Day: November 17, 2013

Dan Brook & Richard H. Schwartz For the first time since 1888 and then not again for about 78,000 years (!), Chanukah and American Thanksgiving coincide this year on Thursday, November 28. Some are calling it Thanksgivukah. Some are calling it another miracle! It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Hope springs eternal. Indeed, it's always been an integral part of Jewish and American history, spirituality, and politics. Without hope, there wouldn’t be a Chanukah; without hope, there might not even be a Jewish community; without hope, there might not be democracy or America. That’s the power of radical hope! Thanksgiving was established as a national holiday by President Lincoln 150 years ago, although various days of thanksgiving were celebrated since the early 1600s in America. Chanukah has been celebrated for 2178 years. The two holidays are united in our gratitude for Light, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Latkes. Jewish survival is a miracle of hope. Increasing light at the darkest time of the year to celebrate Chanukah and Jewish survival is also a miracle. Each year, we should be grateful for our miracles and we should work and hope for further miracles. We sincerely hope that Jews will enhance their celebrations of this spiritually meaningful holiday of Thanksgivukah by making it a time to strive even harder to live up to Judaism's and America’s highest moral values and teachings. For most of us, we certainly don’t need more "things" in our homes or more food in our bellies; instead, we need more meaning, purpose, gratitude, and spirit in our lives. There are a variety of ways to accomplish this. One significant way we can do this, on a daily basis, is by moving towards vegetarianism. Chanukah commemorates the single small container of pure olive oil — expected to be enough for only one day — which, according to the Talmud (Shabbat 21b), miraculously lasted for eight days in the rededicated Temple on the 25th of Kislev 165 BCE, exactly two years after it was defiled by the Syrian-Greeks, who were ruled by the tyrannical King Antiochus IV. In kabalistic (Jewish mystical) thought, according to Avi Lazerson, "oil is symbolic of chochmah (wisdom), the highest aspect of the intellect from which inspirational thought is derived." A switch to vegetarianism would be using our wisdom and compassion to help inspire another great miracle: the end of the tragedy of world hunger, therefore ensuring the survival of tens of millions of people annually. Currently, from one-third to one-half of the world’s grain, and about three-quarters of major food crops in the U.S. (e.g., corn, wheat, soybeans, oats, alfalfa), is fed to animals destined for slaughter, while about one billion poor people chronically suffer from malnutrition and its debilitating effects, tens of thousands of them consequently dying each day, one every few seconds. Hundreds of millions of turkeys are bred in unnatural and brutal conditions, leading to injuries and ill health first for them and eventually for their consumers. Maimonides, the great rabbi, physician, and scholar known as the Rambam, who wrote that the pain of people is the same as the pain of other animals (Guide for the Perplexed), ruled that one must literally sell the clothes one is wearing, if necessary, to fulfill the mitzvah of lighting the menorah and celebrating the miracle (Hil. Chanukah 4:12). Uniting physical needs and spiritual needs is vitally important for the body, the mind, and the spirit. In the joyous process of celebrating our holidays, other beings shouldn’t have to be enslaved, tortured, and killed by our tyranny over them. No one should ever have to die on our account. Chanukah represents the victory of the idealistic and courageous few, over the seemingly invincible power and dominant values of the surrounding society. We learn through both our religious studies and history that might does not make right, even if it sometimes rules the moment. Therefore, quality is more important than quantity; spirituality is more vital than materialism, though each is necessary. "Not by might and not by power, but by My spirit," says Zechariah 4:6, part of the prophetic reading for Shabbat Chanukah. Today, vegetarians are relatively few in number, though growing, but the highest ideals and spirit of Judaism and America are on their side. According to the Book of Macabees, some Macabees lived on plant foods — to “avoid being polluted” — when they hid in caves and in the mountains to escape capture. Further, the major foods associated with Chanukah, latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganiyot (jelly donuts), are vegetarian foods — as is chocolate gelt! — and the vegetable oils that are used in their preparation are a reminder of the pure vegetable oil (olive) used in the lighting of the Temple’s Menorah. The miracle of the oil brings the use of fuel and other resources into focus. One day's oil was able to last for eight days in the Temple, a miracle of resource conservation. Conservation and energy-efficiency are sacred acts and vegetarianism allows resources to go much further, since far less oil, water, land, topsoil, chemicals, labor, and other agricultural resources are required for plant-based diets than for animal-centered diets, while far less waste, pollution, and greenhouse gases are produced. For example, it can require up to 78 calories of non-renewable fossil fuel for each calorie of protein obtained from factory-farmed beef, whether kosher or otherwise, but only 2 calories of fossil fuel to produce a calorie of protein from soybeans. We increasingly need to incorporate this ecological ethic into the fabric of America, Israel, and everywhere else. Reducing our use of oil by shifting away from the mass production and consumption of meat — thereby making supplies last longer, freeing us from our dangerous dependence on oil as well as oily authoritarian governments, and diminishing the availability of petro-dollar funds for terrorists and others — would surely be a fitting way to celebrate Thanksgivukah. By conserving oil, commemorating how one’s day’s worth of oil lasted for eight, and by reducing our