Dear Hevreh,

 

Yesterday, our community celebrated the Festival of Lights in style with latkes, doughnuts, lighting of candles…and magic! A fun and engaging magician, the Great Scott, made us laugh and left us amazed with his sleights of hand and knowledge of the magical arts. The show was not only entertaining, but got me thinking about how magic relates to our relationship with God. 

 

How can we sense God’s presence in our lives? If the Bible is our guide, then the clearest way for God to appear in our lives is through the performance of “magic” — miracles like splitting a sea or getting water from a rock. These events, which cannot be explained by reason, have ingrained in us the sense that when something happens beyond nature and reason then they must be evidence of God. This focus on God’s “supernatural” abilities has led to an ambivalent Jewish   attitude towards a human’s ability manipulate God’s supernatural abilities (i.e. to perform magic) in which the only people who could legitimately perform “supernatural” acts were those who had a close relationship to God. 

 

The story of Hanukkah, and in particular the belief that oil to light the menorah for only one day actually lasted for eight days, is a good example of this ambivalence. The military victory of the Maccabees over the Greeks was so improbable, so beyond reason, that it was akin to a “supernatural” event. As such, the rabbis in the Talmud needed to show that this event was ordained by God and thus used the story of the miracle of the oil as proof of God’s role in this victory.

 

I believe that the need of the rabbis to bring God into, or to prove God’s role in, the “supernatural/magical/miraculous” story of Hanukkah speaks to an important human need — to be in partnership with a god who can help us achieve things that seem beyond reason. 

 

No more than six months ago, pulling off a Rubber Duck Race fundraiser seemed laughable, improbable, beyond reason. Yet here we are, at the beginning of our Duck Week. Yesterday, at the end of the Hanukkah party we labelled many of the ducks that will be racing in the event (see picture below and more on Facebook tomorrow). There is still much more to do this week, and with the grace of God and belief in our mission to sustain a vibrant Jewish presence in Perth Amboy, we are making this improbable duck race a reality!