Advent with Stu g (and Rabbi Joseph Edelheit) Day 14

Time for another guest…

I met Rabbi Joseph Edelheit on a trip to India a few years ago. We met over lunch and hit it off immediately. I had just read a book by Rabbi Lawrence Kushner and was thrilled to talk with a real life Rabbi…we’re still talking today and Karen and I truly value his friendship and insight.

I spent a couple of days with him at St Cloud State University earlier this year, where he is Professor of Religious and Jewish studies, talking and playing a concert with his students and demonstrating, I guess, our inter-faith dialogue.

I will talk more about our friendship and work another time, but I am privileged to get the chance to meet people from different backgrounds, and want to make space in my posts, to include these voices.

Joseph gave me permission to use these pieces of writing, and I will link them directly to where they have originally been hosted.

So here we are… originally posted on the Emergent Village blog here

I have taken a few excerpts of text that may get you thinking or even better talking.

Dialogue reminds us that we are not on our own…

Taken from - If the Last Supper was a Seder, then did Jesus celebrate Hannukah?

Joseph Edelheit

“When I introduce the Hebrew Bible to students who think they are taking a course in the Old Testament, I write four words on the board: Hebrews, Israelites, Jews and Israelis. I explain that these are not the same people and I will expect them to understand the when and why of each term.”

“This is the period of the year many Jews experience the “December Dilemma”! Depending on the actual community in which they (the Jews) live, they might be such a minority that they are literally overwhelmed by Christmas, and their observance of Hannukah is actually hidden. It is tough being a small voice trying to be heard as distinct with all of the white noise of Christmas music filling every single possible sound wave.”

“So we can feel secure that Hannukah will not eclipse Christmas. Unless of course, we are honest that both festivals are brilliant attempts by the leaders of early post-Jesus Christianity and early rabbinic Judaism to push back against the popular Winter Solstice celebrations that brought light into the darkest time of the year.”

“Christmas is an amazing sacred affirmation of a messianic promise and now an economic and popular cultural period of needed communal and family celebrations. It is not necessary for Christians to stop and worry about reframing their Christmas wishes every time they think they are engaging a Jew, and it is not appropriate for Jews to adopt nor syncretize Christmas into Hannukah…so can we all agree that putting Stars of David on Christmas Trees is a bit much? For the many interfaith families, this can be a painful and stressful period of always being “unrequited” and the December Dilemma is very real and should not be dismissed as a mere sociological experience. For some Jews, this is an annual time of being reminded constantly that being a Jew requires a resilient identity.”

The complete text can be seen here

Joseph Edelheit, is a Reform Rabbi—retired from Temple Israel, Minneapolis in 2001—and now Director and Professor of Religious and Jewish Studies at St Cloud State University. His D Min is in Christian Theology from the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. He is a founding Director of Living India an NGO doing HIV/AIDS work in rural India.