Shaarei Shamayim

SHEMOT 5771

Shabbos Christmas

I thought long and hard about how I might begin my sermon on this special Shabbos. I agonized with this approach and with that approach, and this is what I came up with: “Merry Christmas, merry Christmas!” That’s all we’ve been hearing for weeks. It’s finally here, and let me say to one and to all instead, a Gut Shabbos, and a Gut Yontif. It really does feel like Yontif, doesn’t it? Whether this is our holiday or not, it feels nice to see hardly any traffic on the road, and people home with their families. It really does feel Shabbosdik. It’s one day when the whole world, is behaving in a Jewish way. And that’s nice to see.

Rabbi Shamai Kanter writes about Christmas on Shabbos:

This is the only time of the year, when those of us who live in the Diaspora have an opportunity to experience something like a Shabbat in Jerusalem. The stores close early, by mid afternoon. The streets are pretty much empty of traffic. People have done their last minute shopping in preparation for the holy day. A hush of anticipation settles over the city. It is the only time of the year when the environment around us supports, rather than distracts from a Jew’s efforts to create a Shabbat. And therefore, I love it when Christmas comes out on Shabbat. I feel as if everybody around me—not just me—is keeping Shabbat, and that is such a nice feeling.

I think of the wonderful passage in the Talmud (Shabbat 118b) that says that if the whole world kept just 2 Shabbot, the messiah would come. And the Midrash (Shemot Rabba 25:12) says even one. If the whole world observed Christmas and New Year’s in a Jewish way—with joy but not with revelry, with family and friends, and not in huge unruly crowds, with prayer and singing and holiness, but not with pagan orgies—how wonderful it would be.

I’m glad that our Christian neighbors have such a beautiful and joyous holiday. I even teach our Religious School students about the deeper symbolisms of Christmas, especially the Christmas tree. They live in a Christian world, and they should know that Christmas is more than television specials and crowded malls.

Rabbi Marc Gellman wrote a beautiful story about Christmas and Christmas trees and a revered colleague. Let me share it with you:

            T’was the week before Christmas…and I was early for a meeting in New York City, and I had drifted into Bloomingdale’s to kill some time…When what to my wondering eyes should appear, but old Rabbi Moshe Forman (not his real name) ascending the escalator along with all the yuppies.  Seeing an old Orthodox rabbi in Bloomies is like seeing Santa in a yeshiva. It makes you ask, “What’s wrong with this picture?” So sure was I that my old colleague and friend Rabbi Forman had wandered into Bloomies by mistake that I ran after him up the escalator. I guess I feared that he would be picked up by the security guards the next morning, lost, hungry and unconscious in ladies lingerie.

            The crush of holiday shoppers made it impossible for me to get close to him, and modesty prevented me from shouting, “Hey Rabbi Forman wait up!” I saw him exit the ascending escalator on the 5^th floor, and I followed him, this time at a distance, to see if he had some destination in mind.

            Words fail me in describing what I saw him do next. Rabbi Forman scholar of the Talmud, head of the orthodox rabbinical court in Queens, scion of a rabbinic dynasty from the Carpathian mountains, disciple of the Tzanzer Rav, the only person in his family to survive the Holocaust, was looking at the Christmas trees in Bloomingdale’s!

            He stood motionless in front of the decorated Christmas trees. One tree was called, “Victorian Delight,” another, “Golden Dreams”…I walked up behind him and touched him slowly so as not to startle him, and I said, “Rabbi Forman are you all right?” But he did not answer me or move. He was staring at a table of golden Christmas tree angels under a sign, “Take 20% off ticketed price.” Then Rabbi Forman said in a low voice, as if to someone other than me, “There were no angels in the trees around Belzec.”

            Belzec, along with Sobibor and Treblinka were death camps—not forced labor camps—but death camps. They were built for only one purpose, to kill all the Jews of Poland and 600,000 Jews were killed in Belzec, among them Rabbi Forman’s entire family. He escaped from the place in some way he would never reveal to me.

            “You see that snow on the branches of that Christmas tree?” Rabbi Forman pointed to that artificial snow you spray on the branches to fool people into thinking that it has just snowed in your living room. Before I could say a thing he said, “The trees around Belzec had snow like that on their branches all year long. It was gray snow, but it was not snow. It was the ashes of my parents’ bodies which coated the branches of the trees around Belzec.” After a long time during which he said nothing and I said nothing, we left Bloomingdale’s.

            As was my custom, I gave Rabbi Forman a lift back home to Queens [after the meeting]. In the car I asked him, “Why did you go there?”

            And he said, “I wanted to see the place before I die. I have never been in such a store in my life. I wanted to see the place the Christmas trees are sold.”

            “Was it what you thought?” I asked.

            “It was beautiful. Amazing and joyous. I have never seen such colored lights and the music and the angels…the angels were very beautiful.”

            We drove on without saying anything. When we arrived at his apartment house, I waited to see him safely through the front door, as was my custom, and I heard him exclaim as he turned out of sight, “There were no angels in the trees around Belzec [just the Christmas trees adorned with the ashes of my parents].”

Christmas is a time of very mixed emotions for Jews. It’s an “amazing and joyous” holiday as Rabbi Froman said. Its theme is, “Peace on earth and good will to all,” and yet, for a good deal of history, this Christian spirit was not extended to Jews. Instead, for them it was a time of great suffering. The only day of the year that European yeshivas would close would be on Christmas because after thunderous and rousing sermons about Jesus’ birthday and how the Jews killed him, scores of thugs would come out of the Churches and beat up on every Jew they could find. The rabbis then closed the yeshivas to protect their students. There are some European type yeshivas that still close in remembrance.  

Yes, “there were no angels in the trees around Belzec,” but I sense a profound change in Christians today—especially here in America. Before Rosh Hashanah, Chanukah and Passover I am visited by representatives of Christian Churches with holiday gifts telling me that they just want us to know that they love Jews, that we are Gd’s special people and that they believe in Gd’s promise to Abraham and his seed: “Whoever blesses thee I will bless and whoever curses thee I will curse.” These are among the 50 million Christians in America that are strong supporters of Israel urging Israel not to give back even an inch of land.  

So, on this Shabbos day, when our Christian neighbors are also resting—just as we are—let us wish them with a full heart a Merry Christmas. Christmas deserves to be celebrated by Christians for what it is—a religious holiday, not a secular one. And so should Shabbos be for us. May we and they both think about what we can do to make these days not just days off, but holy days. Then perhaps it just might really become a time for “Peace on earth and good will to all.” Merry Shabbos. Amen!

                            Rabbi Mark Hillel Kunis

                           12/25/10