Celebrate The Real Miracle of Hanukah at Gesher
Bundle up and Join us for three hanukah Gatherings
First Night of Hanukah: A Chinese Food-on-Hanukah Feast
A Hanukah Feast on Christmas, Latkes and Chinese Food, Caroling, and Games, Hanukah gift exchange
Wednesday, December 25 at 4 PM
Third Night of Hanukah: Shabbat and Hanukah Vegetarian Potluck Feast
Nourishment and a discussion of kindling light in dark times
Friday, December 27 at 6 PM
Fifth Night of Hanukah: Outdoor Family Hanukah Extravaganza
Featuring wood-fired oven pizza, latkes, Menorah-making, Hanukah Theater, and more!
Sunday, December 29 at 4 PM
FIRST NIGHT OF HANUKKAH: A CHINESE FOOD-on-hanukah feast
Wednesday, December 25th at 4 PM
A Hanukah Feast on Christmas, Latkes and Chinese Food, Caroling, and Games, Hanukah gift exchange
So, what is it about Jews and Chinese food? Rabbi Laurie’s Uncle Danny once said that you can count the number of Chinese restaurants in a town and multiply by a certain factor, and figure out the number of Jews in the town. That might be dated: Sushi might be the newer Chinese Food- but there’s still a relationship: it’s a leftover tradition for December 25th, when neither Jews nor Chinese were celebrating Christmas. Jews wanted something special to do, Chinese restaurants were open, and for generations, Jews felt liberated to engage in the exotic culinary experience of Chinese sweet and sour, mushu, sukiyaki, to say nothing of pork ribs. The question is always: What do Jews do on Christmas? Answer: They play games - from dreidel to poker to Mah Jong to the extent that a lingering image of the Jewish home is that they ate Chinese food watching out for the pogrom…Well, this year, that mightunfortunately be a consideration more than most.
Chinese Food links Jews and Chinese. Our cultures have survived the test of time. Both celebrate intellectual achievement. Both believe that family and home are the principal vehicles of culture and its sustenance.
So, what’s special about THIS December 25th? It’s the first night of Hanukkah! Every nineteen years, the Jewish and Gregorian calendars merge in a repeated cycle. I figure I was about 12 years old when, in Beverly Hills, where I grew up, the first night was celebrated on December 25th. Why do I remember this? Because my ONLY Christian friend, at the time, Rick Trotter, got to open his presents in the morning and, when I asked if we could do that, too, in an unexpectedly strict move, my mom insisted that we wait until the night when we would light Hanukah candles. Why do I remember this? Because I felt deprived and totally miserable at the seeming injustice of it all. I must say it was VERY out of character for my mom to be strict about anything. Much less to stand up for a principle related to being Jewish. But, the truth is that I remember it to this day and kind of muse that it happened. Maybe it was one of those challenges that are the spiritual opportunities of identity and in a very fluid home (in terms of Jewish identity) made me know that somehow I was being told “I was Jewish…”. Albeit, not a in a joyful or positive way, not with humor and delight, and with the nourishment (physical and spiritual) that we know is our recipe is the recipe for giving Jewish enough appeal to pass it from one generation to the next!
So, this year, we are seizing the opportunity in a Gesher way: we are inviting you to a feast, and have plenty of joyful celebration planned. So, bundle up and come to our heated tent, and we’ll have a feast of latkes and homemade Chinese food. We will fire up the pizza oven for latkes and cook latkes in it and build a bonfire. After all, this is the celebration of light in a season of darkness.
And, we are always celebrating the miracle of the Jewish people that has been transmitted from generation to generation with angst and joy all the way to us. Now, that’s really a miracle, when you think about it! — Rabbi Gary
Suggested donation, $18, person, No one is turned away for inability to pay. RSVP a must!
THIRD NIGHT OF HANUKKAH: A SHABBAT AND HANUKAH FEAST
Friday, December 27th at 6 pm
Festive vegetarian potluck
Celebrating miracles in a dark world at Gesher. Shabbat, feasting, and a conversation about darkness and miracles — what is the light we retain and celebrate? Please bring a vegetarian dish to share. RSVP a must!
FIFTH NIGHT OF HANUKKAH: OUTDOOR FAMILY HANUKAH EXTravaganza
Sunday, December 29th at 4 pm
Wood-fired Pizza and Latkes! Making Hanukiyot (Menorahs), Gelt, and Hanukah Cookies! Playing games, and more!
RSVP a must!
Hanukah! You can feel it in the air. Children sing, "I have a little dreidl," and Jews everywhere are polishing their menorahs, dusting off latke recipes, emerging from retail stores their arms laden with eight nights worth of gifts. Yet, amidst the clamor of it all, did you ever stop to wonder just what we're celebrating? What is the miracle of Hanukkah that our people have commemorated for eight nights each year, for generations beyond number?
According to the Book of Maccabees, Hanukkah marks the military victory of the Maccabees, a band of Jewish insurrectionists, who triumphed over mightier forces to reconsecrate the Ancient Temple in Jerusalem after the Assyrian enemy had polluted it and laid it to waste.
The Talmud, edited hundreds of years later, tells us that Hanukkah is the story of a miracle. When the Temple was reconsecrated, the Maccabees had only enough oil to keep the "Eternal Light" glowing for a single night. Yet by a miracle, the light burned brightly for a full eight days!
Did you ever stop to wonder what happened to the Maccabees, or the Temple, or the priesthood? And what happened after the eighth day?
The mighty Macabbees lasted only a few years in the priesthood. The reconsecrted temple stood but a paltry two hundred years. Since it was laid waste, over nineteen hundred years ago, most of our people has wandered the Earth.
Given the Jewish people's track record with miltary victories, maybe a single victory is a miracle. But given our accomplishments as a people, elevating military victories to the center of our history does not make a whole lot of sense. At least you have to admit, one victory every thousand years or so is not much to brag about. And the way the oil lasted? It's true that today we live in a time of deep appreciation for oil. Getting eight times the mileage might well seem a miracle. Don't get us wrong, we do not question the veracity of this legend, but we wonder, what is the real miracle of Hanukkah?
We do think that there is a miracle of Hanukkah to be celebrated. The real miracle of Hanukkah is not that the oil lasted eight days. The real miracle is that the celebration of the oil lasting eight days stands a good chance of lasting eight millennia. The miracle is that we light candles.
The story of the Jewish people is a stroy of light flourishing in darkness, flourishing against considerable odds. Four thousand years ago, if you looked at all the peoples -- the Hittites, the Perrizites, the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Canaanites -- all greater in numbers and military prowess, you might have questioned the sobriety of anyone who suggested that the one people who would survive (and flourish) would be this tiny band of nomads, these children of Israel, these Jews.
History tells us it's never been easy being Jewish. The number of people -- powerful ones -- who have hated us has been prohibitively large. The twentieth century saw the single most concerted effort to destroy any people, ever, and it was an effort perpetuated against the Jewish people. It failed.
Even today, it's still not easy being Jewish. There are hardly Hanukkah specials on television, no Hanukkah music piped into department stores. Come Bar/Bat mitzvah age, our children ask, "So what's the point, anyway?" And ours can seem a lonely miracle, indeed. Yet, we are a people that knows how to celebrate the light. Today, a single generation removed from the Holocaust, our people has not only survived but flourished, celebrating a peoplehood that was born at Sinai. Today, as we struggle against the forces of marginality and assimilation, let us know what our people stands for. Let us seek in our collective wisdom, at this time of darkness, a way to welcome the strangers among us. We must seek a way to make that welcome felt throughout the Jewish community. We founded Gesher to build a bridge of welcome and caring -- the same welcome and caring that has been the lifeblood of the Jewish community for generations.
No, the miracle of Hanukkah is not that the oil lasted eight days. The miracle - the real miracle of Hanukkah - is that from year to year we remember and extend the light of those original eight days to celebrate the miracle in our own time.
