Please click the link to watch Rev. Cynthia’s video recording of this sermon.
A popular joke that we Unitarian Universalists have claimed to share with Jews is “two Jews or two Unitarian Universalists, three opinions.” The Bible itself is not a book of one opinion, but a collection of books, some written in reaction or response to others. I remember learning in seminary that the books of Jonah and Ruth were written in response to the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. All four were written in the same era, the late 5th century to the early 4th century.
Before the Common Era, centuries before the Maccabees captured Jerusalem and reclaimed the Temple in 165 BCE, the event celebrated at Hanukkah. Ezra and Nehemiah speak of Jews returning from exile and rebuilding the Temple.
From the first chapter of Ezra: “In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus, king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and also to put it in writing:
“This is what Cyrus king of Persia says:
“The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of his people among you may go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the Lord, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem, and may their God be with them. And in any locality where survivors may now be living, the people are to provide them with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with freewill offerings for the temple of God in Jerusalem.”
Then the family heads of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and Levites—everyone whose heart God had moved—prepared to go up and build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem. All their neighbors assisted them with articles of silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with valuable gifts, in addition to all the freewill offerings.
Moreover, King Cyrus brought out the articles belonging to the temple of the Lord, which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and had placed in the temple of his god. (NIV)
“Nehemiah insisted and Ezra agreed that any men of Judah who returned from exile with foreign wives and children should turn them out,” (from Ezra 10, Nehemiah13).
In response to that edict, Jonah tells a story of God calling a Jewish prophet to go preach to the people of the city of Nineveh, capital of Assyria; in other words, an enemy people. Jonah the Prophet flees in the opposite direction, but God provides Jonah some unusual transport to Nineveh. Reluctantly, Jonah calls the people to repent. They do repent and God saves them, which does not make Jonah happy. The last words of the book of Jonah are God’s: “…should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
God has compassion on a foreign enemy of Judah. Should the people not have compassion for their foreign wives and children?
The book of Ruth is also a response to the edict to turn out foreign wives and children. It tells the story of a foreign wife, now a widow, who chooses to return to Bethlehem with her mother-in-law. Naomi, the mother-in-law, tells Ruth, her foreign daughter-in-law, that she frees her from her responsibility to her. She may return to her parents’ home.
You likely know Ruth’s response: “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” (from Ruth 1:16-17 NIV).
Once they return to Bethlehem, Naomi connects Ruth with a second husband from her family, Boaz. At the end of the book of Ruth we read, “So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife. When he made love to her, the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. The redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.
Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him.The women living there said, ‘Naomi has a son!’ And they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.” (Ruth 4:13-16 NIV).
In other words, King David had a foreign grandmother.
Hanukkah is a holiday about resisting assimilation. The Maccabees fought to retain their Jewish identity and claim back the Temple. But Simone Zelitch tells a Hanukkah story in which the miracle of the oil—the one day of oil that lasted for eight—is accomplished by two Jews who break Jewish Temple laws, an assimilated Greek Jew who presumably doesn’t keep the Jewish law at all, and a non-Jew. What is Zelitch trying to tell us?
Eleazar blesses the two law breakers and even the assimilated Jew. Zelitch leaves open whether or not he will bless the non-Jew, the Canaanite from the people the Jews conquered when they came into the land. I think the suggestion is that he should. After all, God allowed this man a part in the miracle.
I titled this sermon “Simple Miracles.” One day of oil lasting for eight does not seem as miraculous as making the lame walk, the blind see, or the dead live again. Zelitch suggests that the miracle of the oil could have been accomplished by simple sharing. But sharing across differences is its own miracle.
When I first began to look for a Hanukkah story for today’s service, I was actually in search of another story. I knew I had heard the story on one year’s NPR annual “Hanukkah Lights” program. It is a story of two older men who live across the hall from one another. Each puts a menorah in the hallway by their door. But one insists on following Rabbi Shammai starting with eight lit candles and putting one out each night, while the other follows the teaching of Rabbi Hillel and lights one candle each night. They argue and argue over this and everything else, but if I remember correctly, the story ends with them sharing a holiday meal together.
This year’s Unitarian Universalist Common Read, a book that Unitarian Universalists are encouraged to read and discuss together, is Authentic Selves: Celebrating Trans and Nonbinary People and Their Families with interviews by Peggy Gillepsie, one of the co-founders of Family Diversity Projects and the projects photo and texts exhibits.
One of the people profiled in the book is Joy Ladin. Ladin says, “Jewishness is very important to me, and I’m proud of the progress the Jewish world is making in recognizing transgender Jews. However, as I know from my own experience as a member of the Board of Keshet—a national organization working toward full inclusion of LGBTQ+ Jews—even very liberal Jewish institutions often struggle to go beyond simply adding the word ‘transgender’ to their official welcoming documents.
“When the dean at my university, a major figure in Orthodox Jewish women’s education, first saw me after my transition, she said, ‘We personally value you very highly, but we don’t think that our students or their families will accept you as a professor any longer.’ Then she said, ‘It is the policy of Yeshiva University that no man can set foot on school premises wearing women’s clothing.’ I was put on ‘indefinite research leave.’ To the dean’s surprise and mine, a group of students protested that fall. They were outraged. The Orthodox Judaism they learned had taught them that you don’t treat a person that way.
“When my attorneys sent a demand letter in the spring, I was told that I could return to teaching as myself—as a woman. Several years later, I was promoted to full professor. The fact that an openly transgender person has been able to teach at Yeshiva University offers hope to all LGBTQ people who are longing and fighting for acceptance in culturally conservative families, institutions, and communities. If it’s possible at Yeshiva University, it’s possible almost anywhere.”
Ladin continues by saying, “It felt awkward to get so much attention for my transition, and some of it was an awful kind of attention to receive. But I gradually realized that I was lucky. By being at the intersection of very traditional religion and open queerness, it gave me a unique opportunity. I got a front row seat to the way cultures change, and to the collision between modernity and traditional religious community. Eventually, I started to appreciate the attention.
“I’m not sure if what I do in my writing and teaching work is considered activism, but I do feel like part of my work is to help people understand what it is to be trans. For example, I pay attention to anti-trans feminists and evangelical critiques of trans identity. Not because it’s fun to read that stuff, but because it’s my job to understand opposing viewpoints so that I can help others understand and learn.”
Is the “fact that an openly transgender person has been able to teach at Yeshiva University” a simple miracle or just a miracle?
I am going to answer, “Miracle, I don’t care what kind.”
Is a miracle accomplished by human interaction any less a miracle than one accomplished by some higher power alone?
I am going to answer, “No.”
Can retaining one’s identity and resisting assimilation be held in balance with not rejecting others? Even if those others are breaking your rules?
I am going to answer, “Yes.”
Zelitch’s Hanukkah story of Eleazar’s visitors and the scriptural stories of Jonah and Ruth suggest that God is more accepting than we are.
The story of the Christmas menorahs of Billings, Montana tells us that there are more people who want to be accepting than those who do not.
Ladin’s acceptance as a professor at Yeshiva University suggests that we ourselves can be more accepting than we think we are when confronted with real, live people.
That acceptance is a miracle, perhaps simple, perhaps not, but a miracle. We can live with others across our differences.
As Peter Yarrow wrote:
“Light one candle for the Maccabee children
Give thanks that their light didn’t die
Light one candle for the pain they endured
When their right to exist was denied.
“Light one candle for the terrible sacrifice
Justice and freedom demand
And light one candle for the wisdom to know
when the peacemaker’s time is at hand.”
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