Die Pflaumen reifen im September, by Gennady Karabinskiy

Maybe the first time I became excited about Michael Lerner’s ideas, and certainly the first time I wrote about him, was when I read a piece by him about Chanukah. As I wrote then (only 2003 but it seems a very long time ago):

The “first national liberation struggle in recorded history,” writes Michael Lerner, was that of the Jewish Maccabees against the Hellenic tyrant, Antiochus. Many Hellenising Jews had accepted his rule. Lerner writes, (my italics):

To fight against superior military force was totally illogical and unrealistic from the Hellenisers’ standpoint. But the Maccabees rejected assessments of ‘realism’ that derived from the framework imposed by the imperialists, and drew instead upon the Jewish religion and the stubborn spirit of a people who had come to believe that every human being was created in the divine image, hence had a right to be treated with respect and decency. These were people who could not submit to the rule of the imperialist, and whose religion taught them that they need not, because the central Power of the universe was a power that rejected the reality of oppression. The Torah told the tale of their origins in a slave rebellion against another imperialist power thought to be invincible – Egypt of the Pharaohs.”

I read that on some other website now long gone, not at Tikkun’s site. Now I know it is from a supplement that Tikkun publishes every year at Chanukah in our Nov/Dec issue, which you can download as a pdf here. The image above comes from this year’s version of the supplement.

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area you are warmly invited to come celebrate Chanukah with Michael Lerner’s community at Beyt Tikkun synagogue-without-walls meeting in SF and Berkeley on Saturday evening, December 12.

7:00 p.m. Noe Valley Ministry 1021 Sanchez St, San Franciso (between 23rd and 24th streets)

7 p.m. Children’s games and activites
7:30 p.m. Rabbi Lerner tells the adult version of Chanukah story–the first national liberation struggle
7:45 p.m. Chanukah candle lighting (bring your own menorah or chanukiyah if you have one)
7:50 — Singing and DANCING to the music of Achi Ben Shalom
8:30 — We serve latkes and sour cream and you bring food for a veggie pot-luck
and SHMOOZE and dance some more.

Entrance Fee: $10 plus food for a vegetarian pot-luck
Members of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue: Free plus bring food for veggie polluck.
BRING YOUR FRIENDS, CHILDREN AND NEIGHBORS. EVERYONE WELCOME!!!!!

This year for the first time we are also publishing a companion guide to an alternative Christmas — and you can talk with the author of the main article in that guide, “new monastic” Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, on Monday night on our Tikkun Phone Forum. That’s at 6pm (Pacific Time) 9pm (Eastern). Call 1 888 346 3950 and ENTER CODE 11978#

No doubt we will talk about Chanukah then as well, and any other seasonal celebration that you yourself practice: Kwanzaa, Holi, Solstice, and so on. We would love you to send us any stories, services or customs around Holiday Celebrations (at any time of year) you participate in for a new section of our NSP website where we write:

Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives want to help people of all faiths to celebrate holidays in traditional and new ways. That’s why we’re putting together this new section of our web site. For each faith tradition we will have a list of traditional holidays and from there we will collect sacred texts, rituals, art, poetry, ideas for liturgy, stories, and more so that we can expand everyone’s understanding of each holiday and open people up to new ways of celebrating.