Sunday, December 21, 2008
Chanukah
First night of Hanukkah. Listening to a program of seasonal music, Kitka and Davka, finding it much more moving than the christmas fare. Cheerfully sad, plaintive joy. I had a fascination with Judaism in high school, the only religion I may have changed to. Eventually, my love of ceremony and history would not overcome my bone deep dismissal of belief that contradicted my experience, and any institution that treated women (or any group) as distinct and inferior. By their works shall you know them, dontcha know. But I love old music that has been nurtured through voice after voice, generation after generation, emerging with a patina, richly nuanced. The mystery holds power for me, when the sounds stay pure, the words become magical incantations, the universal moan.
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3 comments:
(o)
In the UK I'd hardly known any Jews as such. In the USA they were all over the place and for the first time I became aware of the laconic Jewish thread that runs though American humour at its best. The awareness grew when my elder daughter palled up with the daughter of a Jewish family and our Christmas celebrations (thinly disguised appreciations of food and wine) elided seamlessly into Chanukah - or was it the other way round? Later the family invited us to dinner and we were served lobster. I had to admit I didn't know how to get into the beast and the father (an attorney) showed me how, to the accompaniment of jibes about British incompetence. "We may be incompetent," I said, "but we have a talent for choosing our servants." In the UK that remark could have created a knee-jerk response about anti-semitism. But he shrugged his shoulders at the outburst of laughter from his other guests (all Jews I think) and said, rather gracefully, "Score: US zero, UK one." Another of those moments I've clung to throughout the Bush administration.
BB,
You may well have meant Chinese or Indian, or Irish, really.
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