OHHHHH CHRISTMAS YOU SO FINE YOU SO FINE YOU BLOW MY MIND, GO CHRISTMAS! CLAP CLAP CLAP! GO CHRISTMAS! Awesome job, The Gap, way to go! You have created an ad that is a uniquely horrible combination of a Toni Basil song, the movie “Bring It On,” “Stomp,” the Blue Man Group, and everything else that is terrible in this universe. …GO CHRISTMAS! CLAP CLAP CLAP!
NO, not political spin. In the spirit of keeping it light ( increase the light, y’all), NPR brings you the fluffiest of Chanukah stories: The Major League Dreidel championship.
Taking place at an unnamed bar on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the “twist” on the traditional dreidel game is that instead of spinning for luck on a pot of gelt, spinners compete on how long their dreidel spins on progressively smaller surfaces: skill (in theory) not luck, wins this championship.
In an earlier post, KRG put out a call for new and listenable Hanukkah tunes. I nominate this year’s big Hanukkah release, “Songs in the Key of Hanukkah” – an eclectic anthology compiled by Erran Baron Cohen and featuring songs performed by Cohen, Idan Raichel, Jules Brookes, Yasmin Levy and Orthodox African-American rapper, Y-Love.
I remember from my childhood, listening to Hanukkah songs at home and listening to these children singing slightly out of key and some wonky old piano player to make a terrible record. The idea was to create a new concept in Jewish holiday music, something that everybody would enjoy listening to.
Click above for a taste: Cohen and Y-Love (along with some other unidentified hasidic-looking folk) performing “Dreidel” on Conan O’Brien.
Every year I lament the awful songs that are associated with Chanukah in the English speaking world (I wonder, do American Hindus and Muslims feel this way too?). I don’t have any problem with Mi Yimalel, but you know, how many times can you sing it? And Christians have a lot of very nice holiday songs – mostly penned by MOTs.
But there is, in my opinion, one major exception. Thank heaven for Tom Lehrer, that’s all I have to say. And in the meantime, if anyone knows of any listenable Chanukah songs that can be happily sung around the chanukiah without a lot of electronic assistance, feel free to let me know. OR for that matter, any listenable Chanukah songs of any kind (I do admit to have some warm feelings for “How do you spell Channukkahh” from the LeeVees last year)
Neil Swaab, the cartoonist behind the wickedly funny (and often simply wicked) comic strip Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles offers his take on the intersection of the holiday season and worldwide economic meltdown:
(click on the image to view full size)
If you’re not familiar with the misadventures of Swaab and his teddy bear sidekick, Mr. Wiggles, enjoy diving into the strip’s archives. Beware: Mr. Wiggles is no Teddy Ruxpin. Wiggles is known for extreme sexual deviance and violence, pushing boundaries that you probably don’t even realize exist (and might wish you still didn’t after reading). Through his explicit humor, Swaab explores the nature of taboo in a world that seems increasingly devoid of any remaining taboos, to great effect. His extreme situations offer a way in to explore everything from the position of the weakest in society (such as in a hilarious and disturbing series in which Wiggles enslaved a senior citizen) to the loneliness and alienation of a single artist in the city. His take on religion is pretty cynical, but his strip on atheism will surely strike a chord with at least a few Jewschoolers (as it did with the editors of The Humanist, who reprinted it in this month’s issue).
Last week, Kung Fu Jew’s post about multifaith families stirred up a lot of activity in the comments section. KFJ ended his post soliciting for other posts from intermarried Jews and products of intermarried Jews. I am neither. And, in fact, as a product of the Conservative Movement’s indoctrination program youth group, I entered adulthood believing that intermarriage was the worst sin one could possibly commit.
A couple of things happened to change my point of view. A big factor, naturally, was experience. I saw my friends who came from intermarried families grow into Jewishly committed adults. I saw my cousins figure out how they could create authentic Jewish identities for their children in partnership with their non-Jewish spouses. I got involved in Jewish education and met hundreds of families doing the same thing. And I heard from dozens of people with multifaith backgrounds about how the hardest part of Judaism was getting in the door, even when they desperately wanted to. I started to think that maybe if we weren’t so busy building up the fences around who gets to learn and practice, we might notice a whole lot of people anxious to get in. (And this year, I was pleased when my Federation published a study that implied just that.)
In truth, dayeinu, that would have been enough. But as I myself have continued to study and learn about the development of Judaism through history, I’ve learned that this whole business of tightening our borders has changed quite a bit over time. And when the discussion around KFJ’s post started getting into a fight over what kind of “influence” non-Jewish religions might have on Judaism, should (or shouldn’t) have on Judaism, I felt like a big piece of the story was being ignored, namely the influences that other religions and cultures have already had on Judaism over the last couple of millennia.
Before I get too deep into this, I have to acknowledge that the subject of influence is sticky. My own thinking is itself influenced by Michael Satlow, with whom I had the pleasure of studying last year. One of Prof. Satlow’s mantras in our class was that “influence” is a problematic term to describe cultural interaction. To wit: the Hasmoneans, upon taking power in Jerusalem, structured their government as a polis, a Greek-style city-state. While one might say that these Jewish leaders were influenced by their Greek surroundings, others might say that they simply structured the government according to their time and place. Since they themselves were as much a part of their time and place and the Greeks were, it doesn’t quite qualify as influence because the Jews weren’t outside of the cultural landscape that gave rise to their governmental structure, they were part of it.
Still with me?
Personally, while I understand Satlow’s hesitation around influence, I don’t entirely subscribe to it. Shaye Cohen’s Forward article about the Hasmoneans nicely demonstrates why with its recounting of the creation of the holiday of Hanukkah itself:
…the twin ideas that an assembly of the people has the power to institute an annual festival, and the idea that an annual festival is an appropriate way to mark a great victory, are ideas that came to the Hasmoneans from Greek culture. This is how the Greeks celebrated their great victory over the Persians in 479 B.C.E.; they instituted an annual festival at Delphi.
Let’s take a moment to appreciate the irony here, given how Hanukkah is generally talked about today.
Call it influence, call it cultural exchange, call it (as Shaye Cohen does) enrichment of Judaism, whatever you call it, it’s not limited to the Hasmoneans.
I have to admit, I think driedel is… boring. I’ve been thinking of what kind of a game we could have for Chanukah that could be iconic in the same way, yet still entertaining.
I don’t know if this is it. The No Limit Texas Dreidel Game
Take Dreidel, combine it with poker, and you’ve got a new dreidel experience that is truly fun. You’ll check, bet, raise, or fold depending on the strength of your dreidel hand (or how much you like to bluff)….Q: What is No Limit Texas Dreidel?
A: No Limit Texas Dreidel combines the traditional dreidel game with Texas Hold’em poker. The objective is for each player to create the best dreidel “hand” by combining dreidel spins. You will combine dreidel “spins” in your shaker, which only you will see, with other Community Spins, which will be seen by all players. Players bet in rounds using poker betting rules. The game is best played with chocolate gelt (coins), as is the traditional wager for the Dreidel Game. No Limit Texas Dreidel is an entertaining adult party game and is family fun for everyone ages 9 to 99.
The OU has provided the Traditional Chanukah Blessings in International Sign Language and Russian this year- and although I speak neither language- I find this delightful. Language can be such a barrier to religious observance and communal involvement and I’m glad to see that the OU has taken the time to make Chanukah accessible to more of us.
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