leeG

How's this for our Christmas Special? We have two Jews giving their differingfeelings about Christmas, we have filk songs, and a recipe for a festive dish for enjoying in the season of Sukkot. Not to mention a great celebration for a great man's birthday.
Enjoy!

CHRISTMAS, BEN STEIN, AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY

by Lee Gold

Shelby Vick emailed me an essay on Christmas, supposedly by Ben Stein.
Eventually I got around to checking this out on Snopes and found that Stein wrote the first half but not the second half. (See http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/benstein2.asp for further details.) I replied to Shelby with some of my own thoughts on the subject from the point of view of a fannish Reform Jew, and I’m willing to let him reprint them in his fanzine. Please note that I don’t speak for all Reform Jews, let alone for all Jews, just for myself. On the other hand, I know a number of people who agree with me, so I’m not the only Jew who feels this way.
Ben Stein: It does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit-up bejeweled trees Christmas trees.
Lee Gold: They are Christmas trees. It bothers me when they’re called secular commercial winter holiday trees or shopping mall decoration trees. I’m all in favor of recognizing Christmas as a Christian holiday rather than trying to claim that it’s really $mas and that we’ve all got to celebrate it in honor of consumerism.
I think it’s just fine for stores and other businesses to put up Christmas trees and crèches and other Christmas decorations to show they’re focusing on appealing to customers who are celebrating Christmas. Of course, it means they’re not focusing on appealing to their non-Christian customers, but they’ve got a right to do that.
Christmas lights and Christmas trees are indeed very beautiful, just like someone else's birthday candles are beautiful. I love looking at the twinkling lights and sparkling decorations. But they're not mine.

Ben Stein: It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me.
Lee Gold: It bothers me, about the same way it would bother me if someone said "Happy birthday" to me when it wasn't my birthday and then insisted that it was too my birthday, that I had to celebrate that day as my birthday even when my birthday was really on a very different date.
And of course Christmas is (for those who celebrate it) their Savior’s birthday party. But I wish they didn’t expect me to celebrate it. After all, I don’t expect them to celebrate our joyous holidays like Rosh HaShana, the Day of Judgment (the new moon which Jewish legend says is the birthday of the world), when I will greet fellow Jews by saying “May you be written in the Book of Life” or Sukkot, the Feast of Booths (the week-long holiday that starts on the full moon after Rosh HaShana) when I will greet fellow Jews by saying “Happy holiday.” During December, I try to start the exchange of greetings by saying “Happy holidays" to people in order to forestall their wishing me “Merry Christmas.”
I don't know if Ben Stein is a religious Jew who celebrates the Jewish holidays or a secular Jew who doesn’t believe in God and may not even know much about Judaism. All I know from his essay is that he seems to think he has the right to tell me how I should feel as a Jew without citing the Tanach (that's the Jewish Bible: Torah, Neviim/Prophets, Ktuvim/Writings) or rabbinic teachings and that he seems to think he has the right to tell me how I should feel as an American without citing the Declaration Of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, or other core writings of the Founding Fathers.

Ben Stein: I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto.
Lee Gold: I agree that people who wish me a Merry Christmas are not getting ready to put me in a ghetto. They are, however, assuming that I'm just like them when I'm not. I wish they were willing to accept that someone else can have different tastes, different beliefs, different desires.
Ben Stein: In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year.
Lee Gold: I think Ben Stein is thinking of Hanukkah as the Jewish way of “celebrating this happy time of year.” Hanukkah is a minor Jewish holiday which (ironically) celebrates a fight against assimilation toward Greek culture (after Alexander the Great conquered the Middle East). The big Jewish holidays are (in order) Rosh HaShana (aka the Day of Judgment), Yom Kippur (aka the Day of Atonement), Sabbath (the very first holiday decreed by God, the only holiday mentioned in the Ten Commandments), the Pilgrimage festivals of Passover, Shevuot (Weeks), and Sukkot (Tabernacles), and then a a number of other medium holidays before you finally work your way down to Hanukkah.
And of course Hanukkah is not the same date as Christmas. It’s celebrated on the eight days that span the dark of the moon around the Winter Solstice, the longest dark nights of the year. In 2007 Hanukkah starts on the night of December 4th and will be long over by Christmastime.

WHY DOES HANUKKAH HAVE EIGHT DAYS?

by Lee Gold, Copyright December, 1996

to the tune of "The Wind from Rainbow's End"
sparked by a comment from Solomon Davidoff
When I was a child, the kids in the first grade
Asked, "Does Hanukkah mean Christmas" and "Why does it have eight days?"
"Why isn't it the same date for two years in a row?"
They'd gather 'round and listen to my tales of long-ago.
CHORUS:
Alexander the Great.... But a small town named Modin...
Judah the Hammer.... The Temple was swept clean.
Rededication, while the Old Moon shrank each night....
And a tiny cruse of oil that lit up the Feast of Lights.
As I grew older, we studied the Three R's.
The mundane girls took Cooking; the guys boned up on cars.
We hadn't much to talk about -- except on winter days
When they'd gather 'round and ask me, "Why does Hanukkah have eight days?"
CHORUS
I went on to college and I studied Shakespeare's plays,
But nobody asked Shylock, "Why does Hanukkah have eight days?"
And nobody asked Fagin -- the reason's plain to see:
They all of them were waiting till the time they could ask me.
CHORUS
I've kept up my studying, and I'm a filking bard,
But the questions haven't ended -- and they've started getting hard.
"Why do the kids get coins or choc'lates wrapped in golden foil,
And back before Columbus, what did people fry in oil?"
Alexander the Great.... But a small town named Modin....
Judah the Hammer.... The Temple was swept clean.
Rededication, while the Old Moon shrank each night,
And a tiny cruse of oil that lit up the Feast of Lights.
They held a second Sukkot 'cause they'd spent the first in fights.
The darkest nights of winter were the time that they lit lights.
A one-day vial of oil lit the Temple for eight nights.
A tiny cruse of oil lit up the Feast of Lights.

Ben Stein: It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu . If people want a crèche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.
Lee Gold: Crèches on private property don't bother me. I am a little annoyed to see them on public property, because it means that I’m paying for them (with my tax money), but then there are lots of other things done in my name with my tax money that I am even less thrilled about, and probably most Christians feel the same way about what’s being done in their name with their tax money. Hanukiahs (a menorah is seven-branched: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menorah a hanukiah is nine-branched: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukiah) paid for with tax dollars or set up on public land annoy me too. So would Neopagan altars or idols paid for with tax dollars or set up on public land.
Ben Stein: I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew
Lee Gold; I don't like getting told that I don't have the right to think for myself rather than to conform. I don't like getting told that as a Jew I should keep a low profile rather than stand out as different from the majority culture. The Passover haggadah praises the Jews in Egypt because they were "distinguishable." I wonder if Ben Stein has noticed that passage.
And yet, despite all the above, for decades, my husband and I have had a party every December 25th in honor of the birthday of a great man. I buy red and green apples, and I drive cotter pins through their stems, deep into their hearts. Then I loop Christmas tree hangers through the hole at the top of the cotter pin, and I hang the apples from our ceiling lamps and our ceiling heater vents and from our front porch. So far none of the apples has ever fallen on a guest, but we warn people that if one ever does, we expect the victim to stand up and say, “The force of gravity is equal to the product of the masses of the attracting bodies divided by the square of the distance.”
And of course that’s because December 25th is Isaac Newton’s birthday.
I don’t bother mundanes by explaining this to them, but I do hang up a sign on our front porch that says, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SIR ISAAC NEWTON.” (So far none of the neighbors have asked about this.) I do this because there’s a Jewish tradition that we should metaphorically interpret the commandment about not setting a stumbling block in front of a blind person (Leviticus 19:14) and so (except to save human life) we shouldn’t deceive other people into thinking that we’re not Jews. This is also part of being distinguishable (which the Passover haggadah derives from Genesis 47:27).
The nice thing about celebrating Newton’s birthday is that this is a holiday on which we can all agree, people of all religions and of no religion. (Well, we can all agree except for people who feel that even though Newton was born December 25, 1642 and died March 20, 1727, and Great Britain didn’t adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1752, that Newton’s birthday should still be given as the appropriate Gregorian date. I guess you just can’t please everyone.)

NEWTON’S BIRTHDAY SONG

(finished at last) started by Lee Gold, but revised and continued by Kate Gladstone and then continued yet again by Lee Gold
to the tune of “My Favorite Things”
first published in Xenofilkia #98 (http://thestarport.com/xeno/)
Brachistochrone: the curve between two points covered in the shortest time by a body moving without friction under a constant gravity; the curve of quickest descent.
“Are not gross bodies and light convertible into one another; and may not bodies receive much of their activity from the particles of light which enter into their composition? The changing of bodies into light, and light into bodies, is very conformable to the course of Nature, which seems delighted with transmutations.” -- Isaac Newton (found on a webpage of his quotations)
Prophets and prisms and planets in motion,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lee
Pebbles I find by the shore of Truth's Ocean. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kate
Fluxions that help me in my measurings -- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lee
These are a few of my favorite things.
Brachistochrone paths — a problem worth solving, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . all Kate
For points on a surface that keeps on revolving —
Just minimize "t" - as a cycloid it swings —
These are a few of my favorite things ...
When that Leibniz ... says I swiped his ...
Integrals, I'm sad --
Until I try turning some lead into gold,
And then I don't feel so bad!
Astrology led me to Kepler and Euclid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . all Lee
Back in the days when I was a mere schoolkid.
Projectiles and pendulums; pi found in rings —
These are a few of my favorite things.
Curves that are cubic, and coins for the nation, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . all Kate
Finding the Beast who infests Revelation,
Dates for the Pharaohs and Biblical kings —
These are a few of my favorite things.
(Trans)mutating is elating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . all Lee
Nature’s happy when
She watches how gross bodies turn into light
And then they turn back again.

Here’s an apple dish I sometimes cook for Sukkot (the week-long autumn festival that comes two weeks after Rosh HaShana) and sometimes cook for Newton’s Birthday.
TZIMMES (by Lee Gold)
for a large casserole dish
The night before you serve this,
a) take a couple of dozen prunes and put them in water (whatever water you drink; for me that's bottled spring water, not tap water) for a few hours to plump out.
b) cook three large, four medium, or five small red garnet yams at 350 degrees for a couple of hours.
The next morning
a) take 3-5 large Granny Smith apples. Remove the stems and seeds. Peel them. Chop them into medium chunks. Then chop up the plumped prunes too.
b) get a casserole. No, you don't have to grease it.
c) scoop out the yams and put it in the casserole for the bottom layer.
d) cover that layer with apricot jam or brown sugar
e) throwing in half of your plums and also throw in some raisins.
f) sprinkle with cinnamon.
g) throw in half the apples
h) spread on more apricot jam or brown sugar
i) throw in the rest of your plums and some more raisins.
j) put in the rest of the apples and sprinkle with cinnamon again.
k) cook at 350 degrees for an hour, unconvered, with a cookie sheet underneath it
Two hours before serving this dish, put it back in the oven at 350 degrees with a cookie sheet underneath it and bake it (covered this time) for another two hours.
You could probably vary this dish by putting in dried (plumped) apricots and nuts.