A Community of Faith, Sharing Religious Beliefs and Traditions

The Quest for Common Ground is pleased to present a series of posts this month during this joyful holiday season in the hope of providing our community of Southington, Connecticut, and other communities of people greater understanding of the diversity of relgious beliefs rooted in their rich heritage and traditional creeds. Freedom of religion is a cornerstone of the American credo that extends beyong tolerance and reaches out to understanding so that we may love one another as we love God.  It is, our faith, after all, which offers us the values of our most cherished beliefs and religious traditions which enrich our lives in this great country.  

Rabbi Shelley Kovar Becker
Gishrei Shalom Jewish
Congregation, Southington, CT

We begin today with a joyful reflection by Rabbi Shelley Kovar Becker of the Gishrei Shalom Jewish Congregation in Southington, CT.  Please feel free to share your comments with our community.                                                                                                    

By the time you read this, Chanukah, the 8-night Jewish holiday known as the Festival of Lights, will be over.  I am fortunate to celebrate with family and congregants, lighting the chanukiah (Chanukah menorah) and enjoying potato pancakes, known as latkes.  They are a traditional food of the holiday but jelly donuts may be consumed as well.  It is all about the oil so any fried food will do!

As a rabbi I have been asked many times this year about Thanksgiving and Chanukah falling so close together.  I am sure you have read about it and a search of the Internet will bring up the particular calendrical computations that produced the phenomenon. But in musing on the overlap of these two days, I offer this: Thanksgiving was the feast of gratitude the early settlers of America offered for the bounty of this new land that marked their survival over the hardship of their migration to the unknown and their appreciation for religious freedom.

Chanukah Menorah

For Jews, Chanukah, is a holiday that celebrates our surmounting the oppression of the Syrian-Greeks in the second century Before the Common Era.  Chanukah represents the few overcoming the many, the fight for self-determination over subjugation.

This year however, I am more focused both personally and professionally, on the resultant separation of the Jewish holiday from Christmas. For you see, Chanukah is not the Jewish Christmas and so I have an opportunity to teach that two great faith traditions celebrate joyous events both very different and very meaningful to each of us. I hope the understanding and compassion that can come from each holiday having its own fullness of time for observance signifies a wonderful new year to come.

- Rabbi Shelley Kovar Becker, Gishrei Shalom Jewish Congregation, Southington..