Shabbat Vayeishev 5785- Ahad Ha'am's Competitive Imitation (how I learnt to love Chanukah PJs)
You can listen to Rabbi Deborah's sermon here or read it below.
In the middle of a conversation in our atrium bemoaning Asda’s choice of colours for this year’s Chanukah pyjamas- white for those of you wondering, utterly impractical for jammy fingers- one of the people I was talking to asked a group of us, ‘but obviously you bought them anyway didn’t you?’
And of course the answer was yes. None of us really wanted them, but we’d all bought them.
Why did a group of completely autonomous adults, with better judgement and taste, decide they had no choice but to purchase an extremely sub par supermarket pyjama offering?
Because, the logic we’d all arrived at entirely independently was, if we didn’t buy them then they might not make them next year.
I was reflecting on the conversation walking home, and what it says about how we feel about Jewish visibility- commercial or otherwise- in this country.
Why did we all schlep to years of slightly dire Simchas on the Square? Buy not very nice Chanukah PJs, or indeed the one Chanukah sweatshirt that Amazon sold for years before the print your own market of endless ‘Oy to the World’ slogans from China took off.
What is it? Is it desperation? Exhaustion? Or relief?
When GAP made the best Chanukah PJs that have ever been on sale in the UK, two years ago, the excitement was off the charts. The fabric soft, the pattern tasteful, the price reasonable, we’d finally made it! We were on the radar, deserving of our very own slice of the festive season’s commercial pie.
I know there are many people who would hear this unfolding and just wonder what I’m on about. And I think our rabbinic ancestors might have been some of those people. If Chanukah is the ultimate story of Jewish survival against the tides of cultural pressure to reclaim and dedicate our identity and resist assimilation, what on earth are we doing talking about festive Pyjamas?!
The comedian Zach Margolin released a video this week.
It’s a parody of the John Lewis Christmas adverts, Ellie Goulding music in the background as it follows a man through his office Christmas celebrations. He takes in doughnuts only to have them exchanged for an angel to put on the tree, a colleague gifts him a Christmas jumper to wear, he’s invited to work drinks on a Friday night and can’t go.
As we watch him walking around, then sitting at home spinning his dreidels alone, his colleague texts him inviting him to a Christmas party at hers on Saturday night. When she opens the door, behind her are all of his colleagues in Chanukah sweatshirts, menorahs in hand, having spotted his feeling of isolation and thrown him his very own party.
I think for a very considerable proportion of people, the experience of walking into a mainstream shop and seeing Jewish symbols, festivals, and ideas as being worthy of a whole merchandise range is essentially like having your own version of this film playing in your head. It’s affirming, it’s about being culturally visible and validated as normal, mainstream enough to have our place up there. And for once it’s a nice kind of visibility. A fluffy PJ’d, yummy doughnut, uncomplicated,cozy, fairy lit, visibility where we can find a way to join in with something around us but without feeling like we have to make who we are as Jews disappear.
I am totally aware that there is a conversation around all of this that requires us to ask, what are people chasing? Can we just accept that there is this thing happening around us in the country we live in called Christmas, that has meaning and resonance to a small number of people for religious reasons, and a larger number for the cultural and familial constructs that exist around those religious traditions, but as Jews it’s not our festival and not our season to worry about partaking in?
Can we not just be happy observers? Not grinches or scrooges but just Jews- with our own stuff to get on with? And why is it that how we celebrate Jewish stuff and Jewish distinctiveness is now being shaped by a religion bigger than us and bigger than Christmas itself- market forces!
I’ve long grappled with my own bubbling and pretty strong animosity towards the dominating power of Christmas culture.
I think at its most challenging it makes Jews feel - in the words of South Park’s Kyle that there’s something wrong with us if we hold back from what everyone else is doing, even if what everyone else is doing isn’t really (unless you live in an interfaith household) for want of a better word, ‘ours’. And I guess this year of all years, it’s really not a stretch given the experience of being Jews in this country at the moment, to say that the last thing anyone really wants is another reason to feel like Jewishness is in some way wrong, delinquent, or other.
In an 1893 essay called ‘Imitation and Assimilation’, the great cultural Zionist thinker Ahad Ha’am wrote of cultural encounters. He introduced a term that has really helped transform for me the question of how to manage this time of year- and whether it's a nightmare or a gift that Chanukah and Christmas coincide so often as they do this week.
This term is ‘Competitive Imitation’. He describes an encounter of two strong cultures where each learn from the other ‘new ways of expressing its spirit’, and where they ‘strive to surpass the other in those ways’. He contrasts it to what he calls ‘self-effacing imitation’, where one of the cultures in the encounter is much smaller or weaker. In this case, the weaker culture submits and effaces its own individuality.
Simply put, when you know who you are you can encounter others' differences, and develop yourself positively by learning from their skills to help do what you already want to do but better. If you aren’t sure of your own identity, then encounters with other cultures can dilute it further, causing us to give up our distinctiveness and copying what others do as a desperate but ultimately doomed attempt to keep up.
For me, this is where the PJs come back into the conversation. What are they? Are they a concession, a way of saying we’ve got no choice but to get swept up in this Christmas storm so let’s do it in blue and white instead as a nod to our heritage, or are they a gift that says dressing up and owning your identity makes everything more fun so let’s embrace it?
In the best world, I think these moments are examples of Ahad Ha’ams dream of cultural encounter, where - as Reform Jews have done in so many parts of our religious lives- we grow and enhance our Judaism and Jewish practice by using things we’ve seen and learnt from other cultures around us. Going into things with confidence - admittedly, sometimes easier said than done- is so crucial to this.
As an aside- and because I know many families in this community are also balancing the question of interfaith households- this is why I struggle with Chrismukkah which reduces two very distinct, very substantial and meaningful identities, down to a thin enough common denominator to turn into one thing. It's the ultimate example on both ends of self-effacing imitation rather than a proud and substantial celebration of the things that make us who we are in our wholeness.
The prouder and more confident we are in our Jewisness, I think the easier this season is to manage. It’s easier to enjoy shared experiences with others who are different to us if we are clearer and more secure about who we are- and who we are not- in those spaces. Storytelling, visibility, and sharing are all part of our toolbox for helping ourselves know how we want to be, and enabling others to see us and our culture too.
It’s a bit paradoxical. It might feel like the way to make the challenges of this time go away is to acquiesce and to just do as everyone else is doing, but I think we all deserve something richer, something more. There’s a wealth of warmth, history, culture and connection to celebrate about being Jewish, this week and every week. There’s a strength of purpose and maybe even a sense of freedom and relief that comes from unapologetic acceptance of our difference, and encountering the world around us from a position of strength and mutual exchange. And perhaps this year more than any as Chanukah falls on Christmas day, we have the gift of being able to lean into all the joys of a festive season and allow them to create the most perfect setting for that first beautiful light, and the 7 that follow suit.
