beginning of Christians’ freeing themselves from that law. Adopting the distinctive rituals of the other holiday shows that a person does not understand his or her own heritage, when “good will” can only come about by all of us respecting and accepting the other’s uniqueness, not hiding it.
Understanding the importance of supporting people’s immersion in their heritage could help us in many of the world’s problems, such as in France. There is much being written and analyzed regarding the outbreak of violence in France mainly amongst its Muslim citizens. There is no one answer of why it has occurred, but one of the factors must certainly be the French’s insistence on its citizens’ assimilating themselves into a common French identity.
This explains, for example, why France just two years ago passed a law prohibiting headscarves, mostly worn by Muslim girls, in public schools. The headscarf made Muslims look different when all French are supposed to be the same. In France it is unlawful to even keep statistics by race, religion or ethnicity. This insistence on papering over variations among people is particularly ironic coming from those who taught us to “Vive la difference,” to cherish and understand differences.
This misguided sense of oneness—of all being the same – was an article of faith for most of the leaders who drafted the constitution of the European Union. But the people of these countries, the French, Germans, Dutch and all the others recognized that they are not one … that they are not the same … that they have their own backgrounds, histories and heritages. And those could not be hidden with a piece of paper.
In our country, Betty Friedan led us along the same erroneous path with her revolutionary “The Feminine Mystique,” which sparked the Women’s Liberation Movement. In its earliest form, the Movement based itself on insisting that men and women should be treated the same, with similar expectations and opportunities. Two decades later, John Gray’s “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus,” and Deborah Tannen’s “You Just Don’t Understand” agreed with what Judaism had said all along, that while men and women may be equal in value, they differ in many important areas, particularly in how and why they communicate with others.
Statistics show this biologically as well. Women are less vulnerable than men to life threatening diseases, but more vulnerable to every day sickness and pains. As the Washington Post put it: “Women are plagued by arthritis and bunions and bladder infections and corns and calluses and constipation and hemorrhoids and menstrual woes and migraine headaches and sleepless nights and varicose veins. In the meantime, men get heart attacks and strokes. Women are sick, but men are dead.”
One last example of the consequences of trying to remove or suppress our differences will, I hope, drive the point home. Western society today confronts a threat to its values and security in the movement known as Radical Islam and its most famous proponent, Osama bin Laden. A religious magazine called “Sojourners” recently published a document entitled, “Confessing Christ in a world of violence,” signed by church leaders, professors of theology, and ethicists. The document called for a rejection of the “crude distinctions” being made between Islamic radicalism and Western democracy, going on to say: “The distinction between good and evil does not run between one nation or another, or one group or another. It runs straight through every human heart.”
For these sophisticated thinkers, there is no real distinction to be made between Islamic radicalism and Western democracy; the violence in the world is no more the fault of Saudi Arabia’s Wahabism, Palestinian and Iraqi suicide bombers, Hamas, Hizbollah, or Al Qaeda. After all, “the distinction between good and evil does not run between one nation and another or one group and another.” The problem, we are told, “runs straight through every human heart,” meaning the only difference between me and a suicide bomber is in what part of ourselves we have chosen to act on; rock bottom, though, we are all pretty much the same.
Again, the Torah’s presentation of Jacob and Esau—same mother, same father, same home, yet sharply different from birth—drives the point home. If ever two people should have been the same, it was Jacob and Esau. And yet, we learn that Esau was the “yodea tsayid – the hunter, the murderer,” and Jacob was the “yoshev ohalim – the dweller of tents, the student.” We may all be the same in having been born in the image of God, but we cannot let that lead to the false conclusion that we are all the same!
So male or female, German or French, Christian or Jew … this is the time of year to remember that harmony will come to the world by noting and respecting that we all walk our own paths in life. Accepting and even celebrating that is the proper definition of “good will.” So let’s put the “Ch” back into Chanukah … and yes, let Christians “put the Christ back into Christmas”. Then there will truly be “peace on earth and good will toward all men” … and women as well!