Every Hanukkah, menorahs appear around every Jewish community. Chabad expends a significant amount of time and money putting up their distinctive chabad menorahs with the straight branches connected to the main stem at an angle. Chabad has decided to make this their standard menorah that they use all over the world, and I have to respect their ability to standardize on anything in this day and age when we Jews can’t seem to standardize on anything. The problem is, it’s completely inaccurate.
The bible, lacking pictures, gives a textual description of the menorah, which is a little vague on some details like the straightness of the arms. Chabad bases their menorah on the Rambam (Maimonides), who drew a menorah in mishnah torah. The problem is that the Rambam, living in 12th century Baghdad, had never seen the menorah, which disappeared some time during the 6th century. There have been numerous archaeological discoveries which have shown the image of the ancient menorah depicted on coins, mosaics, pottery, and even ancient graffiti. While there is some debate about what the base of the menorah looked like, all the graphical representations show the menorah with curved arms. The Biblical Archaeology review has an exceptionally nice gallery of ancient depictions of the menorah which you can peruse at your leisure.
Why does Chabad insist on continuing to use a shape that is wrong? Some treat it as branding - a simple and easily recognizable symbol. People who want to be downright hostile to Chabad also claim that this shows a separation between Chabad and the rest of Judaism, but that’s reaching IMHO. My feeling is that it’s probably just another case of tradition trumping what we know to be historically accurate – a choice was made, and without a central leader, they have no mechanism to change that decision now. Besides, you know how we Jews are about tradition. If I can eat Turkey, then Chabad can have a straight armed menorah.
I went to the bible lands museum today (overall rating: not spectacular, but still pretty good). They had a temporary exhibit on the shofar (horn blown on special occasions like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur). I learned, among other things, that the shofar was sounded when a Jew was put in herem.
They also had a wonderful documentary about the blowing of the shofar at the kotel during the British mandate period from 1923-1947. The British had allowed Jews to pray at the kotel, but did not allow them to pray loudly, have torah scrolls, or blow the shofar for fear of disturbing the Arab population. Every year though, the shofar was blown at the end of yom kippur as an act of civil disobedience. The British of course tried to arrest the violators, some of whom were caught, and some of whom were sentenced. The documentary was made a few years ago when someone decided to get the remaining living shofar blowers together to tell their stories, and tell they did. The stories are funny, touching, sad, and joyful. My favorite is when one man explains how when they spied a British undercover agent the Jews communicated in Hebrew (which the British did not speak) by simply singing their message in the same tune as the prayer service.
As a followup to a previous post where I complained about the lack of transparency in Israeli cell phone plans (it’s actually a symptom of a larger problem – there is no transparency here in any large institution – banks, government, telecommunications, commerce, etc.), I finally found a solution. Rami Levy. Initially a chain of discount supermarkets, Rami Levy has been expanding. Rami Levy has entered the cell phone market as a virtual network operator (MVNO). They have no physical infrastructure, but buy airtime in bulk from pelephone, and resell it cheaply. They have made a public commitment to being open and transparent about their pricing, as well as to being cheap. So much so that while Orange can’t even tell me what their rates are, RL’s are published in the newspaper. When I walked into one of the new RL cell phone stores, the first thing that happened was someone handed me a flyer that detailed their plans and the costs. Needless to say I’m now a satisfied Rami Levy customer.
Now here’s a few things that struck me as interesting. Rami Levy is buying air time from pelephone for 0.14 per minute, and resells it for 0.20 per minute. Pelephone and Orange sold comparable plans where they charged 1.00 – 1.20 per minute. Since I assume Pelephone is still making a profit on the airtime they sold to Rami Levy for 0.14, their profit margins must have been obscene on the plans they sold. How on earth is it that none of the big three decided to undercut the other two by lowering their margins to increase their volume? (Otherwise known as “competition in the western world). The answer, unfortunately, appears to be simple: collusion. This also demonstrates a serious flaw in the Israeli system where there is no transparency and large duopolies and triopolies dominate almost every industry: price fixing and collusion are rampant. Already the competition has done good – 2 of the 3 big cell phone companies have slashed rates in response to Rami Levy. Rami Levy is apparently going to be followed by several other new MVNOs in the next few months, so perhaps the stranglehold of the big three will be broken. Hopefully Rami Levy will also decide to keep being disruptive and break a few other industries open as well.
I’ve heard many (many meany many) fellow IT employees complain about how the industry is so male dominated. I don’t claim to know the source of the problem, but I know that scantily clad booth babes certainly don’t help.
One of the things that drives me nuts about Hebrew is that the word for “like” is the same as the word for “love”. Every so often I’ll be watching a TV show (srugim BTW – great show), and one character will profess feelings for another. But I’m unclear – did they profess love or just affection?
Here’s a fun game to play with your friends next time you’re sitting down for shabbat lunch. See if you can figure out how many times Jerusalem has been attacked, besieged, or conquered. The answer, courtesy of Eric Cline’sJerusalem Besieged:
There have been at least 118 separate conflicts in and for Jerusalem during the past four millennia—conflicts which ranged from local religious struggles to strategic military campaigns which embraced everything in between. Jerusalem has been destroyed completely at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked an additional 52 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, been the scene of 20 revolts and innumerable riots, had at least five separate periods of violent terrorist attacks during the past century, and has only changed hands completely peacefully twice in the past 4,000 years.
Via Flickr:
At the tower of david (a large citadel built by herod to defend the city of Jerusalem), you can still see large stones the seleucid Greeks used to pelt the Hasmodeans (Maccabeas) during the time of the Hasmonean revolt. The culmination of the revolt was the military victory celebrated during the holiday of Hanukkah.
Hebrew as a language imports a decent number of words, mostly from Arabic and English. Several English greetings have become legitimate Hebrew words including Hi (היי), Bye (ביי), and O.K. (או קיי). I’ve also heard people using Hello and wow. The interesting thing about the last item in this list is that since the w sound doesn’t exist in Hebrew, it is usually transliterated as a double vav (וו). The o in wow would be made by a single vav, so as best I could tell the word wow would be spelled ווווו. Imagine my disappointment to learn that it’s actually spelled וואו.
speaking of Hanukkah, my brother in law Shmuel has started a small series of cooking videos on youtube, and the first is entitled the cure for the common latke. His first recipe is called the green glory latke. If you’re looking for some delicious and interesting latke recipes, check it out.
Hanukkah starts tomorrow night, and for perhaps the first time in my life I’ve had this new sensation leading up to Hanukkah that I don’t normally have. I’m feeling….. excited!? Allow me to explain.
On its technical merits, Hanukkah is not the biggest or most important of Jewish holidays. In fact, it doesn’t even crack the top 10. Culturally though, it ranks fairly high for two reasons. One is the obvious reason – it’s proximity to Christmas has led to many natural parallels and converted it into a “Jewish Christmas”. Kids are off from school, stores have sales, everyone is giving out presents, so Jews tend to take advantage of these other happenings and integrate them into Hanukkah. The second thing is that the very unimportance of Hanukkah makes it more attractive to non-religious Jews, who use Hanukkah as one of the primary factors in their Jewish identity. The rigid ceremonial aspects of the more important holidays can make them very distant and inaccessible to the less religious Jews who struggle to find meaning in, say, eating dry crackers for a week or giving up cell phones for a day. Hanukkah has very little of this (there is the candle lighting, and pretty much nothing else), and almost no restrictions that the average person would notice. This leaves people free to innovate and find ways to make the holiday meaningful, fun, and accessible to them. Just in the last few decades we’ve seen the creation of Adam Sandler Hanukkah songs, gift giving, dreidel spinning contests, and days of service (which conveniently fall on Dec 25th – when we are usually off from work anyway).
We Orthodox Jews in turn have always tended to shun innovation of this sort. We find meaning in Jewish holidays through the older minhagim and halakha, both of which change at a glacial pace. While it may seem stale to the outside world, we derive meaning from experiencing the timelessness of our culture – infusing the present with a dash of the old. It connects us to something larger than ourselves, reminds us of our place in history, and helps us find our place in the world. We therefore tend to pull back from Hanukkah, and while I would never want to imply that I or any of my coreligionists would ever disparage one of our holy days, we certainly do look down on Hanukkah somewhat as “the holiday for the non-religious Jews”. We think of Hanukkah as if it were the training wheels for Judaism – you might need it at first, but us “real Jews” don’t need to bother with such things.
Now this brings me to Israel. There has been little to no cross pollution with Christmas because Jews are actually in the majority. People wish each other a happy Hanukkah at the right times! There are no presents. There are sufganiyot for sale at every bakery. Housewares stores are selling hanukkiot and candles (but you can find better prices in the shuk). There are large hanukkiot in public places and they’re actually the center of attention – not just small tokens of Christian guilt placed in the shadow on a giant Christmas tree. Museums and malls have Hanukkah events for kids. Minhag Yerushalayim is to light the menorah outside, and while I haven’t had the chance to see it yet, from what I’ve been told that the city will be littered with hanukkiot. (I’ve also seen a large number of hanukkiah boxes for sale – they’re basically clear containers that will keep your candles from getting blown out by the wind). For the first time in my life I understand what my Christian friends meant when they referred to the holiday season, because for the first time in my life I’m actually experiencing a holiday season. Frankly it’s hard not to get a little excited for the holiday, and that feeling in itself is both new and pleasantly unexpected.
I went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre today with my sister-in-law, Gabby (for those of you who are curious, Ari holds by the Jewish custom of not going into churches for any reason, but I think that’s a little silly myself). In one section there is an interior structure (the Aedicule) which is supposed to be the exact location of Jesus’s tomb. When we got there just at 1pm there was a line of people waiting to go in (we were not planning to, line or no line), but the front of the queue was blocked off. Just then a priest in full regalia, chanting prayers and carrying a lit censor, went into the Aedicule, did a circuit, came out and departed. Time for the line to move? Nope! As soon as he was out of site another priest, again in formal (but very different) garb appeared, chanting and waving incense, did a slightly different circuit of the tomb and disappeared. Done? Not even…There was still one more, again very ornate but slightly different in every aspect, to preform his ritual. When he was done the people on line were finally allowed to start filing into the Aedicule again.
So why the same service three time? Well it turns out Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Apostolic churches have joint control of this holiest site in Christianity. But the power sharing seems pretty tense and uncomfortable…There’s a ladder that’s been leaning against a window for over 150 years because the 3 groups can’t agree to move it. There are also regular brawls (Wiki lists 4 over the past 10 years) over slights real and imagined. The keys to the church have been held by the Muslim Nuseibeh family for over a millennium because the Christian sects can’t agree which of them should be in charge of the front door.
As Gabby and I left through the thick cloud of incense that had filled the outer chamber (that’s what happens with ceremonies x 3), I thanked God that my religion doesn’t have the monopoly on crazy…With the amount of infighting the major religions all continue to enjoy, it’s no wonder that interfaith relations continue to be so tense.
Every Hanukkah, menorahs appear around every Jewish community. Chabad expends a significant amount of time and money putting up their distinctive chabad menorahs with the straight branches connected to the main stem at an angle. Chabad has decided to make this their standard menorah that they use all over the world, and I have to respect their ability to standardize on anything in this day and age when we Jews can’t seem to standardize on anything. The problem is, it’s completely inaccurate.
