On Joy in the Darkness

Hey there, welcome to the OMFG podcast, Jewish wisdom for unprecedented times. My name is Rabbi Jen Gubitz, and together with my friend and co-conspirator today wearing her very favorite dress, Rabbi Jodi Gordon, we're glad you're with us.

OMFG is not just a podcast, it's a philosophy, a worldview, A way of keeping it Jewish while keeping it real. Sometimes, especially if those times are any time in the last few years, the world just gives you an opportunity after opportunity to say, "OMFG!" Now, the world is the world, but Jewish tradition inspires us to call out to each other, and sometimes to God, and to figure out what it all means. And so this podcast is our way of inviting you into the conversation.

So in true OMFG fashion, we hope you're wearing some Hanukkah sweaters and sipping an iced coffee, maybe by Wandering Bear, or seltzer. Jodi can pick the brand. Welcome to OMFG.

So before we really get into it, two things I want to say is, again, we continue to hope Wandering Bear will sponsor our podcast.

I know.

And two, I'm having like a real seltzer moment because As a resident of Massachusetts, of course, I feel a lot of love and obligation to Polar. And this new flavor that I'm drinking, Pink Apple and Lemon, is delicious. But I recently also discovered Waterloo. Have you tried this?

Yes.

Oh, it's very, very delicious. But it's not in all of the stores here. So it feels like it's like a treat.

I don't know.

Anyway, Jen, it's so good to see you. And I just have to say, it is so freaking dark out. Last night I was driving back to the synagogue and it was 6 o'clock and I swear to God, it felt like 2 in the morning. And it's really sort of unnerving.

As my dad says, it's great to be seen. And I know, 3 PM, becoming more my father, becoming more my father, more and more and more. You know, I'm in, I'm taking classes very slowly towards marriage and family therapy. And right now we're doing something on genograms, which is tracing all of the different patterns in the, the generations of your family. And so far, dad jokes hasn't made its way in, but I feel like that's like a deep cut into my identity now, is how much can I be like my parents while retaining my individuality. Anyways, talk about gloomy. 3 PM yesterday was so sad. I like really sat at my desk. I have a window to the gloom, which is great to have a window, right? Not everyone does in their offices. It even looks kind of like gloomy where you are already, Jodi, and it's 11.

Yeah, no, it's 11 in the morning and it's gray and not bright at all here.

And it's, it's so dark that we have these, um, solar lights that light up on our back stairs And they won't go on because there's no sun. And so, you know, I think also like there's the physical darkness and then there's the broader darkness of the world with all that's going on in the headlines. There just feels like there's a lot of darkness, um, everywhere we turn.

I mean, not to sound too cynical, and I've been thinking about this, but even without like a major, major tragedy there is just this general veil of like some truly dark stuff going on in the world.

Yeah, I mean, it's no wonder some of us just want to disassociate and wrap ourselves in string lights or gaudy Hanukkah attire while drinking bubbly beverages that we hope someone will eventually sponsor this podcast from.

I feel like you and I have discussed this before, but there is something about the month of December that just feels like it's like the most human month to me. Like, Of course all of the holidays now are around light. Like, it just makes so much sense. Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas. Darkest month of the year, people are gonna find a way to bring in the light.

Yeah, the world gets darker and colder and all we want is a little candlelight. It does make sense. But there is this cool thing about Hanukkah that you actually taught me that just feels intrinsically hopeful. And that is that right smack in the middle of the holiday, we have a turning point.

My favorite, the not very well known, but no less wonderful, Tikufat Tevet. So Hanukkah, as we might know, starts on the 25th of Kislev. And then as we light that fourth candle of Hanukkah, we also mark the longest night of the year, which our ancient tradition calls Tikufat Tevet. So Tikufah, like sort of the period or the turning of into or toward Tevet, which is effectively the winter solstice.

Side note, we know that sometimes Hanukkah doesn't actually fall on the winter solstice. Sometimes it's 2 weeks before or even earlier. But the general idea is really important. I love that built-in turning point. And then a few days later, on the 7th night of Hanukkah, we also mark Rosh Chodesh Tevet. The New Moon of Tevet.

You know, when we talk about this, it really feels to me like there's actually all of this movement, this really dynamic movement that's built into the Festival of Hanukkah, which I mean, it kind of works with that whole adding light to light thing that we do each night with a new candle, right? But the holiday isn't sort of static and unchanging from night to night. But there is really this progression that I think is meant to move us.

It makes me think of the debate between Hillel and Shammai about how to light the Hanukkah menorah. And we know that Hillel won, and that's how we light it, by adding light every day. And Shammai's version was to light all the candles and then reduce. And I wonder about Shammai's inner life because I'm like, don't you want light? Don't you want more light? Like, why do you want to end with, like, the darkness?

So it's like Shammai has this, like, this sort of built-in, like, it's never going to be as good as it was at the beginning. It's like, this is the best it's going to get. And now, like, each night will diminish. Like, I'm usually all for the minority opinion, but I have to say, in the Hanukkah debate between Hillel and Shammai, I feel much more clearly Team Hillel.

Shout out to Team Hillel. Totally, totally. So the traditions around Tikufat Tevet are mystical and really beautiful.

Yes, there is a midrash, you know, a story that helps us to explain something or understand something more deeply, a midrash about the sun and the moon that is associated with Tikufat Tevet, which is a tongue twister that I just— I love this midrash.

Tongue twister, Tikufat Tevet. Say it 3 times fast. Definitely tongue twister. Tikufat Tevet. Tongue twister. Tikufat Tevet. Tongue twister. Tikufat Tevet. I did it! Oh my God, now I'm gonna need to take my inhaler. Oh, tragically, Gubitz. So the story goes that back when God created the world, God made the two great lights: the great light for ruling the day and the small light for ruling the night, as well as the stars. All that God created in this world, God created male and female. So too were the twin spheres that God created on the fourth day. The male sphere approached God and regaled, I am the male and so should dominate my sister. Older brothers. Hashtag older brothers. Let me be greater than she is, larger in size and more powerful in strength. God saw the seeds of rivalry in her creation and in her wisdom answered, son, you shall be larger and more powerful than your sister. Your size and strength shall dominate hers.

The sun luxuriated in his easy victory, and he shone. But God continued, you have shown poor judgment in your request, for great power contains within it the seeds of damage and destruction. You, my son—no pun intended—now so great and glorious, will be blamed for famine. 'For your piercing and endless heat will parch the earth. Your fiery rays will burn the skin of those exposed, and you will cause cancers to erupt on human flesh. Your strong rays will burn out the eyes of those who stare at you. No one will ever gaze at you. No one will look at you.' The sun gulped, but his rays already had begun to grow stronger and longer.

Your sister, the moon, will be smaller and less powerful as you requested, but she will comfort all who gaze upon her. Hounds will bay in song as she lights the darkness. What a sentence.

I know, isn't that so good?

Joey, are you gonna— Joey's sitting here next to me. Will you bay in song? Howl at the moon. He just yells at men. You yell at the sun. Howl at the moon, exactly. Poets and lovers will be moved to rapture by her hazy afterglow. Moonstruck will become a synonym for dazzled by the wonders of love, while sunstroke will come to mean dehydration, followed by death. She will be ever-changing, ever-watched, ever-admired, ever-mysterious. No one will pierce her poetic potential. Composers will be inspired by her. Artists will be moved to capture her essence on canvas. Writers will glorify her powers. The comforting womb-like waters which surround the globe, filled with the rich life of the sea, will be controlled by her. The rhythmic ebb and flow of the tides, whose sounds comfort those nearby and create the pulse of the earth, will be hers to control.

No two days will find her the same. Rather, every night will reveal her subtle changes. Her every movement will be studied and glorified. Time will be measured by her. Cycles will be calculated through her. The calendar will be fixed using her, and each month she will be blessed. So beautiful.

So the sun thought to interrupt God and so stop this monopoly of gifts his sister now had acquired as a result of his ill-conceived play for power. But God's voice grew sterner with each statement. And as God glorified the moon, the sun's bulk and radiance continued to increase, and his firm rays reached out far beyond his initial grasp. He tried to speak, but he could not find his voice.

"Yes, sun, you shall rule over your sister," God continued. "Your greed shall be tempered, however, because now you shall know fully the burdens of power. The forces of which you now have possession shall make you both feared and unloved. Your name shall be Shemesh, sham-esh, for there in you will be the symbol of fire and destruction. And I will call your sister Ya-Re'ach, for contained in her will be God's perfume, my sweet ineffable fragrance made visible.

Sensing the silken shimmer of blue-gray light dancing across the waves, The two stopped their interchange. Their attention was drawn skyward to watch the graceful ascent of Sister Moon into the starry night. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.

Woo! Wow. The end, right? Like, what a beautiful story. I think it's this amazing way of trying to, you know, wrestle a blessing out of all this darkness. You know, the Midrash also tells us about Adam and Eve, that in their first moments coming out of the Garden of Eden, they were also afraid of the dark and they noticed the solstice too.

Yeah, we've talked about that, that point in Midrash and in Torah a few times in different ways. It's, it's really just so powerful. And it makes me realize that the moon is the original winter blues/expelled from various places throughout Jewish history light therapy. Right now we can put it on our bedside, but the moon is the original. So I really love that in these darker days we have festive lights to guide our way. Our downstairs neighbors put up twinkly lights on some bushes in front of our condo. And while I wish they'd asked because it is shared condo space, I'm hoping they chose blue because they know that their upstairs neighbors are not a red and green sort of family. In Boston, the Franklin Park Zoo goes hardcore on zoo lights. And growing up, we used to go to see the building where Santa and his sleigh were lit up, a decades-long tradition in Fort Wayne, Indiana. So I honestly really enjoy the holiday cheer and lights from the many ways different cultural and faith communities try to bring light into the darkness. Totally.

I, I mean, I really, Jen, I'm gonna invite you to go off script with me as we think about this. I love— so I love light rituals, right? And I'm a big proponent of feeling like it is no coincidence at all, right, that Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Diwali, Christmas, they all sort of happen around this time of year. And that core to all of those celebrations is some kind of making a fire, of kindling of light. You know, some of the imagery is a little bit more obvious. And with Christmas, right, this sort of like maybe perhaps more modern convention of, you know, of literally hanging lights. And I think it's— and I do think it's all so beautiful, right? Because like, we can think of all of the beautiful metaphors and, and sort of idioms and maxims about light and, you know, light one candle and banish the darkness and all of these things. And I'm thinking about the fact that some people refer to that, like refer to what happens at this time of year as the December dilemma. And you and I have talked a lot about, forget the December dilemma. There's no dilemma. We all just want to build light. And so we're going to find light in the darkness. It's this innate part of being human, and that's beautiful. And then there is this way in which the moment we are living in right now feels precarious in a different way. And I'm wondering, both from you— and I would open this up to our listeners. You can find us. You can get in touch with us. Does that instinct of persimhaneh, of sort of magnifying or advertising the miracle by putting our Jewishness on display, by putting our menorahs in our windows, by making our lights visible to more people, like, does it feel different this year in any way? So I have two quick stories that are making me think about this. Um, we've talked, I think, a little bit about my husband's great love for just like, more is more. And so we have Hanukkah decorations, like we have one of those big inflatable— I think it's like, right, like a bear holding a dreidel. One year Josh's sister got us like projection lights that like you project onto the house that are dreidels. Like, he loves it all, right? And after whatever, like, the last terrible thing in the news about antisemitism was, like either huge, you know, Kanye West or the other guy who we don't want to talk about, like whatever it was, my mom texted me and was like, are you putting your Hanukkah decorations outside? Right. And I know what I— I knew the question. Like, it wasn't like it wasn't an— and sort of a just curious question, right? Embedded within that question is like, that sounds dangerous, or I wish you wouldn't, or doesn't that attract more attention? And like, my first instinct is like, yeah, of course we are, because Like, there is this way in which, you know, in times where our people have been, you know, either under threat explicitly or implicitly, right, that we've— our people have held on to this idea that, like, you know, being proud to be Jewish, showing our Jewishness is like the way forward. So that's like one thing, right? And then the other thing, and this is— so my, my little Goldie, my little 6-year-old, like had her first experience with antisemitism at school this week. And it was, and it was like with a dreidel in her hand. She was walking into school and she had her dreidel and some kid said something to her that like, it was something to the effect of either like, Judaism's the worst religion or your dreidel is dumb. It's like hard to get a totally clear report from a first grader and there are teachers involved and sort of in some ways like blah, blah, blah. But there is this moment, there is this thing about Hanukkah this year where I'm like, is it a dilemma? But in the other way, like, should we be all the more so like making our celebration joyous and visible and bright, like, or something else?

Yeah, I mean, I think about that a lot. And even in terms of like, I wear being who I am on my sleeve, literally, love to literally love telling people I'm a rabbi. Love representing Judaism. Also think about like when I get on a plane, do I want to have like any Hebrew on me just in case? Or traveling because of being afraid that I'll walk into first grade like, like your kiddo. And I also this year I got a Hanukkah sweater that has big huge gold Jewish stars on it from Tipsy Elves. It's terribly wonderful. And I only wish I had 8 of them so I could wear them every day because I don't think it's really something I want to put in the washing machine. And I think about, you know, on one of the nights of right before Hanukkah, my learning and engagement team from Temple Shalom of Newton were going out to trivia. And I was like, just thinking this morning, like, oh, I'm going to wear it because like, why not? And it's so fun and kind of gaudy. And then I took pause because I was like, is that a good idea? Is everyone nice at trivia? Who knows? And so it's a question like, what does it mean to take the light of being Jewish or being Jew adjacent or loving Judaism and spread it? And at what cost? Yeah, I mean, with the December—

this like whole December dilemma thing, which I mean, I guess it's worth saying for our listeners, like if you haven't heard this term, right, like we usually use the December dilemma to refer to the experience of, you know, being in community or in families where perhaps more than one, you know, holiday is being celebrated. And how as Jews do we sort of keep Hanukkah Hanukkah, which is to say a relatively minor holiday, which of course we love, but, you know, it's, it's not the Jewish Christmas. And how do we manage like Christmas in our world? And there's this part of me that like sort of puts the story together in my head like this, which is to say, you know, like my kids are, they are my sample size of two. And like living in the community we live, which is an amazing place to live. Like Christmas is everywhere. Like it is Christmas. It's Christmas outside right now, right? It's December, whatever.

I mean, you guys live in the scene of Christmas, like what it should look like.

Like there was traffic on Sunday because all of Stockbridge was shut down to recreate the Norman Rockwell Christmas scene, right? Right. Like beautiful. Great. And my, and my kids, they're like, they're such rabbi's kids, but it's like, they're so bothered by it. Like they're like these like almost like tiny little Chabad emissaries being like, Who else is Jewish? We're going to celebrate Hanukkah. Like, Christmas isn't everything. Like, not everyone celebrates Christmas. And there's this part of me that's like, all the more so. Like, isn't this the time to try to, like, stand firmly and, and confidently in our Jewishness so that we're saying to those around us, not just children, but like to our communities, to our congregants, if we're in positions of leadership, to our neighbors who aren't Jewish, like, yep, I'm Jewish. And this is the time of year that we celebrate light in this way. And I'm going to put it out there in the world. And like, how do you sort of balance all of those things?

I think also for many families, like, it's not a dilemma, it's just a logistical challenge if they have to navigate the ways to do different holidays. This year, Hanukkah falls on Christmas or during Christmas, right? So that will present different logistical decisions. But there's 8 nights, so hopefully people can figure it out and where to be and how to celebrate. And also, I don't think it's a dilemma because like Granted, consumerism aside, right? Consumerism aside, like, more light, more light is more good. More light is more good.

And, you know, to sort of to come full circle to where we thought we might be at this point in our, in our conversation today, it's like, yes, Hanukkah is not a major holiday. Consumerism has elevated it. But all the more so, like, for all the reasons we've talked about, and probably more that we haven't even realized, right? This just feels like a great year of like, why not double down on the joy? Like, Jewish joy is a beautiful thing. And I love your sweater dress with gold sequined Jewish stars on it. Kind of one for myself, right? And like, it just— it— why not, right? Yeah.

So like, go hard at the lights, dive into olive oil. Side note, one year in rabbinical school, I went to celebrate Hanukkah at our mutual friends Josh and Noni Braha's apartment in Brooklyn. Nani's an incredible cook and I am not, nor was I in my 20s. And Nani put out a spread of olive oil infusions she had made just for dinner. And it was incredible and remains a source of my lifelong love of infused olive oil. So like, dive into infused olive oil. Incidentally, our favorite one is Greek herb, which feels very complex in the Hanukkah story. I'm, I'm hosting a couple's Hanukkah party at an olive oil store. So like, go, right? Go hard. Dive deep. Dip your bread and latkes in that delicious olive oil.

A rather Hellenistic Hanukkah, if you will. Also, like, yay, Josh Anani. Of course she made infused olive oils. And the other thing I would say is I hope that all of you get to gather in person for Hanukkah and not get COVID. That's my wish for all of you. A very people-y and COVID-free Hanukkah. Maybe you can wear a light-up mask if it feels like the right move.

Also, you can spell Hanukkah however you want. Do it, whatever you want. Add the H's, add the ch's, it's all good.

I am partial to the CH though. Fair, fair.

Double, double N or double K?

Well, with the CH, neither.

Okay, okay, got it, got Got it.

I would also say to our listeners, like, go wild, bet some money, not on cryptocurrency, but on your dreidel game. Have a party.

Dance the hora. Read about the powerful Judith and eat cheese in her honor.

And don't forget, bless the moon and the hope that she will emerge each month to renew us with light.

So we close with this beautiful poem by Rabbi Jill Hammer. Light born from darkness, dawn born from night, hope born from quiet waiting for the light.

Spring born from winter, spark struck from sun, strength born from calling for the spring to come.

Tonight the dark is waiting, longing to be gone. Tonight the earth is turning, facing toward the dawn. Happy Hanukkah! Merry Christmas. Happy Kwanzaa. Happy Diwali. Enjoy the light. Enjoy the olive oil.

This episode of the OMFG podcast was brought to you by rabbis Jen Gubitz and Jodi Gordon, editing by Jesse Ulrich, and Snark straight from Adonai.