Posted By James Besser
A Rabbi's World: Christmas in Israel… Who Knew? / Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik
Having spent extensive and sustained amounts of time in Israel during my life, it doesn't take me long to get back into her unique and idiosyncratic rhythms.
For all of the transplanted Americans in Israel and particularly in Jerusalem, where I have been these past few days, there is little here that is like New York. Some Americans shy away from buses for security reasons. I, personally, was more than happy to take buses around the city, but trying to get on one in the center of town, even trying to get near one, requires a measure of intestinal fortitude that I just don't have. Some of those people should play forward for the Knicks… it could only help.
What has been particularly fascinating to me has been encountering anew the phenomenon of Christmas in Israel. I've been in Israel many times over the December break, and each and every time- this one very much included- I've been completely amazed at the absence of Christmas in the public consciousness.
There are certainly Christians here; the city is quite crowded, hotel rooms are at a premium, and there are many, many Jewish tourists as well. I read that Bethlehem was the most crowded this year that it's been for a decade.
But the public rhythm of Israeli life is not geared to the secular calendar. Electronic and print media are not saturated with ads about gifts; the music on the radio is the same as it always is; restaurants are open… life goes on. If you've ever been on the road on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day in America, you know what's it's like trying to find anything at all open. Not here. Today was Tuesday, 25 December, and it looked and smelled a lot like Monday, 24 December.
So it makes you think about what it means to feel at home even when you're in a country that is not, strictly speaking, your own.
You can't help but notice the absence of the relentless commercialism of the Christmas machine, and of the constant (at least lately) undertones concerning the relationship between being a "Christian leader" and one's fitness to be President of the United States. I feel at home in America, too- a country that, I often sense, is not really "my own," either in any absolutely secure sense.
Israel is no Eden, to be sure, and problems abound here that, as Tevye says, would cross a rabbi's eyes. Truth to tell, rabbis cause a lot of them. But I do feel at home here- especially at this time of year