With the end of Thanksgiving, or for some even the end of Halloween, comes a long fought, noble battle against those who would seek to strip joy from the most merry. Yes, I’m talking about those who insist that there is a War on Christmas (Has this been trademarked yet?), that their holiday is somehow reduced by anyone who won’t utter the words Christmas.
Well my weary friends, fear not. I come here, like the messenger to the town square, to tell you that the time has come to lay down your red cups and wreaths, Christmas has been dealt a blow that it can’t recover from: in 2025, Hanukkah will happen twice.
The recent passing of Grateful Dead bassist, Phil Lesh, has been felt deeply by the music world at large. At a time when society is so divided, it is cathartic to think about Lesh’s approach to community. He wasn’t Jewish, but he hosted several Passover seders at his now-closed music venue Terrapin Crossroads, telling the J. The Jewish News of Northern California in 2014, “We want to honor all traditions of our fans — as what is community without its traditions and world view?” Reboot Network member Todd Krieger has insightful reflections on Lesh’s contributions to bridging divides in this heartfelt farewell to a music legend. Read his full piece here.
Oren Goldenberg is the developer and co-owner of the newly opened Dreamtroit, a $30 million mixed-use artist-led affordable housing project in the historic Lincoln Motor Factory in Detroit. For Sukkot, he ponders the connection between affordable housing and the temporary shelters we build every year to remember the time Jews wandered in the desert. The sukkot we as Jews inhabited in the desert were temporary shelters to protect us on the way to a promised land. They were dwellings for the upwardly mobile, an impermanent solution to get us to where we were trying to go; the first affordable public housing projects, if you will. But Affordable housing can no longer be equated with temporary housing. We are finding that people, over generations, require subsidies and assistance to be adequately housed in America. Affordable housing is the promised land, Goldenberg asserts. Read more here.
Reboot Studios’ short, The Anne Frank Gift Shop, was written by Mickey Rapkin to reach a young audience because of the shocking levels of ignorance about the Holocaust among newer generations. My Brother’s Gift, a play running this month at the New Conservatory Theatre Center in San Francisco, seeks to reach young people by creating a connection to the “talented people and especially the young ones who did not get to experience the wonders of life,” through the lens of the paintings of a young man who was killed in the Holocaust. Heinz Geiringer’s paintings were retrieved from their hiding place after the Holocaust by his sister, who survived. The center’s Artistic Director Ed Decker writes in our blog about his connection to the play, which is running October 20 and 27 at 1 p.m. at the New Conservatory Theatre Center.
Reboot Network member, Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider is a practicing internist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her new narrative podcast, Before We Go, a heartfelt (and often hilarious) journey through life’s greatest challenges—love, loss, family, and the reality of facing mortality is available now wherever you listen to podcasts. In our blog, she shares how the Jewish view of death and the rituals of generations provide a framework for this journey and helped her grieve. And, she says, the concept of tikkun olam—repairing the world—extends to how we approach death as well, recognizing that part of repairing the world is accepting that death, too, is part of its fabric. Read more here.