JOINING THE MARINE (PARK) CORE!

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Joining the Marine [Park] Core!

A Final (“Teves”) Word About Chanukah: THE “NEW HISYAVNUS”? “Black Friday” in Today’s Geulah, But What About a Menorah in Ancient Tzippori?   

By

Rabbi Hillel L. Yarmove © 

 “’Black Friday’ is the name which the Philadelphia Police Department has given the Friday following Thanksgiving Day. It is not a term of endearment to them. ‘Black Friday’ officially opens the [winter-holiday] shopping season in center city, and it usually brings massive traffic jams and over-crowded sidewalks as the downtown stores are mobbed from opening to closing” (Martin L. Apfelbaum, Executive Vice President of Earl P. L. Apfelbaum, Inc., of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January, ’66)

{Please note: The following article, composed during the first half of Kislev this year,  is merely one man’s observations, not a p’sak nor a comment on mercantile practices anywhere else but in the Sacred City. Incidentally, great people have pointed out that since Chanukah falls out in part also during the month of Teves, we are presently still quite connected to the Festival of Lights.}

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I was returning to my rented dirah from davening kavasikin at the Kosel recently (you know, that statement has a nice ring to it: it certainly beats “while I was returning home the other day from shopping at Walmart”!). At the circle where the buses make—or are supposed to make!—their turnaround, I was riveted by a sight I had secretly hoped that I’d never witness at the vortex of this planet’s holiness—a “Black Friday” advertisement prominently displayed on the posterior of one of these public vehicles (see my accompanying photos).

“Black Friday” being proclaimed in Yerushalayim, Ir HaKodesh? Chas v’chalilah! But there they were—both its proclamation and its promotion, clear for all to see. It was probably then that I decided to alert my readers to the creeping illness which I shall term “the new Hisyavnus (Hellenization)” in this week’s column.

But first off, what is “Black Friday” anyway?

The expression “Black Friday” is squarely the product of the second half of the twentieth century (l’fi misparam). In fact the underlying concept behind this newfangled mercantile “occasion” is basically the old-fashioned idea of turning a handsome profit—or going into the black. If you’d like, however, you can allow yourself to think of other connotations of blackness (such as darkness and evil) as they appear in standard European and American literature. And if this isn’t the only Friday in our patently non-Jewish environment with an adjective before it (l’moshol, “Good”), perhaps that may also have played a role—consciously or subconsciously—in the evolution of the day’s name. The fact that “Black Friday” commences (as a general rule) right after Thanksgiving Day and draws to a close with the approach of December 25 is a somewhat humorous reminder to us of a goyishe perversion of “sh’loshim yom kodem . . .”—“v’nahafoch hu”!

In other words, as far as I am concerned,  “Black Friday” as an incentive for increasing sales and revenue has no place in Artzeinu Hakedoshah. Punkt!

And yet, and yet: there it is, all around me during late November this year. And from what I was told, it would seem that the numerous signs advertising “Black Friday” sales in the Geulah neighborhood in which I reside wouldn’t hold a candle to what was going on in Bnei Brak, but—truth to tell—I didn’t travel there to ascertain the situation, so I can’t say for sure.

Now please understand my position on “Black Friday” as it is “observed” here in the United States, where it was born and nurtured: I am basically apathetic toward the whole notion, although if people can better their way of life through increased sales and profits, or through saving money, then I am pleased for their sake. That’s the altruism in me, I suppose. Similarly, I would like our brothers and sisters in Eretz Yisroel to profit handsomely—and not just during one specific period or season.

But why must it be this very season, redolent as it is of strange ideas and stranger customs—even more so in our sacred Yerushalayim neighborhoods? Why, isn’t this the very underpinning of the Chanukah story? Guess what! The serious (not necessarily Syrian) Greeks (pun intended!) are back, only this time they’re using PR to insinuate themselves and their foreign concepts into the Jewish psyche. If you must have a major sales event in Eretz Yisroel, why not choose a different time—and a better name? (After all, the Mexicans call it “El Buen Fin,” or “The Good [Week-]End”).

So much for “Black Friday” in Geulah and elsewhere in Artzeinu Hakedoshah! 

It so happens that on the day of my departure to return to America, I traveled north to the lower Galil to visit Tzippori, where Rabbeinu HaKadosh (Rabbi Yehudah Hanasi) had lived the last seventeen years of his life over eighteen hundred years ago. Ah, the excavated remains of the Shuk Haelyon and the Shuk Hatachton (talk about a merchant-filled town, will you!). What a thrill to walk down the ancient main thoroughfare where undoubtedly the great Redactor of the Mishnah himself (Rabbeinu Hakadosh) had himself often trod. Peledig!

But wait! What is that which I see inscribed on one of the pavement stones in the Lower Market? I can’t believe it—a Chanukah menorah. Engraved for all time, for all the world to see!

No, my friends, this little recent episode obviously did not occur on “Black Friday” in our modern, technologically advanced society. The ruins of Tzippori in the Galil were showing me that what really endures the test of time is that which is quintessentially Jewish and dynamically good—and this I observed on a Tuesday, Yom Hash’lishi, pa’amayim “ki tov” in the days of the Creation of the World. Wow!

So let me ask you: Could I really have learned any better, more heartening, and more thoroughly cheerful lesson than this?!

Questions or comments? Please send these to me at hillyarm@yeshivanet.com. Thanks, dear readers!