I had occasion to head down south two weeks ago. Up here fires in Southern California were in the headlines, but aren't they every year at this time? It wasn't until I had driven to Los Angeles, where I could see a hilltop a ridge or two from the Grapevine up in flames, spent a night at friends' and read the Los Angeles Times the next morning that I realized the enormousness of this year's conflagration. That morning over tea I perused the maps in the newspaper, and I realized that my brother and sister-in-law were right square in the middle of the biggest fire!
Many phone calls later I learned that they and their six dogs and several cats were all evacuated to safety. They had been sheltered first in a stadium, then in a smaller shelter run at a local church. Local Indian tribes opened their casinos and gave free food to all comers, handing additional box lunches to evacuees as they walked back out the doors. For the better part of a day Steve and Teidi thought that their home (which they bought around the same time that Mickey and I bought ours -- and they have been restoring it ever since) had burnt. Then they learned that, for whatever mysterious reasons of fate and fire, houses all around theirs were gone, but theirs stood, ashy but unharmed. A few days later my Mom and I drove down to visit. It was eerie and incredibly sad. There were vast stretches of burnt homes, nothing remaining but chimneys and scraps of burnt appliances. At every decimated lot that day, it seemed, there were families gazing at the rubble that had been their home. And on just about every block, unfathomably, one house would stand unharmed. We are all, of course, incredibly grateful that Steve and Teidi's was that house, but equally cognizant of all the other families who didn't have the same reprieve.
As we visited we heard stories. Nothing happened as officially as I might have thought. Teidi and Steve heard from a neighbor that the fire was getting close. They took the cue and got their animals to a kennel. They packed a few things and waited. Many hours later, as I understand it, the same neighbor called again and said, "It's jumped the road! You'd better leave right now!" Other people didn't have that lead time. People left their homes with the clothes on their backs. Other people, in shock, grabbed odd things and left the essentials home to burn.
Everywhere in the days afterward people asked each other the same question: what would you take? People talk about their pets, their computers, their documents, their photos. Where is the pink slip to my car anyhow? Who cares? Can't I get another one?
In the days since, back in my own household and neighborhood, I've heard about emergencies and crises of various sorts, many of the emotional and spiritual variety. And I keep thinking about those calls: "You'd better pack right now!" What would you take?
I sit here in my little office right now, surrounded by several hundred Jewish books of all sorts, a big box of tallitot and kippot, heaps and a hard drive full of ("l'havdil") my own writing, my little collection of extra mezuzot, a painting of Tami Diane's, the collage I did at Rosh Hodesh Ellul this year, the tzedaka purse I made back when Sara mounted that show of tzedaka boxes, a stuffed doll of Nelson Mandela which I got in South Africa, a little sign a friend made which says, "Deep Peace" and another which says, "Whining is my Life." I've got all the paraphernalia of my spiritual life in here all around me, happy and comforting. And these are just the physical things; in my head and heart are the practices, the sayings, the texts, the memories of celebrations past, the blessings, the teachings, the history, the stories, the calendar. What would I take in a pinch? If life got really difficult, if I had to pack my spiritual bags for a crisis, if there were some chance I would lose all else, what, of all these riches, would I keep close to my heart?
My own answer came to me right away, and even with days since to think about it, I like my first instinct. I expect that it would stand me well, even if I lost much else. I started thinking about other people, about all of you. Different people would take different practices, different teachings. We see this from other times of crisis and loss: some hold fast to ritual precision and find it an anchor to a timeless world. Others take a single ethical ideal and let the rest burn away. Some keep the songs. Others the language.
Hanukkah was such a time of emergency, a time of conflagration. Yes, the underbrush of sectarian conflict within the Jewish community had been smoldering for decades. Pharisees scorned priests; the working folks resented the land owners. The traditionalists were disgusted by the Hellenists. Then one day Antiochus IV closed the Temple, forbade the practice of Judaism and desecrated the altar. And things exploded. People grabbed what mattered to them Jewishly and fought to hold on to it.
Reading Talmud, as we have been on Thursday nights, we get some hints of what people took with them through that time of chaos and through the century following, which culminated in the far greater conflagration of the destruction of the Second Temple. We see hints of the people who carried the memory of the Temple with them, others who carried the hope that their children would retain at least some of the sacred practices. We see the people who held fast to, "Do not do to others what you wouldn't want done to you;" others who held on to their commitment to love God.
In a time of upheaval, what spiritual necessities would you take with you? Hanukkah might be an apt time to ask that question of ourselves and our friends. This particular Hanukkah, when many aspects of our world seem difficult indeed, we might look over our Jewish treasures and see which will best sustain our spirits.
My answer came easily to me. I would take teshuvah. I would take the wisdom that everyone and everything can change, that no wrong turn is irreparable, neither my own nor anyone else's. If my suitcase were slightly larger I would of course take Rav Kook's elaboration which says that all aspects of our world, and indeed all worlds, are constantly in the process of teshuvah, of turning and returning to the good. I'd like to think that with that essential hope I could face just about any flames. Maybe there is another aspect of our huge tradition which most deeply sustains you. If we each keep even one part alive and share it with each other, we can be held through whatever challenges history brings our way. Happy Hanukkah, my dear community!
© 2003 Rabbi Margaret Holub
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Updated 09/09/2004 (rge)