These ASK ABOUT topics are focused on INFORMATION about new paths, rather than on sharing our personal journey. Please keep it to one topic per new path. This is a place for SUPPORT and AGREEMENT only, not a place to tell someone their new path is wrong or why we disagree with them.
You light from left to right - but when people SEE them, they are looking at the other side, and they see the candles this way:
Chabad and most orthodox stick to a conventional 'straight line' arrangement, but in fact there is no rule about relative heights, and you can find many modern chanukiyot that have creative and innovative shapes with candles varying in height - like spirals, or curves. The only actual rule is that the flames must all be distinct and visible (so they can be counted) and that the shammash must be set apart in some fashion so you know it isn't counted.
So if you are shopping, here's the search page for menorahs at The Source for Everything Jewish (although you'll probably get about as good a selection from Amazon):
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
That would take a lot of candles! Even lighting the usual way takes 42 candles, which is a lot.
Oh - the other observance:
No work is done while the candles burn (most of them burn about thirty minutes or so) and the menorah should be set where it is visible to passersby, because we are to 'advertise the miracle'.
So you light after dark, but while people are still walking around in the street (this assumes you live where people walk around!) and if you live in a high rise, you assume your windows are too high to be seen, and you light inside where the people who live in your apartment can 'see' instead.
You also light inside and away from windows in times and places where having candles visible might create a danger to your household.
In Israel, houses from ancient times usually didn't have windows, so Jewish homes would have a special ledge OUTSIDE the front door where the candles would be set (the origin of the custom to light them in a front-facing window so passers-by would see them).
Other trivia -
It is mentioned in the NT (thought briefly). I forget exactly where -Luke or Acts I think - and it says (in English) 'It was about the time of the Feast of Dedication....' That's at least one example where a translation is LESS accurate to the modern reader! It should say 'It was about the time of Chanukah...'
'Chanukah' is Hebrew for 'Dedication' and it refers to the re-dedication of the Temple carried out by the Maccabee forces in 165 BCE.
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
zeek wrote:In the Gospel of John chapter 10 it talks about Jesus being at the temple at Jerusalem during the "feast of dedication" and about it being in the winter.
Yes. It talks about Jesus celebrating Hannukah and Hannukah isn't mentioned in the Old testament. So what is our CENI example regarding extra-biblical (Christmas *cough cough*) feasts? Jesus didn't have a problem with them.
zeek wrote:In the Gospel of John chapter 10 it talks about Jesus being at the temple at Jerusalem during the "feast of dedication" and about it being in the winter.
Yes. It talks about Jesus celebrating Hannukah and Hannukah isn't mentioned in the Old testament. So what is our CENI example regarding extra-biblical (Christmas *cough cough*) feasts? Jesus didn't have a problem with them.
Where exactly does it say Jesus was celebrating Hannukah? Was that part where the Jews who reject Jesus were about to stone him to death? Maybe, but I am not sure about all the Jewish traditions.
Isn't the world wonderful...I am all for rational optimism and I am staying positive.
It is reasonable to assume that Jesus celebrated Chanukah, as it was widely observed. It always occurs on the 25th of Kislev (to start) which is in the early winter. The Jewish calendar is a bit complicated (it is lunar with solar corrections), but Kislev 25th occurs anytime between the end of November and the end of December, usually. This year it started yesterday, Sunday Dec 6th, when we lit the first candle.
Throwing stones at people seems to be a common pastime in Israel even nowadays.
However, only a legally appointed court could pass that sentence, and then the whole population was obliged to participate. During Roman times, no court in Israel had the authority to pass any kind of death sentence, and therefore anybody throwing rocks at somebody else was violating Roman law and accepted Jewish law also, since 'the law of the land is the law' in almost every case.
Rock throwers would have been rioters or at least independent agents, with no legal authority.
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
Here's something interesting - the Vatican has released a new document about Jews and salvation - it is a clarification of something from Nostra Aetate, and harks back to - guess who: Paul.
Guess we are all safe, then, if the Vatican says so.
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
Rabbi David Wolpe is consistently ranked as one of the most influential rabbis in America - he has what you might call a 'mega-synagogue' in Los Angeles, with typically over a thousand people attending weekly. He writes books. He is a cancer survivor (brain cancer). He's a guy with a lot of influence, especially in the more liberal branches (but not only in the liberal branches). He's also really easy to relate to, and spends much of his time interacting with people, instead of talking 'at' them.
He was interviewed recently by Alan Brill, and I'm going to give a link to that. In the course of the article, though, Brill quotes Wolpe on 'spiritual but not religious' - Here you go, and see what you think - it isn't about Judaism, just about this modern American 'spiritual but not religious' demographic:
Do you like feeling good without having to act on your feeling? … Spirituality is an emotion. Religion is an obligation. Spirituality soothes. Religion mobilizes. Spirituality is satisfied with itself. Religion is dissatisfied with the world. Religions create aid organizations… To be spiritual but not religious confines your devotional life to feeling good.
Being religious does not mean you have to agree with all the positions and practices of your own group; I don’t even hold with everything done in my own synagogue, and I’m the Rabbi. But it does mean testing yourself in the arena of others. nstitutions are also the only mechanism human beings know to perpetuate ideologies and actions.
Here's the whole thing - warning, it is long, and covers topics of internal Jewish interest unlikely to entertain others much (sort of like an interview with a Baptist about internal Baptist divisions):
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
