Chanukah miscellany
December 23, 2008
Here are five Chanukah-themed gems from my delicious feed:
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Rabbi Debra Orenstein has posted a set of Eight meditations for Chanukah, one for each night of the festival. Really worth reading. (Hat tip Sustainable Judaism.)
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The Droidl: Star Wars' R2D2-themed make-your-own paper dreidl. Because I am just that much of a geek.
An oldie but a goodie: Stories of Miracles, Moments of Being: A Skeptic’s Hanukah by my friend Jay Michaelson. "For me, however, miracles were an obstruction to faith, not an aid to it..."
Poems for Chanukah at the Academy of American Poets: Amichai, Kunitz, Reznikoff and more. Their list doesn't include David Lehman's Christmas defeated Chanukah, though personally I think it should.
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But probably my favorite Chanukah link this year is this Hallel using Christmas carol melodies. Hallel is the set of psalms recited on festivals and holidays (including this one); this rendition sets the classic psalms, in Hebrew, to a variety of familiar Christmas carol tunes.
That last one probably only appeals to the limited subset of people who recite Hallel regularly enough to know it well, and who know and like a bunch of Christmas carols, but since I'm smack in the middle of that demographic, it's perfect for me.
(For a more serious take on Chanukah, I'm pretty happy with yesterday's Mai Chanukah; if you haven't read it yet, I hope you will.)
On a completely unrelated note:
The folks at blogs.com invited me to contribute a list of my top ten religion blogs to their topten section. I chose ten blogs which are among my regular reads; I think it's an eclectic list and hopefully an interesting one! The list is here: Velveteen Rabbi's Top Ten Religion Blogs.
If yours is one of the blogs I listed, you're entitled to one of these badges, by the way. Thanks for putting your words out there! And thanks for the invite, blogs.com folks.