Several years ago, in order to teach my children about the Talmudic debate between Rabbis Hillel and Shammai over the order of the Chanukah candles and the proper way to light them, I took two separate Chanukiyot and decided to honour each rabbi that participated in the discussion.
Chanukah 5770
According to Reb Shammai, when lighting the menorah, one should begin with the days remaining in the holiday and ignite with maximum potential. On the other side of the argument, Reb Hillel declared that one should always begin with the days completed and ignite instead with realized potential. Thus it was deemed that the House of Shammai would begin with eight lights on the first night and count downward over the week while the House of Hillel would begin the holiday with a single candle on the first night and increase. There are Talmudic proof texts given for both theses; Shammai had some archaic ramblings about sacrificing bulls on Succot. But Hillel's general rule that we should always increase in matters of holiness rather than diminish ultimately won out. (The Talmud actually mentions a vote taken on the debate.) And so today, we Jews light our Chanukiyot as Rabbi Hillel dictated.
I have given some serious thought to this famous Talmudic argument. We Jews may not follow the teachings of the minority opinions but we give them great weight and we do not pretend that they don't exist. These opinions are still found written in the tractates of the Talmud right alongside the majority. (I like to think of them as the RBG decisions.) The dissents matter because they inform our practice and we can look to them with fresh eyes given whatever the period we live in and the societal norms that govern us.
So, even though it is considered halachically correct to light our Chanukah candles in a Hillelian manner, I wondered if Shammai's method might hold some weight today. What if we, alongside our regular practice, added some informed new ritual that gave credence to the teaching of the other side?
We tend to believe that snuffing out a flame is negative. A fire is often synonymous with love, creativity, holiness, or blessing. Extinguishing that beauty is unthinkable. But, what if a fire isn't a good thing? What if, instead of contributing to all that we wish to celebrate, the flame is instead a destructive force? Fire can be deadly and it has the potential to destroy. Wouldn't we want to extinguish that which tears us down? Wouldn't Rabbi Shammai's observance then take on a different, yet still, dare I suggest, holy philosophy, for our celebration of the holiday?
And so, I offer an updated Chanukah practice. I am returning to my custom of lighting two separate Chanukiyot on each night of Chanukah this year; one for Rabbi Hillel and the hope of increasing the holiness in our lives, and one for Rabbi Shammai and the hope of eradicating the destructive forces that poison our world. Here is my rubric.
On Day 1: We light all eight candles for the wholeness that we wish and hope the world to be.
On Day 2: We extinguish the candle of racial, sexual, or religious intolerance.
On Day 3: We extinguish the candle of xenophobia.
On Day 4: We extinguish the candle of environmental destruction.
On Day 5: We extinguish the candle of the acceptance of poverty.
On Day 6: We extinguish the candle our own arrogance and narcissism.
On Day 7: We extinguish the candle of our indifference.
On Day 8: We extinguish the candle of willful ignorance.
May the coming days bring light to the darkness and may we extinguish the fires of apathy. May all who celebrate, look to both Hillel and Shammai for inspiration and may we all find peace.
The decade is coming to a merciful end and believe it or not, that means people have a deep-seated compulsion to create lists.
I marvel at these best of/worst of lists mostly because I honestly can't remember a single movie or television show that I watched back in 2010 that would provide any relevancy to anybody today. I can't even remember what I watched last week so why would I pretend to find hidden understanding and share some perceptive insight into what I thought about The Leftovers, Fleabag, or Killing Eve, shows I watched several years ago but can't recall enough details about to make a list worthwhile. So, an end of decade list of TV shows or movies was dismissed by me out of hand.
I did, however, give some thought to the best of Toronto sports experiences of this past decade. There are several reasons for my compiling this list.
1. Toronto is traditionally a really sucky place to be a sports fan. We spend more time than almost any other city in North America yelling "Wait until next year", and frankly it gets old fast. But, this decade has been different and offered not just hope, but extended periods of actual ebullience. I felt it was time, as a long-suffering Toronto sports fan, to offer up some real remembrance of the thrill of victory rather than of the agony of defeat.
2. Sports bring people of all types together in a common pursuit. Over the last ten years, Toronto has seen the rise of collective cheering locales like Maple Leaf Square and Jurassic Park; places where dedicated and devoted fans can come together and cheer or commiserate with total strangers. Even regular-season games have become community events like no other, and they have brought a diverse city together for something tremendously positive.
3. There has been so much shit in these teen years of the twenty-first century that a bit of reliving the good and exciting can't be a bad thing.
And so, without further delay, I offer up Toronto's Best Sporting Moments of the Past Decade.
10. The Toronto Raptors hire Masai Ujiri (2014) I should say they re-hired him as he had previously been employed by the team as a backroom employee but after a stint with the Denver Nuggets, the Raptors brought him back to be their general manager and now president. His steady hand and clever signings and trades have made the Raptors....well....we will get to that soon. Basketball has become a city-wide phenomenon in a traditional hockey town and most of that is due to Ujiri, his youth outreach, involvement with the community, and basketball acumen. Suffice it to say, that without Ujiri, 2019 doesn't happen for the purple dinos.
9. The Toronto Maple Leafs hire Brendan Shanahan (2014) It was almost as if MLSE had an epiphany in 2014 and realized that losing really does suck so let's bring on the experts to run the joint. Hall of Famer Shanahan finally returned home to run a miserable Leafs team that was going nowhere under Brian Burke. He had a plan, a Shanaplan, to lift the Buds out of obscurity and return them to prominence. He re-engaged with the fans, the alumni, and the city. He finally retired the appropriate sweaters and brought back the history. He spoke straight to the fans when he promised pain before glory and the city has, for the most part, bought into it. No Cups yet but a little luck of the Irish didn't hurt him when he won the draft lottery and was able to select...
8. The Toronto Maple Leafs select Auston Matthews (2016) In the history of the draft, the Leafs had only one other first overall pick, Wendell Clark. The ability to select a powerful centre and goal-scoring savant has accelerated the Shanaplan by several years. The Leafs made the playoffs in Matthews' rookie season and the city went wild. He isn't there yet, but the man can flat out play and his presence, along with those of the flying kids Mitchell Marner, William Nylander, and goalie Frederic Andersen have made the Leafs contenders. Their defence is still suspect and they take too many periods off, but these kids can play. It also didn't hurt that the growth of the younguns led to...
7. The Toronto Maple Leafs sign free agent John Tavares (2018) It is very rare that a player of Tavares' calibre becomes a free agent in the prime of their career. It is even rarer that a Toronto boy wants to come home and play for the Leafs, so when Tavares signed in the summer of 2018, the city was incredulous. In his first season for the Blue and White, he scored 47 goals and became the stabilizing force in the dressing room they needed. It wasn't a surprise when he was named team captain this fall. It would be delirium and bedlam in the city if Tavares ever gets to hoist Lord Stanley wearing the Leaf on his chest.
6. The Toronto FC wins the MLS Championship (2017) I am not much of a soccer fan but I am gradually learning the game. The fanbase in our city is robust and devoted. Thousands show up for every game at BMO field and they went absolutely apeshit when they won the championship. The Toronto Argos won two Grey Cups in this decade and could only wish they had half of the people show up to their games as does FC.
5. The Toronto Blue Jays trade for Josh Donaldson (2014) This was a good old-fashioned baseball trade. The Jays traded Brett Lawrie, Kendall Graveman, Sean Nolin, and Franklin Barreto to the Oakland A's for the power-hitting third baseman. Donaldson slotted seamlessly into the number two spot in the lineup, ahead of Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion and created magic. He promised the rain and he brought it. The Jays added a few more pieces at mid-season that propelled them to the AL East title (Troy Tulowitzki, anyone?) but it was the acquisition of Donaldson that was the catalyst. His 2015 season won him the league MVP and his four years in Toronto are amongst the best in team history.
4. Bianca Andreescu wins the United States Open (2019) Ok, technically she is from Thornhill via Mississagua but we will claim her anyway. The nineteen-year-old phenom has had a year to remember. She not only beat the legendary Serena Williams to claim her first grand slam title but she also won two other important titles this year, including the Canadian Open. She is the first Canadian to win her home country tournament in fifty years. She has risen to number four in the rankings, the highest ever for a Canadian tennis player of either sex and she just won the Lou Marsh Trophy (Canadian athlete of the year) unanimously. Not bad for a girl not yet out of her teens.
3. The Toronto Raptors trade for Kawhi Leonard (2018) This trade was franchise-defining. Not only did the Raptors not know if the Kawhi they were trading for was fully healthy but they traded the face of their team, DeMar DeRozen, to get him. They also knew that they were probably getting a "one and done" season out of their newly acquired superstar but took the risk and hoped for a big payoff. Masai Ujiri had balls of steel to make that trade and it was the biggest deal of the decade for any Toronto sports franchise.
2. This (2015)
I went back and forth for an hour trying to decide between this iconic moment and number one but what clinched it for me was that this led to the Jays moving on to the ALCS and they ultimately lost that series to Kansas City. That said, you have to remember what happened just before Bautista hit this bomb. There was that weird-ass play in the top of the inning where Russell Martin messed up. With two outs in the seventh inning and the game tied at 2, Rangers second baseman Rougned Odor led off third. Texas right fielder Shin-Soo Choo, a left-handed hitter, faced Toronto reliever, Aaron Sanchez. Choo took a 1-2 fastball for a ball and, as baseball’s new speed-up-the-game rules mandate, stayed in the batter’s box. Harmless stuff. Choo did, however, tilt his bat and his hands back over the plate just as Martin lobbed the ball back to Sanchez. Martin’s toss hit Choo’s bat. It squirted toward third base. Odor came home with the go-ahead run. The game was delayed for twenty minutes while the umpires tried to sort out the mess. The Dome went nuts when Odor was awarded home, so Bautista's 3-run shot was clutch and has to be framed in the context of the mess that happened before. It would have been my number one until this happened.
1. This (2019)
This was the most unbelievable shot I have ever seen. That it was game seven in the second round and wasn't even what won them their championship, speaks volumes as to how important it was. Murals are still up around the city depicting it. The Raptors winning the first major sports championship in Toronto in twenty-six years was the icing on a delicious sporting decade. The city came out by the millions to fete their heroes. (I know. I was in the middle of the parade throng.) There were few hard feelings when Kawhi bolted back to L.A. to play for his hometown Clippers. He did as promised. He made our city feel whole again for a brief moment in time.
This photo will go down in Toronto sporting lore for all time. This is how we show our love up north. (Photo by Frank Gunn of Associated Press)
Happy new sporting decade, Toronto. Let's hope it's even half as exciting as the last one.
Somewhere in the backlog of these posts, I have mentioned how much I really like Hallmark and Lifetime Christmas movies.
There is absolutely no logical reason for this weird-assed fandom. These movies are really terrible. Trust me. Cheaply made, poorly acted, and poorly produced stories that stretch the limits of credulity of even the most devoted of Christmas movie fans, these formulaic films should be an affront to every single tenet of entertainment value that I hold dear, and yet, I am captivated and entranced when the first showings hit the airwaves in November. I watch them a lot. All of them. Often. It is a wee bit disturbing.
I will save you the trouble of subjecting yourselves to sitting through a painful two hours of these Harlequin Romances of the season with what I like to call Dawn's Quick Synopsis of Every Single Hallmark/Lifetime Christmas Movie Ever Made.
Beginning-first half hour. Our heroine (because it's always a woman) finds herself in some sort of quandary that involves the upcoming holiday. It could be work-related, (because these are modern millenial women) family issues, travel problems, dinner plans, or a nostalgic pining for home. There is always a cute best friend who is unbelievably supportive, a child (these can include our ingenue's own offspring, a niece, nephew, or street urchin, or the son or daughter of the man she is about to meet) who will act as a matchmaker, and a jackass of a boyfriend. Our heroine will travel in this first half-hour to a quaint town, where she will be mesmerized by the locals, love the indelible spirit of Christmas which is everywhere, and where she will meet some unbelievably gorgeous and local vet, soldier, doctor, handyman, businessman, carpenter, who may or may not have an unbelievably gorgeous kid hanging around, dependent solely on if the child of the movie is introduced earlier as hers.
Half-hour-first hour. Our leading lady is continually thrown into ridiculous situations and inane coincidences with the hunky local. She keeps reminding him that she has an asshole of a boyfriend back home but that doesn't seem to deter the LL Bean model who is trudging through the fake snow to make Christmas cookies and sing carols with her. The kid is always there for ambience because what kind of Christmas movie doesn't have kids believing in the magic of Christmas and hoping beyond hope that Daddy will find the woman of his dreams who can ski down the mountain beside him in next year's catalogue.
First hour-hour and a half. The problem that was besetting our leading lady seems to be easily solvable and she discovers how much she loves the quaint little village where everybody is always Santa and Christmas is celebrated 24/7/365. But she realizes that she has a boyfriend and exactly at the ninety-minute mark, (it is really creepy how I can set my watch by this) she apologizes to the Christmas fling and heads home to her miserable Brooks Brothers clone. Sometimes, Mr. Wall Street makes the trek to Christmasville to interrupt what might be a chaste first kiss between leading lady and backwoods hunk, but there is always a fly in the ointment.
90 minutes-End. Asshole is dispatched, magic is reinstated, a quick kiss, a child's dream comes true, and Christmas in Hooterville is forever preserved.
So, why do I like these shitty excuses for entertainment?
I'm not entirely certain but it has something to do with the fact that they are total escapism. There is nothing political, controversial, nor even a hint of contention in these relationships. I like the familiarity of the themes and I like the quiet certainty of the endings.
But this year...Hallmark/Lifetime are doing something that I am sincerely wary of. They are introducing "Chanukah"-themed movies into their rotations. Oy! Here is the TV guide blurb for tonight's offering.
Mistletoe and Menorahs Ambitious toy company executive Christy (did I mention that they always have holiday-themed names?) has an opportunity to land a career-making new account if she can learn basically everything there is to know about Chanukah and very quickly. Luckily, Jonathan, a friend of one of Christy's co-workers, has all the knowledge she needs, (read that: HE'S A JEW!!) plus he desperately needs someone who can turn his stale bachelor pad into an authentic Christmas wonderland, to score points with his girlfriend's dad.
In other words, this Chanukah movie is actually a Christmas movie wrapped up in gold-foiled gelt.
It isn't a secret that I loathe the false equivalency of anything comparing Christmas to Chanukah. Chanukah, merely by virtue of its seasonal placement on the calendar, is often thought of as the Jewish Christmas. Of course, that idea is really stupid and demeans the celebrations and observances of both holidays but if you are out and about anywhere in North America right now, you might think that Jews are celebrating Christmas in blue and white. There are ugly Chanukah-themed sweaters; gingerbread houses with Magen David on the door; Elf on a Shelf's stereotyped Jewish cousin, Mensch on a Bench; and the always dreadful Chanukah bushes. In response to this "Chrismification" of Chanukah, I wonder how our non-Chanukah observing cousins might react to a potato latke yule log or a deep-fried, jelly-filled nativity scene.
I understand the knee-jerk reaction to act in the name of inclusivity for all of us who are non-participants in the baby Jesus season but here's the thing: I have never once missed celebrating Christmas because I have never once celebrated Christmas. I don't feel neglected and I don't feel as though I am missing out. I find the season pretty and joyous and for those who are observant, it is a time for family and friends. In my younger days, I sang in Christmas choirs and I have been carolling. I have been invited to family tree-decorating parties and I have baked Christmas cookies with friends for their celebrations and have loved participating, but it is absolutely understood that I am a guest. I am not there to intermingle my holiday observances with theirs. I have even attended Christmas Eve mass so that I might keep a friend company. It was a beautiful experience but it wasn't my celebration. I have never once looked at Christmas and thought of it as a secular observance. It is religiously significant but not for me and therefore I don't do the stringing of lights or a tree because it simply isn't my holiday.
Chanukah is different than Christmas. It is a minor holiday that celebrates freedom and independence and is frankly a wee bit uncomfortable for me due to the fundamentalism the Maccabees represent in my otherwise pluralistic existence. We eat greasy, fried foods and we fill our homes with light at what is, for us in North America, the darkest time of the year. Gifts are NOT a requirement although many families choose otherwise. I understand that some families, due to the intertwining of faiths, have found ways to co-mingle the holidays. As somebody who has never had to deal with such dilemmas, I would never suggest that this is inappropriate, only that I would like to see the holidays stand on their own merits. We Jews don't need to adopt Christmas traditions any more than Christmas celebrators need Chanukah in order to feel as though they have satisfied their need for seasonal inclusivity. So, I would suggest avoiding the ugly blue sweaters laden with sparkling menorahs or the white tinsel bushes heavy with blue gelt ornaments. Find Chanukah traditions that aren't dependent on Christmas-themes and embrace those instead.
I will probably take a pass on tonight's Lifetime Chanukah-themed Christmas movie mostly because I think it might cause me some indigestion. I can handle Christmas as an outsider. It's really ok with me. Just don't pretend that Chanukah is its equivalent.
