Next year -- more precisely, later this week -- I'm going to get back to the Jewish-ish book-club idea, I promise. But today I want to blog about a particular book, and my reasons for reading it. You see, my family is not very good about giving me books as presents -- that is, they are inexplicably reluctant to follow my not-so-very-involved directions on how to order the ones I want from distributors in foreign countries, or even to consult my seventy-plus-item Amazon wishlist (which is really for my own benefit, but I wouldn't be horrified if my parents took a look). What does work, I have found, is the simple expedient of accompanying my loved ones to bookstores, accumulating a modest stack, and handing them over with some tactful euphemism such as "Here. Get these for me."

There is absolutely no other way I could've wound up with my favorite Hanukkah present, a copy of the Artscroll Selichos which happened to be on the half-price shelf at the Temple Hometown gift shop. Said gift shop, which has to be unlocked by a secretary during business hours, is the only place in My Hometown to buy Hanukkah candles, which makes the presence of not one but two copies of the Artscroll Selichos even more baffling. (I wonder when they'll sell the other one.) So Dad and I stopped in for some candles and walked out with candles, foil-covered chocolate gelt bearing the sacred image of Theodor Herzl, enough Hanukkah ribbon to last us until 2012, and a very silly "Macca-beanie" stuffed toy I bought for, um, pedagogical purposes.* But the prize of the lot was clearly the Selichos book.

For those of us raised in a form of Judaism where it's pronounced "Selichot" and refers to a quick service on the Saturday night before Rosh Hashanah in which new members are welcomed and there's usually some sort of concert, this can be confusing. Selichos (or Selichot, but you'll see that Ashkenazic pronunciation is essential for this in just a moment) are the penitential prayers for the week leading up to Rosh Hashanah and then for the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. There are a good half-dozen regional nusachs as to which ones you say when, and while I should probably follow the Lithuanian observance as a matter of ancestry, I am quite happy with Artscroll's Ashkenaz volume of selichot, which serves as a veritable florilegium of medieval piyyutim for the (other) holiday season. So, for instance, on the sixth of Tishri -- which happens to be my Hebrew birthday -- the congregation whips through the usual Psalms and Kaddishes interspersed with prayers depicting Israel as a poverty-stricken (but still virtuous) wife, begging God to "sink our sins into the depths of the sea / and raise high Your holy Temple on the highest of mountains," judge and pour out wrath upon the Four Empires, forgive manifold iniquities, and bring peace.** These are mostly not Reform-approved, of course, but I think there are worse ways to spend one's mornings during a season devoted to self-reflection.

It will not surprise any regular readers that I found reading my way through this tome to be great fun; it may make some of you feel better to learn that I insisted it be given for Hanukkah, not Christmas. (Do you think Artscroll products explode if you place them within ten feet of a Christmas tree? Don't you think they would if the Mesorah Publications people could arrange it?) Anyway, my very favorite part turns out to be at the end of the book. It's what my grandfather calls "shlugen kapores" (in Yiddish, which is why we need Ashkenazic pronunciation here) and asked me if I'd heard of on the eighth night of Hanukkah, right after he slipped me some gelt. Zadie has an excellent memory for an eighty-seven-year-old, but every now and then he comes up with an apparent non sequitur; Aunt Miriam tells me he's mentioned shlugen kapores on several other holidays. In this case, though, I'm pretty sure he was free-associating with the money. I'm also pretty sure he was surprised when I thought about it for a second and said, "Oh, you mean the chicken-swinging?"

You see, I'd just read about it a few days earlier, and it had stuck in my mind: not only is chicken-swinging an unforgettable image, but I do believe it's the most egalitarian ritual I've seen in any Artscroll siddur. On the morning of Erev Yom Kippur, or at any rate during the High Holy Days, one takes a chicken of one's own gender -- it's usually substituted for money these days, hence Zadie's leap from gelt -- and swings it around one's head three times while (or occasionally in between) reciting various prayers to the effect that one is nominating the unfortunate fowl as one's atonement and substitute. The chicken or money is then donated to the poor (sin apparently being a sight less transmissible than TSEs) and the chicken-swinger is free to toddle off to Kol Nidre. Artscroll thoughtfully gives the prayer in not only masculine and feminine singular and plural (in case someone is performing communal chicken-swinging by proxy), but also for the special case of a pregnant woman or her representative, who must prepare a hen for herself and both a rooster and a hen for her child of unknown gender. (Not that I've ever personally tried to swing a chicken around my head, but I'd think that three would be kind of heavy.*** ) As one might expect from an Orthodox siddur, however, there are no instructions for mixed-gender chicken-swinging.

Sadly, even Zadie was not interested in these informative details, and since the latkes were still hot, I saw his point. Even after the latkes disappeared, however, I found nobody else willing to join in speculation on just what Artscroll meant by "Rashi describes a vastly different form of this custom. But that form is no longer practiced." Now, really, isn't that just an open invitation to fun with books? The nice thing about Artscroll's notes is that they provide some citations, and with one thing and another I quickly located Rashi's discussion of BT Shabbat 81b, where he describes a charming Gaonic custom in which one plants a bean or legume with soil and fertilizer in a palm-leaf pot -- one for each inhabitant of the house, of course -- 2-3 weeks before Rosh Hashanah. (These should not be confused with science-fair projects, which usually take place sometime after Tu B'shevat.) On Erev Rosh Hashanah, one swings the plant around one's head seven times, says the substitution formula, and slings it into a convenient river. I don't think pregnant women have any special responsibilities under this scheme, but adding a few extra bean seedlings to the pot would certainly be easy enough. I don't know why Artscroll is so quick to squelch this practice; it sounds ideal for some eco-kosher types I know.

Why, you ask, am I so fascinated by this whole chicken-swinging business? Well, really -- chicken-swinging. Need I say more? But, more seriously, there's a deep hunger for mildly goofy ritual in contemporary culture, and I know this because Temple Boondoggle is hosting an upcoming Interfaith Event (for an exceedingly good cause, I hasten to add) featuring vibrating crystal something-or-others and Gregorian chant.**** And if people insist on cannibalizing the world's religious traditions in search of Something Meaningful And High-Drama Yet Undemanding (I'll be interested to see if the worshippers react to Gregorian chant the way my students do, namely, by falling asleep within three minutes) -- well, anyway, if everyone and his guru insists on doing this, I see no reason why the Jewish tradition can't hold its own under these circumstances, and I don't think the Kabbalah Center should have all the fun either. Why, we have chicken-slinging to offer -- or, for the vegetarians, seedling-slinging! And there's always the boring mercantile-economy version if you can't cope with killing a bean plant or have lower-back problems.

Or, sarcasm aside, we could just offer some plain old garden-variety prayers for peace -- because substituting animals and plants only works so far in atoning for individual or communal misdeeds, and if there's one thing I'm clear on, it's that my tradition is remarkably good at writing prayers. I hadn't intended this to be my final post for 2003, but I'm not feeling comforted (individually or communally) as I look back over the year, and I think I could do worse than close it out on one verse of a prayer for peace, written by a paytan who may have been named Benjamin somewhere in Ashkenaz centuries ago. I am quoting it in a translation (p. 701 of my Hanukkah present) which eliminates the rhyme but gives you some of the structure and most of the ideas. It'll do for the time being.

Peace that is good, from the Lord Who is good,
to those who come to cling to You;
do not set Your countenance towards us in strict judgment.
Give truth to Jacob's children and kindness
to Abraham's descendants, that they may be justified;
kindness and truth have met righteousness and peace.

* -- Now, I am sure the producers of the "Macca-beanie" line mean well, and I think naming a stuffed frog "Toadah" is a stroke of bilingual genius, but what really melted my brain was the apparent line of sacrificial beanie toys -- "Paschal," the lamb, and a red bovine (if you can gender a stuffed animal, be my guest) somewhat sacrilegiously named "Torah." I, of course, bought "Torah," after cooing "what a cute little parah adumah!" and baffling the other three people in the gift shop. ("Torah" actually has a "birthday" listed as September 21st, so I like to think that someone somewhere at the Macca-beanie shops shares my questionable sense of humor.) I look forward to installing her at the peak of the wooden-block ziggurat in my office and giving extra credit to any student visitors who can tell me why this is deeply wrong.
** -- See below for more on this last -- in fact, I like it enough to add it to my secret file of Things To Sneak Into Adult Ed Somehow or Other During Elul. See, I do recognize that not everyone is as thrilled as I am to look at multiple versions of the Midrash of the Ten Martyrs (which is also in the Selichos book).
*** -- It is not clear from the ever-so-authoritative Artscroll instructions what a pregnant woman does in the event of an ultrasound, or conversely if she knows herself to be carrying multiple fetuses; I myself would think sextuplets called for a hen and a dozen extra-large eggs, but you'd want to tape the carton shut first.
**** -- I am not in any way involved with this beyond the coincidence of synagogue membership; I only get involved in the sorts of interfaith events where people quote from Pirke Avot.

I have finally decided to go ahead and write about Return of the King before I discuss the sexual politics of chicken-slinging (relax, there's not really a connection). In order to do so, however, I need to explain that while my favorite book in the trilogy is probably The Two Towers and my favorite scene is virtually everyone's favorite scene from ROTK -- "Éowyn am I, Éomund's daughter" forward -- my favorite quotation is also from ROTK. Gandalf says it to Denethor: "[T]he rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower in days to come. For I also am a steward. Did you not know?"

That quote didn't make it into the movie; if it shows up on the extended-edition DVD, it will need to be placed in another context, because movie-Denethor is never sane enough to bother discussing motives, and movie-Gandalf is seldom forthright enough to admit to any. This is a pity. It is also a pity that Renee has left the blogosphere, because I think her critique of the previous LOTR movie carries nicely into this one. "My main problem with Two Towers the movie is honor," she wrote. "What about it? There is none. The book is overflowing with honor; the relevant scenes in the movie were exchanged with something else."

I realized that Renee was right when I caught myself holding my breath as Aragorn raced into Meduseld to tell Théoden that the beacons of Gondor had been lit. (The beacons, incidentally, were the only scene from the movie that moved me to tears -- no great surprise, since the scene in the book where Gandalf names them off moves me to tears.) Théoden's motives had already been horribly cheapened in the previous movie, when he tried to run from Saruman's forces instead of charging to aid the men of the Westmark; in this movie, he had already asked Aragorn why they should help Gondor (there is apparently no Oath of Eorl, with its generations of selfless reciprocity, in the movie-universe). On this occasion, however, he lived up to the book, pausing only for an instant before agreeing to ride to the aid of Gondor. And I let out my breath and realized that something was wrong, wrong, wrong -- not about that moment, but about the movie.

Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is a story of (among other things) honor, in many different shapes and sizes. The word shows up with amazing frequency in the books. To continue with the example I just mentioned, once he escapes Wormtongue's enchantments, Théoden is a consummately honorable figure; indeed, as Saruman's taunts make clear, it is the creeping lack of honor he most fears. Yet Théoden withstands Saruman -- in fact, he withstands everything from Helm's Deep to Aragorn's disappearance to the hard ride to the final charge on the Pelennor Fields -- and, as Éowyn says late in the book, "he died and has both honor and peace." The fact that Théoden's actions in ROTK-the-book remain largely unchanged in the movie may explain why so many of my friends suddenly found themselves adoring him. He, along with Faramir (whose movie trajectory was similarly disrupted in the last installment), behaves with perfect honor and complete heroism in this movie, and we love him for it.

Unfortunately, the other grand old men in Return of the King do not come out as well. Denethor, whose first appearance in the book shows him ravaged by grief but still mail-shirted and ready to fight, is well over the line into madness from the moment he appears in the movie. Book-Denethor knows to light the beacons and ready the guard; his will to fight is not broken until the twin blows of Faramir's mortal wound (a nuance which was a poor trade for those Monty Python jokes) and his vision of the black ships sailing up the Anduin. What makes his death more tragic is the awareness that Denethor actually does see true in both cases; like Faramir, Denethor is a true descendant of the Númenoreans, and he is several steps ahead of everyone in the city -- except, perhaps, Gandalf.

Ah, yes, Gandalf. As you might have guessed from my choice of quote above, I occasionally identify with Gandalf in Return of the King. But I think my will to enjoy the movie was pretty well broken when I saw Gandalf knock Denethor back onto the pyre in Rath Dínen. In the book (I know I say that a lot), Denethor briefly comes to his senses, recognizes that his son might still have a chance to live, and wants to stay with him; however, when Gandalf reminds him that his duty is to take up the defense of the (doomed) city, Denethor is again overcome by madness, leaps back onto the pyre, and lights it himself. Every action taken in that scene is deliberate, every one is honorable, and every one is horrible, from Pippin's pleas to Gandalf's disappearance from the battlefield to Bergil's homicide (I grant that that wouldn't've fit into the movie) to Denethor's suicide. In Jackson's movie adaptation, we get staff-fighting and a pyromanic version of The Three Stooges instead.

I could keep going, analyzing the movie scene by scene, pointing out each place where the need to insert dramatic tension (I presume) led to a corresponding loss of honorable motives on the characters' part -- not to mention an equal loss of narrative coherence in most cases. (Why rework the Frodo/Sam/Gollum scenes so that Frodo is not only falling under the Ring's sway in double time but has suddenly become an abominable judge of character? Why make Merry (and half the muster of Rohan, assuming they had functioning eyes and ears) an accomplice before the fact in Éowyn's dereliction of duty at Dunharrow? Why give Arwen a completely inexplicable case of Romantic Wasting Disease so that Aragorn risks his life not only to save Minas Tirith but to help his main squeeze?) I will instead say that this is a very good movie in its own right, with amazing acting and wonderful battle scenes* and gorgeous scenery, but as an adaptation of the book it is somewhat better than the Ralph Bakshi version.**

Now that I have recovered from this experience, I don't especially want to go watch Jackson's last movie again in the theater; I do want to go buy the extended-edition DVD and watch it with my finger on the fast-forward button so that I can enjoy myself as the beacons light up across Anòrien and the Rohirrim kick Harad butt. But, even more, I want to curl up with a copy of The Return of the King (with appendices) and reread the story I love, the one I'm glad this movie has reminded me of yet again, the one I'm glad has passed through the night. "See there is fire on Amon Dîn, and flame on Eilenach; and they go speeding west: Nardol, Erelas, Min-Rimmon, Calenhad and the Halifirien on the borders of Rohan."

* -- Wonderful battle scenes somewhat marred by a complete lack of military strategy on the part of the Good Guys, that is. I am not a military historian, but I have some slight grasp of how premodern warfare occasionally worked. When you are trying to attack a fortified city, you (a) sneak up on it, as the Orcs did with Osgiliath, and/or (b) mount a frontal assault with siege engines while cutting off your enemy's supply lines, as the Orcs did with Minas Tirith. You do not (a) fail to retaliate with long-range weapons until your enemies are pouring into the city (as the Men did at Osgiliath and to some extent at Minas Tirith) or (b) try to take the city with a straight-on mounted charge across level ground in broad daylight (as the Men did later at Osgiliath). You also have the brains to send the women and children out of your obviously-about-to-be-besieged city ahead of time (as Denethor did in the book, but not the movie). Finally, when you are leading a surprise cavalry charge against the flank of an enemy army, you quietly disable their outlying guards and ride like hell until you hit their front lines (as the Rohirrim did in the book) instead of pausing while silhouetted on a ridge in full sight of everyone to give speeches and allow your enemy plenty of time to get its caltrops and archers into position (as the Rohirrim did in the movie). I watched this movie with my father, and after about the fourth supposedly heart-wrenching battle scene he leaned over to me and said, "The good guys aren't really very smart, are they?" "It makes better sense in the book," I said. "And they use actual archers to disable the elephants, not kamikaze elves." "What?" he asked. "You'll see," I muttered darkly.
** -- Yes, I'm well aware of which parts of the trilogy the Ralph Bakshi version covers, and how.

I haven't posted in several days, largely because there is only so much entertaining blogging material to be gleaned from being sick. Someday I will get around to my planned post on Cavafy's poems about Hellenism and the Hasmoneans (which are very good, even in translation) -- but I was just leafing through my Cavafy on the plane this past weekend when I remembered something even more important than arguing that the Hellenists won. Namely: sinus infections and the air pressure changes which take place during airplane flights do not mix. Owowowowowowowowowowowow. And ow. (On the plus side, I gained a whole new appreciation for those first accounts of martyrdom. One more connecting flight and I would've sacrificed to idols in a heartbeat. ;)

I spent the next couple of days in and out of bed -- Mom actually did make chicken soup during the five or so hours she has not spent at work this week -- and on Tuesday, when I finally woke up without a pounding headache or earache, I immediately dragged my father to five stores plus groceries, then came home and baked about a gross of sugar cookies for distribution to neighbors, friends, extended family, and possibly random people on the street. We have a tree in the living room, two hanukkiot in the dining room, wrapping paper of various types all over the place, and carefully controlled chaos (my favorite kind) in the kitchen. I have only burst into tears twice this week -- which isn't bad if you consider that we are having our first Christmas without Grandmother -- and, all this notwithstanding, I suspect that I am one of the few people who actually means it when she says "Happy Holidays!"

You know how every synagogue newsletter in the country has a little column entitled "The December Dilemma"? I am always saddened to discover that they involve "how do I tell my children that they don't get a tree?" instead of some of the obvious halachic questions which our combined holiday season ought to raise. Frankly, my personal "December Dilemma" is the realization that I am probably never going to find a nice Jewish boy who knows as many Christmas carols as I do. But at least I have plenty to laugh about. So, in the spirit of whatever you happen to be celebrating, let me offer a list of December Dilemmas My Family Has Actually Experienced In The Past Week.

(10) Should we turn down the TV [currently playing Yet Another Christmas Concert on PBS] before we light the menorah? Should we turn it off? Do we need to leave it down/off until the candles burn out? Does it matter if the music in question is "Walkin' in a Winter Wonderland" versus "O Come All Ye Faithful"? What if the music changes -- do we interrupt the lighting?

(9) Should we model the laws of combining holiday stamps and holiday cards after those of kashrut? So far, we have determined that it is best to match the stamps' holidays to the cards' holidays, fine to slap Hanukkah stamps on all the cards (my own preference), acceptable to use generic-holiday stamps on generic-holiday cards, but unacceptable to use anything other than Hanukkah or peace stamps (despite the obvious contradiction there) on Hanukkah cards.

(8) So, about admiring lights? At what point does it stop being Aesthetic Appreciation and start being Reindeer Envy? Also, is there some reason why we can't have a huge illuminated menorah in our front yard? What about lights hung on the bushes? Does it matter if they are clear, colored, or blue-and-white? Are clear lights too WASP-y? (My mother's solution: she wants clear lights, but my father has to take the initiative in putting them up. So far he has resisted being used as our Christmas goy, but I suspect he will give in soon enough.)

(7) Does placing gifts wrapped with Hanukkah paper under a Christmas tree constitute a category mistake? What about using Christmas-wrapped gifts for Hanukkah? Which side of the family, if either, should be offended?

(6) While we are at it, should my father be reciting the second Hanukkah blessing as "who has wrought miracles for your forefathers"? Is it relevant that my father's heritage is Scotch-Irish, and therefore his (and, logically, my) forefathers were probably painting themselves blue while the Hasmoneans were duking it out with the Seleucids?

(5) When Hanukkah falls on Christmas Eve, it is a beautification of the mitzvah to deliberately save all the red and green candles from the box for that evening? What if there is no custom of my father upon which to draw? What if my father just thinks it's funny? What if my parents would probably forget to light altogether if I didn't remind them?

(4) Why is there no Hanukkah sheet music for banjo? (Not that we can't figure it out -- "Mi Y'malel" sounds awesome with a clawhammer technique.)

(3) Incidentally, is there some reason "It Came Upon The Midnight Clear" doesn't qualify as Hanukkah music (the more eschatologically oriented sort, of course)?

(2) Can I treat the next person who mentions that "Chrismukkah" episode from The O.C. as a rodef and preemptively whack them? They're completely separate holidays with only superficial resemblances (yes, we all have midwinter festivals of lights) but rather strongly divergent themes and meanings. Seriously, I find it sad when people assume that neither holiday has any religious meaning -- but that doesn't stop me from being amused at their inevitable juxtaposition in American culture, or curious about the extent to which Christmas has been secularized to the point that many of my Christian colleagues sniff and say they're celebrating "Advent" all December. Also, I am tired of hearing about The O.C., although I have finally figured out that "O.C." stands for "Orange County" rather than "Original Character."

(1) Finally, a topic which was brought up only academically among us: does anyone except the characters from the comic strip "Curtis" actually celebrate Kwanzaa? And if you belong to a family which celebrates both Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, how many candles and in what order do you light on Friday, Dec. 26th, the eight night of Hanukkah, the first night of Kwanzaa (Umoja), and Shabbat? Also, can you substitute a hanukkiah for a kinara and just leave two candle-slots empty at each end?

I need to go do some last-minute wrapping; tomorrow is Christmas, of course, and the next day is Driving To Coast City So We Can Celebrate Hanukkah With Mom's Side Of The Family Boxing Day, not to mention the last night of Hanukkah. Happy holidays, everyone!

Our departmental role in Search The First is over, Search the Second is off to a promising start, I have successfully completed my pre-Hanukkah/Shabbat shopping (except for the Krispy Kremes, but that's not closing early), and I think I can hold off what is clearly a nasty cold/sore throat another two days* by mainlining vitamin C and the occasional bowl of soup. I do need to put together a d'var Torah for tomorrow morning, but the fact that several families bring their elementary-school-age children to our minyan significantly reduces my options for this week's portion. (I mean, I'm not about to stop any child from reading anything she wants to, but I do not wish to be personally responsible for an eight-year-old asking, "Daddy, what's a sacred prostitute?" And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I will be leaving out all my favorite parts of Vayeshev and discussing dream interpretation.)

At any rate, I have a bit of free time, and while I am thinking seriously of going home and sleeping for about ten hours, I want to stay up until sundown for obvious holiday-related reasons. This gives me just enough time to finalize my Hanukkah playlist, which includes (at last count) five different versions of "Maoz Tsur." I like Maoz Tsur, but it is in many ways emblematic of Hanukkah for me, because it's not quite what it appears on a surface scan.

In Temple Hometown, as a child, I learned one Hebrew verse ("Maoz tsur yeshuati...") and three English verses to what was translated "Rock of Ages." The Hebrew I registered as pretty sounds; the English reinforced what I had been told was the True Meaning of Hanukkah, namely reliance on God's power combined with a healthy dose of anti-tyrannical Jewish activism. The English lyrics I (and many of you) know can be found all over the 'net: here is an example complete with traditional-melody MIDI. "Rock of Ages, let our song / Praise Thy saving power" -- it deliberately echoes an extremely Christian hymn which borrows the cleft rock from Song of Songs 2:14 and goes all Christocentric on it.

Our "Rock of Ages," on the other hand, stresses God's action in the first verse ("And Thy word / Broke their sword / When our own strength failed us") but switches quickly to a focus on the newly-liberated Jews singing in the Temple ("And His courts surrounding / Hear in joy abounding....") and concludes with a crashing paean to universalism and a nod to a helpfully vague messianic era: "Yours the message cheering / That the time is nearing / Which will see / All men free / Tyrants disappearing"). The usual contemporary adjustments include ditching archaic "Thy" and "ye" for their modern equivalents, abandoning the second verse (whether because it's set in the Temple or because people want to sing dreidel songs instead I couldn't say) and trying desperately to substitute something for the final descriptor in the line "children of the martyr-race." (I have heard "children of the Maccabees" and "children of the wanderers," but no doubt there are other options.)

This last amendment strikes me as a pity, because "martyr-race" is not only a completely authentic Hanukkah reference but also practically the only thing in "Rock of Ages" which evokes something of its Hebrew antecedent. The Jewish "Rock of Ages" I learned was the brainchild of a Reform rabbi and cantor named Gustav Gottheil (1827-1903) who began his career in Germany and ended it in New York; he seems to have borrowed from a German version by Leopold Stein (1810-1882) about which I know very little. The Hebrew "Maoz Tsur," on the other hand, is a late medieval Ashkenazic piyyut written by a fellow called (judging from his thoughtful acrostic signature) Mordecai. I hope it will not come as a shock to any of you that the Ashkenazim of the thirteenth century or thereabouts were not unduly concerned with spreading messages of liberation to their fellow (ahem) men. In fact, the first verse of "Maoz Tsur" starts out with the fervent wish for "slaughter for the blaspheming foe," which I trust you will agree is a bit of a switch from "Thou amidst the raging foes / Wast our shelt'ring tower."

The original six-verse poem is framed as a plea for God to restore the Temple and smite Israel's enemies; toward this end, God is reminded of His starring role in liberating Israel from Egypt (see also Exodus), Babylon (see also Ezra/Nehemiah), Persia (see also Esther), and Greece (see also, yes, Maccabees). It concludes with the prayer that God will repel Edom (which, in this context, probably represents not just Rome but also Christianity), avenge the blood of slain Jews, and hasten the advent of the Messiah.** The final verse sends chills down my spine in translation, and confirms that the poet is speaking not in the voice of the Maccabees but in that of his own, equally blood-soaked era: "For the triumph is too long delayed for us / and there is no end to days of evil." Mordecai's charming ditty was set to a German folktune and sung just after lighting the Hanukkah candles by German Jews from at least the sixteenth century forward -- in one of the tinier ironies of history, the same melody was borrowed by Martin Luther for his hymns.

That said, Gottheil was probably not trying to achieve some sort of abstract vengeance on the body of Christian hymnody by ripping off the title "Rock of Ages" (although one feels that Mordecai would have approved of almost any sort of vengeance). Let's face it: "Maoz Tsur" features almost the least Reform-friendly set of lyrics imaginable. There already existed a marginally less euphemistic English translation which begins "Mighty, praised beyond compare" -- you can Google that and locate a few rather dodgy pages with those lyrics. but I am not convinced that I should offer a link to anything which attempts to rhyme "gallows" and "zealous." Gottheil's version represents a significant improvement, but it also abandons any pretense of being a translation -- "paraphrase" is pushing it. All it retains of "Maoz Tsur" are the concepts of "rock," God's salvation, and something rather vague about rededicating the Temple which Gottheil puts carefully in the past rather than the future. Oh, and the melody is still catchy.

Leaving aside the classical Reform abuse of the concept of "translation" (I think the CCAR owes the Pathological Distrusters of Translation money to form a support group, and I wish we'd gotten over it more than we have, but that's another post).... right, leaving that aside, "Maoz Tsur" represents a very interesting paradox. I don't really have a problem with singing about the re-establishment of the Temple by purely and exclusively divine means, but I could (as I have said many times before) do without the pigeon-killing. More seriously, I don't want to call down vengeance on people who have slain or persecuted my people -- if I find someone doing so in situ, I will certainly turn them over to the proper authorities, but I'd really prefer to leave the more involved machinations of divine justice up to God. On the other hand, while Gottheil's hymn contains nothing to outrage my liberal sensibilities, it's not a good translation, dammit. And did I mention the melody is catchy?

I know the guitar chords and part of a descant, and I grew up singing both the English and the Hebrew -- something I am convinced matters in the internal debate I conduct every year. After all, I (like most of my readers) fit into neither song -- I can empathize with Mordecai's Ashkenazic anger and desperation, and with Gottheil's fin de siècle optimism and willingness to abandon tradition, but I do not quite agree with either. Still, I love both songs, in the same exasperated way I love my family. And perhaps that explains a lot for me, personally; it's not like the two sides of my family have all that much in common either. But that doesn't help resolve the larger problem of what to do about the conflicting messages of "Maoz Tsur" and Hanukkah more generally. My default response to anything is to throw education at it, which is how I wound up with this post, but I'm not sure it helps.

Still, it's almost sundown. I need to get home and see about lighting a bunch of candles -- and then I think I'll just sing "Ner Li." Oh, and happy Hanukkah, everyone!

* -- In another two days, of course, I will be home, where I can demand that my mommy and my daddy take care of me and make me jello. Being sick is absolutely no fun without an audience.
** -- More precisely, the Seven Shepherds of Micah 5:4, who will assist in kicking Assyrian butt. (No, really. For further Jewish identification, see BT Sukkah 52b and a whole bunch of Sukkot-related stuff.) Note also that the Hanukkah verse mysteriously refers to "roses," which relates to the Song of Songs which relates back to the original Christian "Rock of Ages." I seriously doubt that Gottheil had that in mind, but it's still nifty. By the way, I am quoting from this handy, fairly literal translation of the Hebrew "Maoz Tsur" complete with OU-approved commentary if you'd like to judge for yourself.

For those of you who wondered: yes, I finished my grading in time -- at a rather leisurely pace, actually. And now I am only two job-talks and one candidate-breakfast (don't ask) away from turning to the "miracles, and the salvation, and the mighty deeds, and the victories, and the battles" which are so feelingly commemorated among my people during this holiday season.

I refer, of course, to the Return of the King movie.

No, really, it's been nearly 48 hours, and I still haven't gone; what's worse is that I don't know when I'll have time to go. The problem is that (a) I am too old to want to go to a midnight show by myself before getting up at 6 am the next day (and, by the way? Never admit to your department secretary that the candidates' hotel is directly along your commute into work unless you want to do a lot more ferrying-to-breakfast than is even remotely helpful to your tenure case) and (b) we have candidates here today and Friday, and all my other free time between now and Saturday evening is taken up with Hanukkah/Shabbat activities. Since I leave for Hometown on Sunday morning and will hit the ground running as regards holiday prep there... well, there's always Christmas afternoon, right? Grrrr.

At least the department bought me filet mignon last night, along with a very nice glass of Cabernet. And I am using the CD burner on my office computer (which does occasionally serve some pedagogical purposes) to put together a kickass Hanukkah playlist for our annual post-Christmas trip up to Coast City. This time of year I walk around constantly humming or singing under my breath as it is -- I would love to know why my subconscious invariably goes from "Maoz Tsur" to "The Coventry Carol," but I can only assume it has some sort of cheerfully seasonal Second-Temple-ultraviolence theme going.* Or possibly I just sing them in the same key.

Seriously, I love the holidays. All of them. Especially Cormarë.

* -- I really must find more people in my immediate circle who recognize that, "You know, I think Hanukkah has the most disturbing subtext of any holiday I recognize. Although Holy Week runs a close second" is an invitation to a satisfying conversation, not a cue to back away slowly.

Yes, I just put up a backlog of posts. Again. Sorry about that. I seem to have a genius lately for getting mostly done with several posts and leaving them all in draft form.

Further communication will have to wait until I've finished my grading. Except that I do have one piece of advice for any academic types out there -- never, ever check your own ratings on one of those rate-your-professors sites. Especially while grading. I have taken a break because the urge to prove wrong the two people who said I was "easy" was overwhelming my judgment.

Also, what do they mean, not considering me a "hot tamale"? ;)

Classes are drawing to a close, bringing with them the usual crop of Students I Have Not Seen All Quarter. This is not an altogether bad thing when the student in question merely wants advice on his final paper, or an answer to her questions about the final exam: I enjoy meeting my students on a one-to-one basis, and have even toyed with the notion of requiring them to turn up in my office once early in the quarter so I can get their names matched to their faces more quickly. What's frustrating is the students who haven't done any work in the class (usually as in not having turned things in, or been in class for quizzes/tests) and are now telling me that I will be personally responsible for the destruction of their academic careers if they get anything less than a B. Sometimes an A. Oy.

Even worse are the students who want me to move their exam dates. I do not usually give final exams, largely because I think gigantic in-class comprehensive tests administered over the course of a week are a rotten way to assess progress in critical thinking and partial mastery of several complex subject areas. Some students freeze when they are required to take tests; others simply subject me to eccentricities of handwriting and spelling about which the least said the better. (I do not grade down for spelling or grammar problems, but I am sometimes sorely tempted, especially when they misspell words which are in the test question they are answering and/or part of the course title.) The only real advantage of a final exam is that it requires students to pay some attention to the material covered in the final week of class -- which, on Boondoggle U.'s schedule, stands alone after the Thanksgiving break -- and this semester's experience has taught me to emphasize "some." (Also, in the last week of class, it's impossible to pull the "I'm going to let you out early and add the reading you clearly haven't done to your assignment for next class" card, aka the Professorial Temper Tantrum.)

But I decided to give a final exam in one class this semester -- one class -- and the scheduling requests are an absolute nightmare. You might think there would be no scheduling problems, since the exam schedule is published by the University before the beginning of the semester and is mentioned several times on the syllabus and in class by moi. You would be wrong. It starts with the people who need extra time due to mild learning disabilities; this is not a huge problem, but simply involves my getting up extra-early. We then move to the people who want to adjust exam dates for travel plans (even though our exam date was towards the beginning of the exam period); they are easily enough disposed of. Then there are the people who have multiple exams scheduled on the same day, and the people who run into job conflicts -- I feel that I deserve karmic brownie points for not telling one student to get a new job already. I do feel uncomfortably conscious that I did not have to work my way through college,* but vague liberal guilt is no match for self-preservation, and I cannot face proctoring more than one session of an exam, especially with the multimedia doodads which will be involved. Also, I'm pretty sure someone else's schedule is not supposed to be my problem.

Finally, the worst category of all: students with (naturally last-minute) personal crises. I often wonder why my students aren't more devious about appealing to me; if they turned up in person at my office instead of sending me emails, I'd have a much more difficult time sticking to the party line. Still, I have to be fair, and I can't face weighing the promotion against the later exam in a major field against the wake. Barring an actual funeral of an actual family member, I tell students that they have to turn up for their exam. And then I feel like slime. I have told my class that they are welcome to show up early and take the exam along with the extra-time people (finishing earlier, of course); I have cheerfully advised the parents to secure babysitters in the event of child illness and the commuters to start good and early in the event of bad weather; I am thinking about getting up even earlier and bringing doughnuts or something (although as the weather conditions are not improving, this is becoming less and less likely). I still feel like slime.

And now I need to get back to sending emails to people who want more information about their midterm grades (now! at once! in the final days of the semester!). I think I'll work on feeling more cheerful about teaching sometime... let me see... in January. Yeah, that'll do it. The real advantage of final exams, as far as I can tell, is that I don't have to hand them right back to the students.

* -- Of course, I stayed someplace I hated because I'd gotten a scholarship that, among other extras, paid what would ordinarily have been a work-study requirement. I'm still not sure whether or not I got the best end of that deal.

I am not in New York this weekend. I mention this because I was planning to be in New York this weekend in order to catch up with friends, the El Greco show at the Met, and some gratuitous holiday shopping. Fortunately, I think, my better sense prevailed several days ago -- I was feeling overstressed and borderline unwell, my prospective host was considerably more so in both categories, and I had plenty I needed to do here in Boondoggle this weekend. I'll get to NYC sooner or later, and I might even manage to do some research on egalitarian minyan organization while I'm there. Also, bookstores. Mmmmm, bookstores. And I was thinking of dropping in on a few Judaica shops.

In a particularly helpful confluence of events, this week's Talmud study has also been cancelled -- there's a lecture many of us want to attend at the same time -- and while I would ordinarily be experiencing withdrawal symptoms, I am ever-so-slightly relieved. The session, you see, was to be held in my dining room, and while I could probably have handled unpacking those last four boxes and finding someplace else to put the houseplants and buying all the necessary paper and styrofoam products to serve decaf coffee to the kosher crowd, I think I must have read one too many loving Scriptural depictions of sacred space and how it is properly adorned.* In other words, I have become concerned that my dining room is simply not Jewish enough.

My experience of Jewish dining rooms isn't all that extensive, really, but I have been to lots of relatives' houses and am fairly sure that one ought to have Obvious Judaica somewhere in the vicinity. A framed ketubah would be ideal, but I am not prepared to get married solely for the purpose of home decor. Mezuzot are nice enough, but even at their showiest they're not too noticeable -- and the particular layout of my house plus considerations of strategic mezuzah conservation has left my dining room mezuzah-less for the moment. Menorahs, Shabbat candles, and kiddush cups are well and good, but they tend to wind up in some sort of display case (I have been poking around antique-ish stores for an appropriate china cabinet) and are, again, not all that noticeable unless you happen to own some gigantic modern-art hanukkiah -- I don't. I like the concept of a mizrach sign, but the only west-facing wall in my dining room is the one with the arch in it.

Then there's the minor problem of aesthetics -- that is to say, I can deal nicely with a silhouette of the Jerusalem skyline somewhere or other, and I am very much in favor of good Hebrew calligraphy (my own Hebrew printing is embarrassingly blocky), but some of the "Judaica" one sees in stores and online seems to pile every Jewish and/or Israeli symbol known to woman atop one another. A lion of Judah roars at an olive tree growing out of a Star of David, with a hamsa hovering in the background and some sheaves of wheat around the borders and, yes, that omnipresent silhouette of Jerusalem stuck in there someplace. Also, all those romanticized shtetl pictures belong to Fiddler on the Roof, not my family history -- my matriarchal line, the one I identify with most easily, were city folk, not terribly fond of dancing, and quite happy to get the hell out of the Russian Pale.

What I would most like, I think, is a pre-modern image of a Jewish woman reading or praying (other than Mary at the Annunciation, because I don't think most of my guests would get the joke). Oddly, though, nothing of the sort is coming up on Google's image search; I would have expected at least one Pre-Raphaelite attempt at Rebecca from Ivanhoe. I'm flexible, though. Any scene from medieval Ashkenaz -- only not crusading martyrs, because people have to eat in this room -- would probably float my boat. And as most of my readers know, I'm a sucker for anything having to do with books or text. I don't have a huge budget, but I could manage to frame a print, or maybe find something affordable by way of original artwork.

Meanwhile, I was digging through one of the to-be-unpacked boxes of files and found an old Hanukkah card I bought at the Library of Congress gift shop (I think) ages ago. It depicts a nineteenth-century shviti plaque -- one with the verse from Psalm 16:8 plus assorted decorative motifs -- and I happened to have a picture frame just the right size on hand, so now there's something hanging on the tiny section of western wall between the arch and the light-switch. But I'd like one more dining-room wall adornment, something big and colorful. Something that indicates that this is the dining-room of a halakhically conscious feminist liberal Jew with mixed Mitnagdic and Methodist ancestry. Something just right.

On the other hand, maybe I should stick to shopping for a new china cabinet.

* -- The title of this post is borrowed from I Chronicles 28:19 in the JPS translation, although I'm more familiar with Ezekiel's decorating scheme. It's a pity HGTV isn't going to feature it on "Extreme Homes," isn't it? Or is that just me?