Why I put up a Christmas tree this year
Sometimes, remembrance has to be uncomfortable
No, I’m not apostatising to Christianity. I also don’t really care for how Christmas trees look, aesthetically. It’s quite out of character for me to have one.
Yet here in my room is a little, very fake Christmas tree, tucked into an obscure corner where only I will see it. Well, now you - hypothetical reader - have seen it, too, in this digital corner.
I’ve made the decision to have a little Christmas tree as a personal experiment in commemorating crypto-Jews. I’ll explain myself now, of course. Put away your herem or your baptismal water, whichever came quickest to hand upon seeing my little “tree.”
It’s a bit of an insult to trees to call this plastic monstrosity a “tree,” frankly.
Memory hurts
You may have read of families who hide their Jewishness, putting forward the public signs of Christianity or Islam while keeping their Judaism hidden in drawers and cupboards and lonely nights.
A lot of Jews don’t have to read about this type of crypto-Jewish scenario. Maybe they can remember these practices themselves, or maybe they hear of it from their older relatives.
Maybe their relatives thought an outward show of Christianity or Islam was necessary for religious reasons, as in apostate messianist traditions. It’s hard to separate fake apostasy for messianist reasons from fake apostasy for survival purposes. Maybe they aren’t separable at all. Eventually they become inseparable, anyway, when the path back to mainstream Jewish community has been blocked. Just ask the Dönmehs.
It is uncomfortable to hide essential parts of oneself and of one’s heritage. It is dreadfully painful to decorate your own home in the style of the forces that wish to destroy you. Your home is as if surveilled from within.
The bifurcated home
In Totality and Infinity, Emmanuel Levinas writes, “Concretely speaking, the dwelling is not situated in the objective world, but the objective world is situated by relation to my dwelling.” In other words, and to simplify his point, our home is not something that exists as part of a world of other things. Rather, our home is the place from which we experience all the other things in the world.
In the Jewish context, we often discuss the importance of modelling Jewish life in the home. We correctly believe that living Jewish lives in our homes will contribute to - or determine - the survival of Judaism. In the U.S., many Jews also model Jewish life for their children outside the home by bringing them to services, sending them to Sunday school, and so on.
Let’s just focus on the home. For crypto-Jews, Jewish summer camp is hardly an option, anyway.
When a crypto-Jew has to erect a Christmas tree every year, and hides all Judaica in the cupboards, she’s creating a painful household situation, bifurcating the home and implicitly making Judaism into something shameful or - at best - dangerous. It’s not her fault, to be clear. I’ll attack victim-blaming later.
If our home situates us in relation to the rest of the world, and the home is uncomfortable and communicates that Judaism is something dangerous or disgraceful, we’re unlikely to have a vivifying relation to our traditions.
So, now we get to my tiny Christmas tree.
It’s uncomfortable to have a Christmas tree in my room. That’s the point of having it. Sometimes memories have to be painful so they can jar us out of complacency.
But having the Christmas tree is uncomfortable in a different way from what crypto-Jews experienced: I’m used to being able to shun the trappings of a faith that isn’t my own. I’m used to the First Amendment. At worst, I’m used to concealment, but not setting up a false front. Not that a little Christmas tree in a corner is a “false front,” but it’s a synecdoche of one, like eating the maror.
Having my little tree is just an experiment. Maybe it won’t accomplish anything for me. Maybe something better will occur to me for commemorating crypto-Jews. But you know what? Nobody else seems to have come up with other suggestions, and this is a specific type of commemoration that I’ve determined to undertake. Especially around Hanukkah.
Maccabees and crypto-Jews
I do like Hanukkah. I’ll say that up front, because I’m probably going to sound like I don’t for at least a few paragraphs. I think it’s worth mentioning, in my own obscure corner of the semi-blogosphere, that the Maccabees make me uncomfortable.
In 1 Maccabees, the first person to fall at the hands of the Maccabees is not a Greek, but a Jew. In Sidney Tedesche’s translation:
When [Mattathias] stopped speaking these words, a Jew came forward in sight of all to sacrifice upon the altar in Modin, in accordance with the decree of the king. When Mattathias saw him, he was filled with zeal, and his soul was stirred up. He brought courage to decision, and running up slew him upon the altar. The king’s man who was enforcing the sacrifice he also killed at the same opportune time, and pulled down the altar. Thus he showed his zeal for the Law, as Phineas had done toward Zimri, son of Salom.
Since 1 Maccabees isn’t in Tanakh, I’m going to treat it as an obviously flawed work. I’ll start with its infelicitous comparison of Mattathias to Phineas.
Phineas’s actions in Numbers are somewhat confusing. He’s often, weirdly, treated as an example of morally questionable zeal, but in that story, G-d seems more like the morally grey figure. Phineas ends up sparing a lot of bloodshed that would’ve occurred, had he gone along with G-d’s orders.
The background is as follows. When a number of Israelite men begin sleeping with the enemy, so to speak, a plague sets in among them. G-d commands Moses to “[t]ake all the ringleaders and have them publicly impaled…” It’s hard to describe how horrible the ancient execution method of impalement was.
Moses delegates the enforcement of this order to the leaders under his authority, telling them to execute the ringleaders who are among their own men. However, Phineas does not properly impale anyone in the style of an executioner. He kills two people, an Israelite and his foreign lover, whom he happens to see pass by. The plague ends.
Phineas’s actions are confusing not because he did something abnormally zealous - he did something less zealous than what G-d had ordered - but because it’s unclear how he knew that killing these two people, rather than all the perpetrators, would get the job done. Regardless, his route to ending the plague, as brutal as it is, ends up less brutal than what G-d demanded initially.
Mattathias, however, is not following G-d’s or Moses’s orders on anything in 1 Maccabees. He acts of his own accord. It’s not a reasonable parallel to draw.
More relevantly to this post, however, what concerns me is how the Maccabees (here and later in the text, on a bigger scale) come to be celebrated for killing other Jews. We have a whole canonical story about going undercover as a crypto-Jew and saving the Jewish people as a result. Esther’s results were rather more resounding than the Maccabees’, and she’s in Tanakh. I spent enough time on this comparison elsewhere.
I just can’t stop wondering whether the Maccabees would’ve killed Esther. Or whether we’d be around at all today, as Jews, if the Maccabeean method of dealing with apparent apostates were the norm. (People have tried and failed to carry this out.)
The story of 1 Maccabees isn’t just a story about protecting Jewry from outside pressures. It’s also a story about protecting Jewry from perceived internal threats. Yet at some point, just about every emerging Jewish movement has been viewed by other Jews as some kind of threat - Hasidism and Reform Judaism not at all excepted.
My brain spirals in many directions when I read 1 Maccabees. Many of these directions are positive; some are not.
To the credit of 1 Maccabees, like most good Jewish literature, its ambiguity is useful for generating reflection. The Maccabees simply aren’t flawless, by my standards. Neither were Sarah, Rebecca, or Miriam. Neither is any of us.
But considering the viciousness of the Maccabees toward Jews, some of who may well have been crypto-Jews and not actual apostates, I can’t help but feel that Hanukkah is the right time to remember the struggles of our hidden forebears.
The powers of secrecy
Earlier, I mentioned that a crypto-Jewish household can make Judaism seem shameful. However, that’s not the only possible outcome. Crypto-Judaism can also make Judaism seem all the more alluring and all the more powerful. Isolation and hiding will never be a substitute for the full, communal experience of Judaism. That’s obviously going to be the case. In no way am I suggesting that families should try becoming crypto-Jews for fun and personal growth.
What I’m saying is that not all families or descendants of crypto-Jews develop a distaste for Judaism. Far from it. Crypto-Judaism can end up making Judaism and Jewish learning more powerful and urgent than they might seem to those whose Jewishness is less of an imposition on their lives. There’s surely a reason that crypto-Jews have tended to be so fervently hopeful in Mashiach.
I wish Jews never had to hide. Obviously. Yet I want to remember that Jews who’ve had to hide haven’t ended Judaism - quite the opposite. Many Jews are only alive and Jewish today because of the painful sacrifices of crypto-Jews somewhere in the near or distant past.
I want to remember that - while I live comfortably, now, as a publicly Jewish person moving around in various public milieux - most Jews have not had this luxury in the last few millennia.
Trivially, it occurs to me that most crypto-Jews who’ve put up Christmas trees have had to deal with real trees, with that ineradicable sap and all. That’s a lot worse than ordering a 2’ plastic-and-metal thing online.
Our future reunification
Fear not, for I am with you:
I will bring your folk from the East,
Will gather you out of the West;I will say to the North, “Give back!”
And to the South, “Do not withhold!
Bring My sons from afar,
And My daughters from the end of the earth—All who are linked to My name,
Whom I have created,
Formed, and made for My glory…
A while ago, I wrote something about how we are all the Ten Lost Tribes. I’ll return to that a bit here, but in the more specific context of crypto-Jews and their descendants. In Bamidbar Rabbah, we read:
But in the future, the Holy One blessed be He will gather them, as it is stated: “Behold, these will come from afar, and behold, these from the North and from the West, and those from the land of Sinim” (Isaiah 49:12). The exiles will come with them; the tribes that are situated beyond the Sambatyon River and beyond the mountains of darkness, they will gather and come to Jerusalem. Isaiah said: “To say to prisoners: Emerge” (Isaiah 49:9), these are those situated beyond the Sambatyon River. “To those in darkness: Reveal yourselves” (Isaiah 49:9), these are those situated beyond the clouds of darkness. “They will graze along the ways and on all the bare hills will be their pasture” (Isaiah 49:9), these are those who are situated in Daphne of Antioch. At that moment they will be redeemed, and come to Zion in joy, as it is stated: “The redeemed of the Lord will return and will come to Zion in song” (Isaiah 51:11).
As someone who teaches English, I’m resistant to including giant block quotes when there are more elegant ways to write a piece. I just love that passage so much that I couldn’t help but include it in bulk.
In the end, we’ve always held, the Jews scattered to the ends of the world, and beyond the mountains and clouds of darkness, will reunite with all other Jews. How can I not read “clouds of darkness” as referring, at least in part, to crypto-Jews?
As an aside, prophetic tradition regarding Mashiach is why I chose a black Christmas tree. We have traditionally held that the forces of Din, or harsh justice, will grow more intense toward the coming of Mashiach, and Din is associated with either red or black. As far as I know, fervently messianist movements have used red, not black, to draw this connection (Shabtai Tzvi tended to wear red silk, and Jacob Frank reportedly saw Mashiach - the Maiden - wearing red silk in a dream). However, I thought that black was more suitable for my purposes aesthetically, so I didn’t look for a gaudy, red, fake tree.
There’s biblical reason to maintain the hope and knowledge that crypto-Jews will return to the fold as we triumph with the coming of Mashiach. That hope has driven most crypto-Jews to persist throughout all of Jewish history. But pondering prophecy rarely makes much of an impact on present behaviour, especially among communities that don’t hold to the older notions of messianism.
I don’t really have concrete calls to action. I have personal, longterm goals regarding how to help certain crypto-Jews and their descendants. But I doubt I’ll ever even get started on these goals, frankly. Support Shavei Israel, maybe? They do outreach to far-flung and sometimes hidden Jewish communities.
I’ll add that promoting independent Jewish learning is important, as is - perhaps surprisingly - creating online Jewish spaces. Helping isolated and hidden Jews learn and find community digitally is certainly better than leaving them to their solitude because they aren’t studying formally with a rabbi.
That’s about all I have for semi-concrete steps to take. I could go on about how hatred of imagined or real crypto-Jews puts all Jews in danger. We need to recall what led to the Inquisition, and we need to speak Frankly about certain resurgent conspiracy theories. I’ll do that elsewhere. Being a highly impractical person, I’d rather end this post by discussing a poem.
Our hidden ancestor
Aurora Levins Morales recently published a new book of poems, Rimonim: Ritual Poetry of Jewish Liberation. Having not yet finished the collection, I can’t give my full thoughts on it, other than to say that one or two poems will end up in my personal, informal siddur. The piece that stands out most to me has been a prose poem, “Four Ancestors.” It’s in the book’s section on Pesach, which constitutes a kind of partial Haggadah.
The first of the four ancestors is “the ancestor who hides.” Yes, it’s a prose poem honouring crypto-Jews. I’ve scarcely read anything like it, and sadly, it’s far too long to quote here in full. I’ll quote as selectively as I can force myself to.
I passed on the knowledge of our history in secret, only lit candles behind shuttered windows, camouflaged my meaning in layered song, whispered forbidden languages at night, and I saved myself and others through deceit. … For centuries this is how I survived, keeping only the smallest flame of us alive. … I am alive, but after so long in hiding, who do I know, and who in the world knows me? When it’s time to open the doors and windows wide, what if I can’t find the key?
I can’t help but answer to this imaginary (but real) ancestor: you have Esther’s Key. It’ll open any lock, eventually.
We need to remember our ancestors who hid themselves, who endured split lives, whose Jewish values of tradition and survival grated against each other, and who - I can imagine - lit Shabbos candles with fir tree sap stuck to their hands.
That’s why I’ve ended up with a little black Christmas tree in a corner of my room.