Voices In My Head Podcast Episode 244: Hanukkah with Rabbi Cary Kozberg

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.com. Have you ever thought to yourself, man, I'd like to host my own podcast? Well, guess what? You can go to podbean.com/voices and get everything you need to create, manage, and promote your podcast. I use Podbean every week for Voices in My Head. There's easy uploading and publishing tools, stunning templates, custom domains, social and promotional tools, an embeddable podcast player, monetization tools, and more. It is your all-in-one podcasting solution. With Podbean, you can create professional podcasts in minutes without any programming knowledge. Best of all, everything is mobile ready right from the start. So go to podbean.com/voices, and when you sign up, use the code "voices" and you'll get a sizable discount. Podbean, for your home podcasting. Thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer-songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is your source for discussions on music, literature, movies, pop culture, theology, and more. Now sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of the Voices in My Head podcast. And don't Don't forget to let the voices in your head be heard by following me on Twitter @RickLeeJames and sharing your thoughts about today's show. Welcome back to the Voices in My Head podcast. As always, I am your host, Rick Lee James, and this is a special episode today because 44 episodes today, at least I believe it's 244 that we're recording today. 44 episodes ago on episode 200, I was in the same place with the same guest here at Temple Shalom in Springfield, Ohio, and at the time meeting my new friend Rabbi Cary Kosberg.

Now an old friend.

Now an old friend, that's right. It's all these months later, and I have always enjoyed just things that I've gotten to read by you, Rabbi. I've enjoyed the time when we've— a couple times we've got to grab coffee and just fellowship together, and I always find the things that you have to share to be very insightful. Just to give you the listeners, if you didn't have a chance to listen to the show that he was on before, Rabbi Kosberg, he serves as the rabbi at Temple Shalom in Springfield, Ohio, and he's also the Jewish chaplain still at Kensington Place in Columbus, Ohio. He's a nationally recognized expert in the field of spirituality and aging and is the principal owner of Side by Side Life Transitions Coaching for the Latter Years, offering pastoral and spiritual help to older adults and their families. And today, as it would just happen, is the first day of Hanukkah.

Tonight begins.

Tonight. So it's an appropriate time, I think, for us to get together. And as someone who is really from the outside looking in, is not a part of the Jewish faith, I have questions and I think listeners have questions. And I know you have always really good insights, so I'm so thankful that we get a chance to sit down and discuss this today on the Voices in My Head podcast. So first off, I want to point people to a really great article that you wrote online, and the name of it has eluded me, so they may have to look up my Facebook page. But if I'm not mistaken, I think the title was "My Wish for..." "A Rabbi's Christmas Wish." That's what it was. "A Rabbi's Christmas Wish." And it was so good, and I just want to encourage listeners, if you have a chance, to go look up "A Rabbi's Christmas Wish," because it really has a lot of good insights for us. You touch on some things in that article that are some of the same things that drive me crazy see every year.

I'm sure, I'm sure.

The war on Christmas. And, you know, we— it seems like some people get their feelings hurt so easily over so many different things and, and often don't take into consideration— especially Christians, we don't always take into consideration, hey, there's other people that aren't Christians on this planet and in this country, and, and we need to show some hospitality in that too. So I want to point people to that article, um, and I really want to thank you for for letting us meet together again like this on what I know is a busy season for you. It's a busy season for me, and there's a lot to talk about. So as we start today, we're going to go fairly basic. Some of these answers I know, some of them I don't, but I think I want to cover as many bases as I can today for our listeners. So what I wanted to start with today is just tell us, just kind of a, as You don't even have to be brief. Go as deep as you want. But what does the holiday of Hanukkah celebrate?

Hanukkah— the holiday of Hanukkah celebrates two things that are related, and there's really two different focuses. One focus is celebrating, observing, remembering a miracle that happened when the Greeks, or rather the Hellenists, under the King Antiochus, who lived in the 2nd century BC, about the year 170. When his forces and his Jewish allies, I might add, this is not just a celebration of a victory of the Jews over the Greeks. It was really very much a civil war because King Antiochus and his Hellenists had supporters from the Jewish community, people who decided that God's ways could be abandoned, that scripture could be abandoned, in order to embrace Greek culture. And many of the circumstances, I have to tell you, and many of the attitudes really parallel what we see in our own time in terms of people of faith, communities of faith being challenged by the outside secular culture and how how seductive the secular culture can be to make people of faith move away. And really that's what happened. The story really begins with the conquest of Alexander the Great conquering Asia Minor. And when he conquered what was the land of Israel or Judea, he was welcomed. It was a peaceful conquest. And as long as he was around, he let the Jewish population do what they needed to do. He didn't really bother them. When he died, his empire was divided up between his two generals: Seleucus, who ruled Syria, and Ptolemy, who ruled Egypt. Now, if you know geography, the land of Judah, Judea, is right in the middle. So Judea was often the football. In the 2nd century, the Seleucid king or emperor Antiochus decided to solidify his claim to his empire. And he— one of the things he did was to insist that all of his subjects adopt Hellenism so that there would be more homogeneity. And the Jews didn't want to do that. As I said before, there were Jews, however, and some of them were leaders who actually were very much in favor of this adoption of Hellenism. We know that there were actually two people, two men from priestly aristocratic families. One's name was Joshua and one's name was Menachem. Okay. Both of them changed their name to Greek names. Joshua became Jason and Menachem became Menelaus. Okay. And many of the Jews, as I said, threw off the Jewish faith and became Hellenists. And things were so stark that Jewish boys, who of course were circumcised, when they went to the gymnasium to participate in sports events— of course, back in those days there was no Nike and there was no Adidas and there was no Under Armour— and men, you know, participated in the nude. So, Jewish boys would come and they were circumcised. And in Greek culture, circumcision was considered to be an abomination because it was considered to be mutilating the body. And we have— we know that there were Jewish men who went through a very painful operation of trying to extend their foreskin. To hide the sign of being circumcised. And you can imagine in those days without anesthetic, without modern techniques, without fighting infection, you know, that was a big risk. So you can imagine how much some of these people really wanted to just jettison any sign of being Jewish.

As someone who was just at the gym this morning, I must say I'm thankful for Nike and Adidas. Amen.

Yes, for sure. Amen.

For sure. Amen.

So things got even more— well, let's put it this way. Antiochus became more proactive. And as we know from the Book of Maccabees, which is in the Catholic Bible— it's actually part of their Bible. In the Jewish and Protestant Bibles, it's part of what we call the Apocrypha, the outside books. But the Books of the Maccabees document that practicing Judaism and practicing Torah and practicing commandments circumcision, keeping the Sabbath, keeping the dietary laws became capital offenses.

Hmm.

Okay. Now, the story of Hanukkah, the event that leads up to the battle that Hanukkah commemorates, took place in a little village called Modi'in, which now is a bedroom community of Jerusalem. It's about 20-25 miles out of Jerusalem on the way to Tel Aviv. There was a family of priests, a priestly family by the name of the Hasmoneans. The patriarch of the family was a man named Mattathias, and he and his sons had moved out of Jerusalem because the city had become so Hellenized. At that time, the king's forces, with help of their Jewish allies, had turned the Holy Temple into a Greek shrine. Okay, they began to offer up pigs, and they began to basically worship, you know, Greek deities. Okay, so the temple—

which, by the way, I just want to interject, I think our listeners would know that, but the pigs would be a huge no-no for the Jewish people.

Absolutely.

It would be very unclean. So, right, it would— I'm trying to think of an equivalent in our Christian churches of someone coming in and Just imagine just desecrating with a complete pagan idol or something, you know, and bringing it in.

Right. Well, you know, I would think of, you know, Satanists coming in and just, you know, putting up their symbols, you know, on the altar. It was pretty much the same thing. And in the Book of the Maccabees, there's a song or a poem that Mattathias writes which kind of channels the verses from Lamentations that Jeremiah wrote after the temple, as he saw Jerusalem physically being destroyed. In this case, it was more of a spiritual desolation. And in any case, Mattathias and his family moved to Modi'in, kind of out to the boonies, where they believe the government will not bother them, and they can practice, at least in secret, the ways of their fathers. The story goes on that the government forces made their way out. And in a very public display, the Roman— I'm sorry, the Greek officer approached Manathias and basically tried to bribe him, saying, "You're a man of stature. If you will publicly sacrifice to our gods, you'll become a friend of the king and you'll be richly reward. And Matthias says, people, others can do what they want. Me and my family will be faithful to the tradition, the covenant of our fathers. Right. Well, um, a fellow Jew comes up and seems to decide that, yeah, he'd like to be a friend of the king and he'd like all the benefits that come along with that. Okay. And when he steps up to publicly commit this act of apostasy, Matthias comes up and the text says he brought courage to decision and the spirit of Phinehas who also acted with zeal to maintain God's covenant back in the book of Numbers. Okay. Matthias came up to this fellow Jew and killed him. And then he killed the Greek officer. And he called out to those who were gathered, "Whoever's for the Lord, follow me." And that began a rebellion against the empire.

Wow.

That lasted 3 years. After Mattathias died, his son Judah, out of the 5 sons, he was the most trained and most capable in terms of military response. They fought a guerrilla war around the area of Jerusalem, and the Hellenistic soldiers had elephants, which were basically tanks in the time.

Sure.

The Jews had small arms, spears, swords, But they also had the benefit of knowing the geography and the topography of the area. So, to make the long story short, after about 3 years, in 165, they were able to retake Jerusalem. And they were able to retake the Temple and they rededicated the Temple. The word Hanukkah means dedication. And the story is that in rededicating the Temple, they had to light the ner tamid, the eternal light. Light, okay, which was in the sanctuary. And, of course, they didn't have electricity or anything. They used olive oil. It had to be purified. It had to be certified as pure. And they only found a flask of oil that had the seal of the High Priest, and it was enough to last for one day. So, they decided they would do it, and if the light went out, so be it. They would just have to wait to make more oil. And the story is that a miracle occurred and the 1-day supply of oil lasted for 8 days. And that is a reason, one of the reasons, that our tradition tells us we celebrate this holiday. Our prayers that we actually recite during the 8 days of the holiday focus more on the battle. But the hero of the battle is not the Maccabees, it's God. And one of the texts that we read on the Sabbath of Hanukkah is the verse from Zechariah, "Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord." So it is a historical holiday. It's obviously not ordained in the Five Books of Moses.. But it's a holiday that has a lot of meaning. It's a minor holiday. It's not, again, it's not a Torah-ordained holiday. But it's a holiday I think particularly because of the religious challenges today that Jews and all people of faith have living in a secular culture has tremendous meaning for us.

Well, I think you're exactly right because I feel that tension quite a lot of how far is too far here, you know, like how much of culture do we allow to sort of like overtake us in some ways, you know, because you tend to live where you live and life grows up around you. And we often get very good at rationalizing things. Well, this is the real world, we have to live this way. That's That's your spiritual life, but this is the real one.

Exactly. You know, it's an interesting point because when I teach the holiday to my adult classes, I point out that at the very beginning of the story, when the rebellion takes place, the text is real clear that the 5 sons of Mattathias are identified with their Jewish name, and with their Greek name.

Hmm.

Okay, so we know that these were people that had some sort of comfort level with Greek culture. It wasn't that they were abandoning, you know, they weren't cloistering themselves off from the outside culture, but it really basically was, there have to be boundaries.

Yeah.

You know, and if it means— if being Greek means we get rid of who and what we are, we're not going to be a part of that.

Yeah, and I'm thinking several things as I think about it, but I'm thinking about the temple specifically and our centers of worship and how they should be kept pure. And I even think of just what you said a moment ago about the oil, and the oil had to be purest olive oil. And to me, that kind of sums up worship in itself. Is, you know, I even think of, of, um, David. I will not offer anything that cost me nothing. This whole idea of we're bringing forth our very best and we're giving the best that we have to God. And even our best is, is not nearly enough to be what God is worth. But the whole idea of, of coming with even our, our best oil and thinking about the Greek culture moving in and what it was doing it's an assault on that. It's an assault on— no, absolutely. It's almost like culture saying, oh, you don't really have to give your best, just throw in some of our stuff too. And, and I think at times, um, you know, I'm a part of Protestant Christianity, and at times I feel like we have just run after everything in culture as fast as we can and embraced it as fast as we can for the sake of, oh, we're gonna, we're gonna reach new people by doing that.

Exactly, exactly.

And yet, how much have we watered down what we really are in doing that?

Right, and that really is the story of what the Hasmoneans were facing, which is why it's so important and so meaningful for us today. And the sticky point that we "moderns," and I say that in quotes, I have a problem with is the fact that Matthias acted with zeal. He was a zealot. And the word zealot today is equated with fanatic and is, you know, immediately dismissed. And again, the question I ask my very tolerant, very open-minded students often is, what would have happened If Manathias' response would have been, "Do what you want. We're going to do what we want. You guys, you do what you want. It's okay." Judaism probably would have left the stage of history, because the forces of Hellenism were so powerful at the time, both legally and culturally. Judaism probably would have left the state of history, which means that 165 years later, the birth of a certain individual who came from Nazareth wouldn't have meant anything.

Yeah, yeah, talk a little bit about that.

Because there would not have been the scriptures that he embodied, that he wanted people to know, they would have been gone. And I'm not saying he would not have come. I'm not saying he wouldn't have been born But in terms of how of his message, and how he was understood, and how his importance was rooted in traditional Jewish teaching, that would have been impossible because Judaism would have been gone.

Wow.

And, you know, if he would— I mean, even the whole concept of Messiah and God's anointed would have been gone. Now, you know, We can try to imagine if he would have attained importance in other ways. We don't know. But had Manathias not made that decision to go for it and be the zealot in that moment, history would have been totally different.

Well, let me ask another question while we're on that subject. Because my understanding of— and there's again a lot of different views from all different corners— but my understanding of Scripture and my understanding of especially a lot of the Jewish texts and a lot of the Jewish people that God raised up, they are Messiah figures throughout time. Maybe not what Christians will often say, the Messiah.

No, but you're right.

But wouldn't you say that Maccabeus, Mattathias, Matthias, right? I always want to say Matthias. I'm saying it wrong. Would he be considered a Messiah figure in that sense?

I would say in, in that limited way, but again, he's more identified with this, this figure of who we call Pinchas or Phinehas.

Okay.

Who was a grandson of Aaron the high priest. Okay. And he's identified as this Zealot. If you look in, in the book of Numbers, He kills a fellow Jew, okay, because this Jew is apostatizing. He is basically having sacred sexual intercourse with a Midianite woman as part of a pagan ritual, okay. And God says to him, "Pinchas, you will be rewarded because in your passion You stopped my passion, and my passion at the time— we talk about passion, means his upset, okay, because his people were apostatizing. Remember it says, you know, I the Lord am a jealous God. I the Lord— the word in Hebrew for jealous is also the word for zealous, okay. So basically we're saying God has some real feelings when his people apostatize or don't do what they're supposed to do, because basically they're committing adultery. Yeah, they're committing spiritual adultery. And but he's basically was saying to Pinchas, you stopped, you stopped my— because of what you did, I didn't have to do what I would have had to do. Okay. And Mattathias, the text says, in that spirit was acting. So yeah, I guess in some ways he can be seen as a Messianic.

Well, and I know you're familiar, you're probably more familiar with the New Testament than a lot of the Christians I go to church with in some ways, which I love. And speaking of that zeal, you know, when Jesus in the temple and he's driving out the money changers, and one of the passages, you know, is quoting, "Zeal for your house shall consume me," and all that. I think that that's another instance too. I think when I read that passage, it's another instance to me of where something unholy was taking place in the temple.

Indeed.

And Jesus was filled with indignation about that. Right. And so we see this picture of— we're not seeing what we often sing about of the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay. Oh no. We're seeing a fiery person at this point.

Exactly. And that's why, you know, in a Jewish understanding of Jesus, that's one of the reasons he was so faithful You know, I call— particularly today when our culture is all about being open-minded and diversity, and when we see acts of murder being committed in the name of religious zealotry, the whole notion of zeal is quite thorny, you know, quite thorny. But when I look at As you're mentioning, you know, the episode of Jesus and the money changers, the episode of Matthias, the episode of Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron. You know, some of your listeners may remember the old Popeye cartoon. I call it a Popeye moment for them. That's all I can stands, I can't stands no more. Okay, enough. And it's an immediate spontaneous response to wrong. And this is the only reason that— this is the only thing that they can do. Now it's not condoned all the time. Our sages say that if a person has to even ask permission, he's prohibited from acting.

Wow.

Okay. This has to be something that just comes up, okay? And only history will tell if it was the right thing to do or not. You know, that, that's why this is, uh, Hanukkah is very often associated as a kid's holiday. You know, one of the things I don't know if you're going to ask, but I probably should say that it gets today, it gets its focus just from the time of year it falls. And that is because our Christian neighbors are celebrating Christmas, and we don't want our Jewish kids to feel left out. So we put up Hanukkah decorations in addition to lighting the candles for the holiday every night to commemorate the oil that continued to burn. And we send out Hanukkah cards, and we have special foods. And we put up decorations, yeah. But we do that mostly so that our kids can also feel a sense of holiday spirit.

That's interesting. Well, and I did want to ask about some of those things like that that aren't necessarily in the story. And let me ask you some maybe even silly sounding questions at first. But here's a question that's bugged me for a long time. Only because I don't know. How do you spell Hanukkah?

I'm asked that every year.

Or is there a correct way in your opinion?

I don't know that there is.

Okay.

And again, it has to do with transliteration. There is a specific Hebrew way to spell it, chet, nun, vav, kaf, hey. And those are the Hebrew letters. But when they're transliterated, you're going to get all kinds of permutations. Okay. You're going to get CH, which is supposed to be the /x/ sound. You're going to get a spelling that has the H sound, because it's hard for many people to say /x/. It's easier to just say /h/. With two N's and one K. One N and two K's. Both of those without the H at the end. Okay, you're going to spell it all different kinds of ways.

So there's not like a universal, like, one way to— No, I don't think so. Okay, all right, well, see, that answers it for me.

I did work for someone once who had a bit of OCD, and he told me that whenever I had to use the word Hanukkah, spell it one way and keep it.

Okay.

Don't change. And the one time that I slipped, he got on my case for it. Wow.

Well, that's interesting. Well, now I know, and that helps me. That helps me for sure, because I always want to try to get things as correct as I can. Um, now I'm always interested just because of the, the way I try to follow, um, the Christian year and the different calendar dates. So we just started Advent a couple weeks ago, which for Christians, um, that's sort of the, the Happy New Year day. We're starting over again, so we'll move into our, our different times and seasons of the year throughout. So something that might be interesting to our listeners is I know the date changes of Hanukkah each year, if I'm not mistaken.

Well, the Hebrew date always stays the same.

Okay.

Now because the Hebrew calendar is mostly based on a lunar calendar with some adaptation, you know, the Muslim calendar always follows a lunar year, which is why their their feast days will fall in different seasons. Okay. Ours is mostly a lunar calendar, but we adapted so that Passover always falls in the spring. In other words, if it was a lunar calendar strictly, Passover, which Scripture says is a spring holiday, sometimes would fall in the wintertime.

Okay.

Okay. So it's mostly a lunar calendar, and that means that all the Jewish holidays will fall at the same time within a couple weeks of each other. So for example, the Jewish New Year will fall anywhere from around Labor Day to October 1st. Okay, so that's a good 4 weeks, sometimes 3 to 4 weeks. Uh, Hanukkah, uh, this year falls a couple weeks before Christmas. For Jewish families, it's always better when it's closer to Christmas for the reason I just mentioned. But I remember years when Hanukkah fell actually at Thanksgiving. Hmm, interesting. So, yeah, again, it has to do with the lunar calendar and how it, you know, how is it superimposed on the, on the Western calendar.

Wow. And I think I find it wonderful that as Jewish people you order your lives by that calendar too. I'm— my constant frustration, um, is that we are always letting— again, sort of relevant to our Hanukkah conversation— in our churches, we are often letting the secular calendar overrun. Absolutely. Absolutely. So we'll come in on days, and I'm I always like each year around Pentecost for us, which should be one of our highest and holiest days, it is always falling around a patriotic— I think it's Veterans Day that falls like right around that same time. Nothing wrong with that, but it often seems like in church that the secular holiday often overrides the other. And so I love that there's a sense of sacredness in following that calendar, and that makes you distinct.

Right, and the truth is though that But, you know, for many Jews, particularly those who are not so focused on the religion, they have the same— there are the same challenges. I mean, the synagogues focus on the calendar, but individual Jews have challenges just like individual Christians do. And again, I think that's one of the reasons that the message of Hanukkah is not just a Jewish message. It's a message for people of all faith. Because worldwide secular culture is, as we all know, in all kinds of different episodes that we read in the paper, is challenging us.

Yeah, oh certainly, certainly, very much so. Now we already mentioned that, you know, there are some gifts that are given and things like that. Is that a— that's not a mandatory thing necessarily?

No, and again, the gift-giving itself is really more of a response to the gift-giving of Christmastime. Before, you know, before Jews came to America in large numbers, you know, in the countries of origin, and particularly when they lived not among non-Jews, Hanukkah really was much— didn't have as much focus. There might be a custom of giving a little money to kids to buy whatever they wanted. There's a tradition that during Hanukkah it's okay to gamble. Okay. Because it was considered to be a time when you you have a good time. Okay, so, you know, students could kind of refrain from their religious studies and just have a good time. One of the games that we play is called dreidel.

I was going to ask you about that.

And dreidel is really a gambling game. Not that we are okay with gambling, but I always thought it would be kind of neat that When people go to Vegas during Hanukkah, you'd find a dreidel table next to a blackjack table. Wow. And basically, dreidel is a top. A dreidel is a top. It's got 4 Hebrew letters, and the letters stand for neskadol hayasham, a great miracle happened there. And depending on how the top falls, which letter it falls, is facing you, will determine do you get the pot, do you get half the pot, do you get nothing, or do you have to actually put into the pot. And again, it's not that people play for high stakes. It's usually pennies or peanuts. And a lot of it's, again, just to entertain the kids.

That's interesting.

And teach the story at the same time.

Yeah, well, speaking of teaching the story, I've never thought to ask this question until our time together this time, but in our tradition we have the Advent candles that we light and we do it every week throughout Advent, and then on Christmas Day we light the Christ candle, is what we call it. It's a big white candle in the middle. I'm curious, is there a particular order to the lighting of your candles?

Yes, there is. It's That's a very good question. Again, because Hanukkah commemorates the miracle of the oil continuing to burn for 8 days, and I just mentioned that it's interesting that both of our holidays are about light in a time of darkness. You know, this is the darkest time of the year.

Yeah.

And both of our traditions based basically say that in time of darkness we have to keep the light burning. What we do is we light one candle in our candelabra, which is called a Chanukiah. Sometimes these are called menorahs because they're shaped like the candelabra, the menorah that was in the temple, although not all Chanukkah candle holders are shaped like that. But we light 1 the first night, 2 the second night, 3 the third night, all the way up to the eighth night when there are 8. Now there used to be a— many, many centuries ago there was a discussion as to what the proper way was. There were some people, some sages that said, on the first night we should start with 8 candles and as the holiday progresses and decreases increases, we decrease the number of candles. Another group, which is the group that won out, said on the first night we begin with one and we increase.

Okay.

Now that was the group that won out because their reasoning was you should always increase light and holiness and not decrease.

That's very good.

And folks resonated with that.

Yeah.

So that's our cost I kind of love that, actually.

That's really good. And that's one reason I actually love this time of year. One thing I love to do is drive around and just look at the lights.

We do too. I'm going to tell you, I know a lot of Jewish people that it's not— Christmas is not their holiday, but they love going around seeing the Christmas. And frankly, I always wonder every year, again, going back to the article you mentioned I'm a believing Jew who believes that Christ should be put back in Christmas because I think it's a religious holiday that needs to— that religious emphasis needs to be affirmed. And I always like when I drive around, I'm always curious as to whether or not there will be a manger scene in, you know, in yard. There's all kinds of Santa Claus, and I saw, I've seen a couple with penguins. I don't know where that comes from because penguins are not at the North Pole, they're at the South Pole. But it's always about winter and snowmen, and I'm always gladdened when I see a yard with a nativity scene.

It's definitely become increasingly secularized and less and less Do I see any sort of manger scenes or things like that?

I saw one in our neighborhood which really made me smile, and that was, it was a figure of Santa Claus bowing at the manger, which I just thought was just full of great symbolism.

Yeah, I've seen a few of those throughout the years, and actually there's a book that I revisit just about every year now, um, The Autobiography of Santa Claus. I don't know if you've ever heard of it.

No, no.

It's a really interesting book because it's, uh, the writer of it's actually historian and he, he's written all kinds of like biographies of people. I mean, oddly enough, people like Charles Manson. He was a Manson biographer, people like that. But, um, he weaves a lot of, uh, history of the real Saint Nick and then does the story sort of with these magical elements and things. But he never leaves his position as a priest throughout the whole story. And so the whole idea of him telling this story is that this is the reason he has the power to be Santa is because God has given him grace to live until he's done doing the job and just keep giving gifts to people and giving light to the world and things like that. It's a really interesting book. But yeah, so I do enjoy the lights and the things this time of year. That come with it. And I love getting your perspective on things too. And I try to think this time of year— I'm glad to hear you say that because I often wonder what other religions think this time of year.

Well, and yeah, I'm— again, I may be in the minority, but I found frankly that among non-Christians I found that Christians, and particularly Jews who are obviously not Christian, the stronger they are in their faith, the less threatened they are by this.

I agree.

Okay?

Yeah.

And I found that unfortunately people who are not so firm in their own faith find this time to be very, very intimidating. And they want to make their own issues the problem of believing Christians. Right. Okay. And I just never see that. I always like to say when I was a kid and Christmas was celebrated in the schools, it was a time when prayer was said in the schools. Okay. I remember a couple years in elementary school, I sang Christmas carols. I turned out okay.

Yeah.

I mean, in terms of, you know, it didn't threaten me. It didn't threaten my faith. I knew who I was.

Yeah.

I always appreciated the story of Christmas. I think it's important for people who are Christians and who are searching for faith to, you know, to take it seriously. Yeah.

Well, I think that too, and I think there's a lot of insecurity. Maybe people don't even know what they believe, and so at times they, you know, they're They're kind of tossed back and forth like every wave of the sea at times, it seems like. And, you know, next, one thing I wanted to do today and I didn't get to do it, not that the listeners at home would be able to see this anyway, but I actually ordered you a gift for Hanukkah.

Oh, thank you.

And unfortunately, it says it's going to be delivered Thursday, so I'm going to have to drop it by later on. But I did some research because I didn't know Um, like, is there a gift that's appropriate? That's a gift that's not? So the thing that I got you, and I wonder if you can elaborate on this— I'm not going to tell you what it is yet.

Okay.

But it does come from a Jewish store out of New York and someone that makes gifts for Jewish occasions and things like that. So the question I do have for you, we've already said that gifts are not obligatory, um, for this time of year, but you do it a lot. Is there a particular kind of gift that is encouraged around Hanukkah time as opposed to others? Is there something that has more significance?

Oh gosh, not that I can think of, no. You know, most people have what they need in terms of actually observing the holiday. There's all kinds of things that are given. Yeah. And I, I think in that way it parallels pretty much what you know, what the custom is among Christians. Yeah, they're giving gifts.

Well, the gift-giving thing, um, it's, you know, my son is an only child and, uh, he's 4 years old, about to turn 5 this year. He's not only the only child, you know, of our family, he's the only grandchild on both sides. He's the only, uh, so he doesn't have cousins and he doesn't have, you know, his aunts and uncles are are single, and so they haven't got children and things like that. So when Christmas comes around— and it also doesn't help that his birthday is January 2nd, so he has like, in his mind, I worry about it at times because he's going to think all this whole season is just about presents because he's going to get it from everywhere coming and going. And so it's something that I struggle with because I really want him to see that this is not just a day for presents for you. And this year we've been— it's been our challenge to him, um, and this is really hard for a 4-year-old to grasp, but the idea that, you know, it's not really about what we can get as much as anything. We want to see what we can give to other people. And it just— I don't think he can quite understand it yet. He goes to preschool now, so that's helped a little bit with his only childness understanding more. But when we tell them, say, son, you know, the spirit of the holiday would be that not that we get and get and get. So there are actually kids out there that don't have toys, you know. And we might think like, what about, you know, this year when you get a new toy, why don't we look at some toys you have? Maybe we can give those to somebody else and figure out ways. Because exactly, um, my fear is that even in our home, that we're going to become just so— you know, that he would just see it only as this time of just getting and getting and getting and miss completely the point. So I think we all struggle with that, and I think that this whole conversation about how far do we let the culture sink into what we do as people of faith is so important to what we do. And I also want to add, just as a sort of side note, you had recommended a book a while back, which I got, and I'm still reading parts of it, but the— was it The Gift of the Pharisees?

Heirs of the Pharisees.

Heirs of the Pharisees, yeah, and I have been enjoying that.

Yeah, there's actually a chapter in there the author writes about Hanukkah and how it's celebrated in this country. And what's interesting is that he wrote that article, he wrote the chapter as a magazine piece back in 1990. 1960. And to see what's happened 57 years later and compare what he observed then as to how things are now is fascinating. Wow.

I'm going to have to read that chapter then, because I've read different chapters throughout, and I've been very interested in, in your take. And I haven't thought to ask you, um, but I wanted to this time when we got together. Um, in the Christian denomination, Pharisees get a bad rap. They do, yes, they do, for sure. But I don't know that it's it's so much, or even that it's so deserved necessarily, as much as sometimes our interpretation of it. And some scholars have even thought maybe Jesus was a Pharisee.

Yeah, I'm one of those people too, because there were different kinds of Pharisees.

Okay.

There were the folks that were, you know, I think as the pejorative understanding is, they were very strict and legalistic. Okay. And then there were others who were who were committed to the Torah and were committed to the divinity of the oral tradition, but they were much more relating to people with open arms. In Jewish tradition, there are two sages. One's name was Hillel and one's name was Shammai. Shammai tended to be more of the more legalistic, group, and Hillel tended to be more of the open-armed group. And I think there are people who— and they both lived, they both died about the time Jesus was born, supposedly. So, you know, one wonders, you know, when Jesus was growing up, was he influenced by Hillel's teaching? Hillel is the one who said, when someone, when a prospective convert came to him and said, "So, teach me the entire Torah while I stand on one foot," trying to get him to mess him up. And he says, "What's hateful to you, don't do to your neighbor." And that's a version of, you know, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." So, that's why people think Jesus may have been influenced by that. Been taught by.

There's a lot of Pharisaical wisdom that we see.

Yeah, yeah. And it's, as you say, it does get— they do get bad rap. And, uh, um, truth is, if it weren't for them, um, again, there wouldn't be any Judaism today.

That's interesting. I, and I, and I agree with you. I think actually, having studied the Pharisees a bit more, it seems like they're They serve a purpose in the narrative in the Gospels, but—

Yeah, as a foil.

Yeah, definitely. But to do a study about what they actually were, and are there still Pharisees today?

Well, no, the Pharisees actually as a group ended about the time the temple was destroyed. Okay. Now their spiritual descendants, their disciples, are who we call the rabbis. The sages, okay. And they really developed after the temple was destroyed. There was no more physical center. The Torah itself and learning became the focus. So all those sages really formed what we call rabbinic Judaism, which is what we have today in all of its various interpretations.

Fascinating. Well, there we have it. So Pastors, lighten up a little bit on the Pharisees, all right? We need to do a little study into it for sure. Well, this has been so much fun. As always, man, I thank you for just taking time out of your busy day. I know that it's busy. And can we just touch on just really fast, please, if you have a few minutes, um, because we're in an interesting time for, for a couple things, and my mind goes to 3 or 4 different things I want to talk about. But you were just leading a study a few minutes ago here in— yeah, at Temple Shalom. And the study was about something that's hotly debated among Christians right now. The Pope has just made a statement that he would like to change the words, the wording of the Lord's Prayer. And I think what he wants to change it from was 'lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil,' and he wants to change it to something like 'lead us away from temptation,' or something like that, something a little more like instead of— he wants to lose the connotation of, of God being the one that leads us into temptation. But my understanding is that, you know, I, I grabbed my books and was looking at the translation. I think it actually is translated 'lead us not into the time of testing,' I, I think is, is what it comes from. But I was interested, you were telling me just before we started that you were just leading kind of a study on that.

Well, we were talking about the— yeah, the classes about Jewish views of afterlife, and we were talking about our understanding of what would be the equivalent of hell, and we call it Gehenna, not to be confused with the Columbus Circle.

Gehenna and Columbus Circle.

But we were also talking about the notion of Satan in Jewish tradition, and what I'm going to say I got to give a disclaimer. What I'm going to say is in no way— should be not understood as any way challenging or disparaging Christian belief. But to be sure, the Jewish understanding of Satan and temptation and the role of temptation is very different than in classical Christian teaching. And that is, first of all—

And I agree with you, by the way. Yeah, go ahead.

So in Jewish In this tradition, Satan is not the devil, because we don't have a devil. Satan is not an adversary of God or a fallen angel, you know, trying to mess up God's plan. Satan is an adversary— was created by God to be our adversary. That is, an adversary for human beings in order to lead us into temptation in order that we would resist temptation. Okay, so we understand that God means for us to be tempted, not that we should fall into it, but that we should learn to resist it. And I use the analogy in my class that, you know, when you when you have a trainer that is helping you to get healthy, you're hiring that person to make it hard for you. Okay, so that your body and your spirit will get stronger. Without those barriers, you're not gonna move. Okay, so for us First of all, the Lord's Prayer, what's known as the Lord's Prayer, is a very Jewish prayer. We Jews don't say it anymore because it is identified as the Christian prayer par excellence. But every single word and every single concept is Jewish. And so when the prayer is, "Resist," you know, "Lead us not into temptation," what we hear is, "Please God, don't make it too hard for us." Knowing that we have to be tempted so that we can overcome that. That's a very different understanding.

I understand that. As I pray, I do an extended version of the Lord's Prayer in the morning when I pray. It says, "Lead us not into trial, trouble, tribulation, or temptation. Be mindful of our frame, for we are but dust and we can only take so much." —And actually, Rick, we say a similar prayer every morning.

I mean, those of us who pray every morning, part of our morning liturgy is a paraphrase of that. But at the same time, we know, look, it's got to happen. You know, in our daily lives, we're going to be tempted. We're going to be tested. That's part of God's plan, and we're just hoping we're going to be able to meet the test.

Well, and you know, I love what you just said about the trainer because I've, I mean, you and I both have been doing a lot physical fitness-wise and trying to keep that up. And I'm desperately trying to keep off the 50 pounds that I lost over 3 years ago. And I find that this time of year, 2 years in a row now, I've stuck with a pretty strict diet around Christmas time because I'm actually trying to lose weight in the time when everybody else is constantly, and it's just It's just this constant flow of like, "Here, take a treat, take a treat." And I'm always trying to— nope, say no, because there's a discipline to that. And I think that's actually a more healthy understanding, especially of the Old Testament view of Satan, which is a completely different character than what we have in the New Testament whenever we see that. And so, thank you for taking time to share just kind of what you had shared with your study group. I find that kind of fascinating. Yeah, thank you for sharing. Well, we've almost been talking for an hour, so I probably ought to cut it to a close. But Rabbi Kosberg, thank you for being one of the Voices in My Head. As always. Yeah. Thank you for joining me here this week on the Voices in My Head podcast. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com, follow me on Twitter @RickLeeJames, like my artist page on Facebook at facebook.com/rickleejames, and keep up to date on what I'm writing at my author page on Amazon.com. Make sure to follow my calendar on the website, and if you would like to have me come to your town to do a concert, a speaking engagement, or a book event, you can book me through my website by clicking on the link for Pare Booking Agency. That's P-A-R-E Booking. And finally, it would mean the world to me if you were to leave me a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast is on the internet. And now the benediction: May the God of peace, who raised Christ from the dead, strengthen your inner being for every good work. And may the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rest upon you and dwell within you this day and forevermore. Amen.