Rabbi Eric Rosin
Temple Beth-El, Richmond, Virginia
December 20, 2003

Good morning. This morning we not only celebrate and observe the Sabbath, but we also welcome the holiday of Hanukah. Everyone knows the basic outline of the Hanukah story. Like many of our historical holidays, the story of Hanukah is essentially: "They tried to kill us. We survived and prevailed. Now let's eat." It is a theologically interesting, if not compelling holiday that is usually marked more by the lingering smell of fried latkes and the laughter of children gaining and losing chocolate fortunes in high stakes games of dreidel than by a fixation on the relationship between God and the Jewish people or the Jewish people's place in history.

Nevertheless, there are some very important lessons to be learned during this holiday, and I'd like to take just a moment or two to share with you a lesson that I learned last year at about this time. It is a lesson born of tragedy and it is a lesson that a certain celebrity vegetable gave her life to impart to me.

You see, and this is an absolutely true story, last year I had a chilling experience that made me think seriously about the place that Jews play in American society in general and in Richmond in particular. Last winter, I was still new to Richmond. I didn't yet know my neighbors and I was still learning what it means to be a Jew living in the Capital of the Confederacy. The first Shabbat of Chanukah took place on a cold, crisp morning shortly following one of the numerous snow storms of last winter, each of which, I was told was completely uncharacteristic of Richmond weather. (As an aside, it seems to me that by the time you have had three major snow storms in a given year, that kind of weather has become characteristic, but I digress.)

In any case, since it was Shabbat and since I don't drive on Shabbat, I bundled myself up, put on my overcoat, my scarf and my ugly rubber boots, and I emerged into the dazzling bright white of the morning sun reflecting off of the new snow and the hazy glare of the icy sidewalks. I had just turned the corner, still on my own block when something caught my attention. In front of me, just off of the sidewalk, the white field of snow was interrupted by a small, yellow object. As I approached, it became clear that what I was looking at was a plastic purse, no larger than a walnut. I had barely registered this strange lilliputian fashion accessory before I noticed, a little further in front of me a small, plastic nose on the same scale, and in front of that, two prosthetic pink lips, clenched into an immovable smirk.

All of the sudden, the significance of this macabre flotsam flooded into my awareness. Sometime over the previous night, that most famous of root vegetables, Mrs. Potato Head had met an untimely end, and on my very block.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with the unfortunate death of Kitty Genovese, but one night in Queens in 1964, a twenty-eight year old woman named Kitty Genovese was attacked on the streets of her own neighborhood and within earshot of at least 38 people, all of whom later admitted to hearing her screams and some of them even witnessed the one or more of the three separate attacks that all contributed to her demise. The salient factor of Ms. Genovese's murder is that not one of those thirty eight people who were aware of what was happening had been willing assume the responsibility to come to Ms. Genovese's aid, or even to call the police, until it was too late to save her life. Each person in that neighborhood had assumed that someone else would intervene but, put to the test, no one wanted to become personally involved.

The death of Kitty Genovese caused an uproar around the country and led to psychological studies about the effects of vicarious responsibility. Publicly, America wanted to know, how could anyone witness such acts and not, at least, call the police. Privately, many people outside of New York attributed this needless tragedy to their stereotype of New Yorkers, seeing them as cold hearted and unwilling to extend themselves to help a fellow human being, even in such dire circumstances. Around the country, people secretly thought to themselves, "That's why I'll never move to New York. Something like that could never happen here."

All of these thoughts ran through my head, right here in Richmond, as I realized that poor Mrs. Potato Head had suffered the same fate as Ms. Genovese practically under the windows of my apartment and the apartment next door, and like those scared New Yorkers, not one of us had lifted a finger to save her.

But then, I had another thought. There was no telling who had committed this nefarious act, but surely there would be some investigation to try and figure out who was responsible. After all, Mrs. Potato Head was famous. She had made literally millions of dollars for the Hasbro Corporation and, even if her corporate family didn't follow up, she and her husband, Mr. Potato Head had enjoyed over fifty years of marital bliss, including the heady days of "Toy Story" and "Toy Story 2" during which Mr. Potato Head had lived the life of a movie star with the support of his loving wife by his side. Surely the aggrieved Hollywood spud would not let the demise of his wife go by without an appropriate inquiry.

And where would that investigation start? As I continued to walk to shul, an even deeper chill came over me as I realized where the authorities were likely to begin. I was sure that the first thing that they would do would be to interview the people who lived near by. Including myself, a rabbi, an observant Jew, during the holiday of Hanukah, a holiday that is celebrated by shredding potatoes and frying them into latkes!

Suddenly my thoughts were torn away from poor Kitty Genovese and they were instead directed towards Leo Frank, the only Jewish person ever to be lynched in the United States and, not coincidentally it seemed to me, also a northerner who had come to the south for work. I didn't know my neighbors yet. I didn't know if they would come to my defense or if my loud music and my late night aerobics would have soured their opinions of me, but really what I didn't know was how the Jewish community is really regarded in Richmond.

In the middle ages, Jews were persecuted because of the blood libel, the completely untrue supposition that Jews needed the blood of Christian children for their ritual observances. Would I find myself at the mercy of a new and virulent version of that, perhaps to be called the "potato slander?"

And then, it finally occurred to me, the plastic carnage outside of my apartment had propelled me face to face with the central paradox of the modern observation of Hanukah.

There are many layers to this holiday. We tell our children that the Greeks and the Syrians, under the rule of Antiochus the King decreed that the Jews could no longer practice Judaism, and that a small band of religious Jewish warriors, the Maccabees, refused to comply with the decree to defile their shrine, rebelling instead, overthrowing their overwhelmingly more powerful adversaries and ultimately retaking the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. This is a great story, and largely true. It's got conflict and bravery and a come from behind victory against overwhelming odds. In my humble opinion it would make a much better action movie than Mel Gibson's latest cinematic endeavor.

On the other hand, that's not the whole story. The whole story is a little messier. The whole story also includes the fact that it probably was not Antiochus who ordered the desecration of the shrines. It was probably a Jewish priest named Jason who favored doing away with the distinct religious practices of the people of Israel and replacing them with the more cosmopolitan, Greek customs. And the war between the Maccabees and the Greeks and Syrians probably started out as a civil war between the powerful urban Jews who were all too willing to abandon Jewish practice and the more traditional rural Jews who were not.

Which raises the question, why are we celebrating what, at least at the outset, was a civil war in which Jews fought against Jews? The answer must be that we are not celebrating violence perpetrated by Jew against Jew, but instead, we are celebrating the fact that the pressures towards assimilation did not win. We are celebrating that Judaism survived not only the Greeks and the Syrians, but also the other Jews who wanted to be like the Greeks and Syrians among whom they lived.

But here's the paradox: This seems like a funny time in history to celebrate our victory over assimilation. Where are we in that fight today? How many of Richmond's Jews are in synagogue this morning? If they're not here, where are they? My guess is that Richmond's Jews are doing exactly what Richmond's non-Jews are doing. They are sleeping. Or they are checking their email. Or they are getting ready to drive their children to the mall or to the soccer game or they're running around town just doing errands. This morning, as we celebrate our victory over assimilation, we are probably more deeply assimilated into the society in which we live than at any other time in history.

So, what does it mean to celebrate our victory over assimilation? I like to look at it is as an aspirational goal. Hanukah is the time of year when we think about the ways that we want to preserve our Judaism. To tell you the truth, last winter, when I saw the remnants of a plastic toy that had probably fallen out of a shopping bag into the snow, I really didn't wonder if I was going to be lynched. But it did occur to me that my reaction was probably different than it would have been had I not been Jewish. There is still something unique about being Jewish. We all feel it, even if we can't define it. When I first arrived here in Richmond, I was told very seriously not to bargain in stores because it would be seen as stereotypically Jewish and it would reflect badly on the community for the rabbi to haggle. This well-meaning guide to being Jewish in Richmond had allowed his idea of what it means to be Jewish to be shaped by his paranoia and his perceptions of anti-Semitism. Hanukah, however, is the time when we get to think about what it means not to assimilate and when we get to define the positive attributes of the Judaism that we want to preserve.

This morning, as we mourn on the first yartzeit of a certain Mrs. Potato Head and as we celebrate the holiday of Hanukah, let's think about what it means to prevail over the pressures of assimilation. Let's think about how we want to define ourselves as different from the secular world around us. My hope for this community is that as we celebrate the Hanukah, the rededication of the Temple in the year 164 b.c.e. that we also rededicate ourselves to the task of differentiating ourselves and our community, not by means of paranoia or fear or tribalism, but through our spirituality and through our seriousness about Torah and our relationship with God.

Tonight as you light your Hanukah menorah, think about what part of the Jewish tradition we still enjoy because of the victory of the Maccabees and think about what part of that heritage you want to pass to your own children and grandchildren and to all of the generations that will follow.