Where Do You Put Your Menorah?

Joseph never had to ask himself where to place his menorah in the palace of Pharaoh, but if he had, my hunch is that its location would have been as inconspicuous as possible.

Joseph’s transformation from Hebrew prisoner to fully assimilated Egyptian was both quick and spectacularly successful. Having interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams, Joseph is cleaned up, dressed in robes of fine linen, and has a gold chain draped around his neck. He is given Pharaoh’s ring, a new Egyptian name, Zaphenath-Paneach, and a local wife, Osnat, the daughter of an Egyptian priest. The transformation is not merely physical - about externalities – but one of substance as well. When his first child is born, he names him Menashe, meaning “God has made me forget the hardship and my parental home.” The second he names Ephraim, meaning “God has made me fertile in the land of my affliction.” (Genesis 41:51-52) In other words, there is a correlation between Joseph’s newfound physical and familial prosperity, his ability to adapt to Egyptian society, and his willingness to shed the vestiges and memories of his roots. What would take future Jewish communities generations to do, Joseph accomplishes in just a few short verses. So complete was Joseph’s transformation, that he would soon stand face-to-face with his own brothers, speaking to them in his adopted Egyptian language, and they would have no idea that it was their own flesh and blood with whom they were speaking. Joseph’s Jewish identity was so well hidden, one senses it may even have been hidden from himself. Even had Joseph’s dreams anticipated the second-century Hasmonean victory, I suspect he would have kept his menorah – his symbol of Jewish pride – well out of sight.

The festival of Hanukkah is many things. A military victory of a few against many: how Judah Maccabee and his band of brothers defeated their Greek oppressors. It is about the cruse of oil found in the ruins of the Temple – miraculously lasting well beyond anyone’s expectations. But students of the Hanukkah story also know that embedded within the tale is a story about assimilation, acculturation, and the ability of a Jew to differentiate against the dominating tide of a majority culture. As Rabbi Yitz Greenberg explains in his history of the festival, by the second century, Greek culture seemed irresistible. Like Joseph in his day, the elites of the Jewish community had shed their ties to Jewish distinctiveness, opting for the Hellenizing ways of their host culture. The Maccabees fought not just a military battle, but a spiritual one: a dogged spiritual resistance or insistence that despite every opportunity and incentive to do so, they would not “let the light go out” of their Jewish identity.

By this telling, where we do or don’t place the menorah signals a lot more than a technical aesthetic choice; it serves as the historic tell-tale sign or bellwether of our Jewish identity. No other Jewish festival – only Hanukkah – legislates questions surrounding the visibility of its central ritual. Both in the Talmud and in the Shulhan Arukh, the sixteenth-century code of Jewish law, we are instructed to display the menorah in a visible place, by a door or window, for Jews and non-Jews to see, thus fulfilling the mitzvah of pirsumei nisah, publicizing the miracle. That said, each text explains that in times of danger, when such public displays of Jewishness would be unsafe, one may – or even must – place the menorah inside the home, away from public view.

More recently, and more interestingly, in 1978 an intra-Jewish squabble took place between the then head of the Reform movement, Rabbi Joseph Glaser, and the then (and maybe still) head of Chabad, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. It was at this time that Chabad began to erect huge menorahs in public spaces, most famously in Philadelphia in front of the Liberty Bell, and in 1979 – in the midst of the Iran hostage crisis – in Lafayette Park near the White House. Though the debate between Glaser and Schneerson was ostensibly about the constitutional issues surrounding the display of religious symbols on government property, at stake was a far more subtle and substantive question. For Rabbi Glaser of the Reform movement, Chabad’s huge menorahs were a sort of aggressive exhibitionism – a public display of Jewish pride taken one step too far. For the Lubavitcher Rebbe on the other hand, these public menorahs were part-and-parcel of the mission of Chabad. Like the ancient Hellenists, he said, “many of our brethren have left us and accepted idolatry as a way of life.” “We must be like that faithful band of Hasmoneans, [and] remember that there is always a drop of … pure olive oil” hidden deep in the heart of every Jew, which, if kindled, “bursts into big flames.” (Quoted in D. Ashton, Hanukkah in America, pp. 243-245) The debate was not just about tactics, whether outreach should or should not take place in public space. At the core of the debate was how these great rabbis understood their comfort and discomfort in the American context. Should Judaism be public or private; do we live in a time of danger or comfort? As goes the menorah, so, too, Jewish identity.

We are living neither in the sixteenth century, nor for that matter, the twentieth century, but in a new era in American Jewish life. So let me put the question directly to you: Where is your menorah? At kiddush you can tell me the precise location in your home, but for the moment my question to you is more metaphysical than physical. Not just about how you feel, about whether being Jewish is core to who you are. Rather, does the light of your Jewish identity shine forth in your day-to-day existence, or is it something you keep hidden out of sight? At home, at work, on the street, or at play, does the fact that you are Jewish differentiate you from those around you? Simply put, do you live proudly and distinctly as a Jew?

The question is a simple one, but no doubt it makes us squirm. “What do you mean, Rabbi? Of course I live proudly as a Jew, my ‘menorah,’ if you will, is there for all to see.” For some of you, that may be true. But let me probe a little deeper. Were you to do a self-inventory of the week gone by (Hanukkah candles aside), did you live a distinctly Jewish life? Observing Jewish law is the most obvious measure: Was there anything you did or – more interestingly – did not do, eat, or say because of Jewish law? What about your words? Do the people around you know you to be a vocal supporter of Israel, or do you shy away from those conversations for fear of taking a stand on a controversial subject? What about your home? Beyond the mezuzah on the door, would someone walking into your home know by the art, the books, the rhythms of your home, that yours is a Jewish one? What about how you spend your time and money? If I had an Excel spreadsheet of the volunteer hours and charitable dollars you have spent this year, would I be able to distinguish – or more importantly – would you be able to distinguish your allocations from those of a non-Jewish New Yorker?

Unlike those other moments in Jewish history, I think the question of menorah placement is different for us. Thank God, we are not living in a time of danger. Arguably never before in all of Jewish history has a diaspora Jewish community had it as good as we do here in America. But in all that comfort, we have lost our ability to articulate our distinctive Jewish presence and voice. Fun as it may be to point out Jewish Nobel prize winners, the “who’s a Jew?” game doth not ensure Jewish continuity. Ours is an America, depending on your generation, of Stretch Cunningham from Archie Bunker, Ross from Friends, or Baby from Dirty Dancing – Jews whose Jewishness is understood but not spoken. We smile or cringe at the knowledge that Jerry Seinfeld, Sarah Silverman, and Jon Stewart are Jewish, but it is not at all evident to me that their work moves the needle of Jewish continuity in a positive direction. In all the news of this past week, you may have missed that Leon Wieseltier and Franklin Foer resigned from their positions at The New Republic, a sign understood by many as the crumbling of the tradition of the American Jewish public intellectual, the idea that there is a differentiated and critical contribution Jews make – as Jews – to American discourse.

Journalism, entertainment, politics – by any measure, the distinctive place of Jewish life in America is on the wane. Not the oppression of tyrants, and not even the allure of foreign culture is at the root of the modern-day Hanukkah dilemma. Our problem is rather that despite the freedom to do so, somewhere along the way we have lost our ability to articulate a passionate argument for Jewish distinctiveness. The promise of America is not a melting pot, in which differences between faiths are elided into one indistinguishable stew. The promise of America, to appropriate Horace Kallen’s imagery, is that of an orchestra of different instruments in which each one makes a unique contribution to the symphony of American life. Merely living in New York surrounded by other Jews fails the test of our Maccabee predecessors. We can participate fully in Jewish life – but we don’t. We can send our kids to Jewish summer camps – but we choose otherwise. We can set a communal value that Jews aspire to marry other Jews – but I fear far too many are fumbling this basic talking point. Different does not mean better or worse. Different means that the Jewish people have a role to play here in this world, without which our collective humanity would be diminished. It is not just humanity that needs the Jews, but the Jewish people that needs you. In this festival of lights, ask yourself, press yourself, about the degree to which you do or do not contribute to the light of Jewish life in all its manifestations – ritual, communal, cultural, intellectual, philanthropic, and beyond. This is the litmus test of our Hanukkah lights.

Eventually, we know, Joseph will reveal his true identity, reconcile with his brothers, and be reunited with his father Jacob in Egypt. The final scene of Jacob’s life will have Joseph bringing his children, Jacob’s grandchildren, near for a final blessing from the great patriarch of our people. In what are perhaps two of the most heartbreaking words of the Bible, Jacob motions to the boys and asks Joseph “Mi eleh, who are they?” Jacob does not recognize his grandchildren. The commentators explain that he could not differentiate his own flesh and blood from typical Egyptian youths.

Joseph was many things worthy of emulation, but a model for the transmission of Jewish identity was not one of them. Successful as he was, he failed to give his own children a sense of what being Jewish meant in the diaspora, and by the time he got around to it, it was too late. It is a gulp moment of the highest order to realize that the blessing and challenge of being Jewish in America is that if we fail to live differentiated Jewish lives, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. The decision of where you put your menorah is yours and yours alone. On this Shabbat of Hanukkah may we commit to living and displaying it proudly and prominently.