As odd as it might seem to many of my foreign readers, I’d never seen a Christmas tree until I was about 10, I think. I happened to be at a mall in Haifa, which is home to many Christian Arabs, and saw a huge Christmas tree there. At the time it was a very interesting novelty, something I’d hitherto only seen on the telly and such, and I remember liking it.
Naturally, my family do not celebrate Christmas. They celebrate Hanukkah instead. I hate Hanukkah, chiefly because of its origins as a celebration of the victory of a bunch of fanatics’ semi-successful guerilla warfare over the army of a badly battered nation and the short-lived autonomous chaotic theocracy they established. When I celebrate it with them, all I do is just stand there when they light the candles, just so I don’t really alienate myself from the family, and wait for it to end. As an atheist, I do not say the Hanukkah blessings, and I definitely do not sing that horrible, horrible song Ma‘oz Tsur*: Israelis usually sing just the first verse (occasionally the fifth) and the Hebrew version of Oh Chanukah, with that weird, unrelated reference to the Temple of Israel shoved in there. I am constantly surprised at how non-religious Israeli Jews seem to be completely unaware of what the re-establishment of the Temple of Israel means: essentially, a rampant theocracy, headed by a king and a council of religious elders who will execute people who do not observe the Sabbath and other commandments, and not to mention the huge war that would ensue, as re-establishing the Temple would require demolishing the Al-Aqsa mosque. But that war is, of course, part of the Orthodox Jewish eschatological vision (look up ‘Gog and Magog’ on Wikipedia and search for the word ‘war’), so they’re ready (as the first and last verses of Ma‘oz Tsur indicate), and we should all be afraid.
This long rant is here to point out that I do not feel at home here. This is not my place. I can’t even celebrate Novy God properly, with a festive tree and a happy feast that won’t be harder to prepare due to arbitrary religious rules limiting the availability of good food, as much as I wish I could. I get a bit giddy whenever I see a Christmas tree that makes me feel closer to somewhere I do belong to, but a bit sad as well as I remember where I really am; a bit like a Hindu devotee seeing the idol of the deity he worships, craving to be by his side, so do I crave to serve the ideals I firmly believe in where I belong.
So my blessing to all of you (and myself) for the new year is, may we all be where we truly belong next year; and to those lucky enough to have achieved this, I wish for you to acknowledge it and be happy about it.
С новым годом, everyone.
Unum diem...
(P.S.: My poetry and translation business has a Facebook page now.)
*While this might seem like a poem demanding vengeance against those who’ve wronged the Jews, one must remember that the Christian rulers themselves were far from being that hostile towards Jews were in no small part responsible for a huge part of the hostility towards them, and in fact pretty much started this whole conflict with their gross mistreatment of Christians, which was actually mostly by the common people and not by the rulers, who were generally fonder of them as they were a good financial source for them. Also, Jews haven’t been persecuted systematically by Christianity for ages, and this song is still sung proudly in every Jewish home in Israel.
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