San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
SANDI DOLBEE:
HOW JASON NEVAREZ, BETH ISRAEL’S NEW SENIOR RABBI, IS CELEBRATING
As a little boy, he remembers lighting the special Hanukkah menorah. Taking the shammash, the helper candle, from its holder, he’d light the first candle on that first night and place the menorah carefully onto the window sill of the family’s Bronx apartment overlooking the Hudson River. He watched in wonder as the window glass amplified the light, casting the magnified illumination out into the darkness, over the water.
And then, on the eighth and final night, when all the candles would be lit, the window scene would be ablaze with light.
Years later, Rabbi Jason Nevarez uses these memories as a metaphor for what is possible in this world. All it takes is one shammash, one helper, he says, and your work can be amplified in countless ways.
He brings that story now to San Diego, as he prepares to celebrate the Jewish festival of Hanukkah for the first time as the senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel. With a history dating back to the 1860s, Beth Israel, home to some 1,200 families, is San Diego County’s oldest and largest synagogue.
When Hanukkah begins later this week, Nevarez will recount the miracle that took place more than 2,000 years ago, when a small army of Jews, led by the Maccabee family, defeated their foreign oppressors and were able to reclaim and rededicate the temple. As the story goes, there was only enough oil for the temple’s menorah to burn one day, but somehow it lasted for eight days, until more oil could be secured (which helps explain why Hanukkah is known as the Festival of Lights and lasts for eight days).
On this cool autumn morning, Nevarez is sitting at the University City synagogue, drilling down on one particular theme in the Hanukkah story — rededication.
“It’s about a battle in the midst of the war, and to tell you the truth, we lost the war,” he is saying. “And so it’s about celebrating the battles — and that, to me, is really rededicating myself to what we are trying to do in this world.”
Then the rabbi launches into a series of questions.
“How do we rededicate ourselves to finding new ways to engage one another? How do we rededicate ourselves in a time that feels like we are so consumed with news and the media and the election cycle and all the pieces? How do we rededicate ourselves to really the core of who we are?”
There is one question left unasked: And how do you do all this in the midst of a historic pandemic?
Drive-by Hanukkah
Nevarez began his job in San Diego in July, the same month he turned 43. By then, COVID-19 had left its mark on so many things. Like other houses of worship, Beth Israel’s doors were shuttered and its Shabbat services had gone online.
Even getting here was a testament to what we keep calling the new normal.
Because of the contagious nature of the coronavirus, his family decided not to take the chance of flying across the country from New York, where he had been serving at a suburban synagogue for the past 17 years. Instead, Nevarez, his wife, their two children and their dog traveled from coast to coast for nine days in a 30-foot RV. After they got here, they moved into a house in Carmel Valley that they bought after touring it virtually, room by room, on Facetime.
And in addition to spending these first months getting to know the congregation and staff, everything had to be reimagined with the use of online technology — including the High Holy Days this past September.
As the daily rate of coronavirus
Your first kiss and last school dance. Your first car and last night of living at home. Our lives are made up of these firsts and lasts, like bookends framing the chapters of our journey. This month, we will look at a pair of them. Today, we feature a rabbi preparing to celebrate his first Hanukkah as the senior leader of San Diego’s oldest and largest synagogue. In two weeks, we will visit with a priest who, after nearly 50 years, is facing his final Christmas before retiring.
cases slowly lowered here, he and Beth Israel had high hopes for this first Hanukkah. “We had an elaborate plan to use our beautiful campus to have a walk-through, to kind of create stations of Hanukkah,” he says.
But then San Diego’s virus rate landed us back into the dreaded purple tier. Now the plan is to create a drive-by experience by arranging eight stations — one for every night of the holiday — on the first floor of the parking structure. One station, for example, will highlight giving to charity (proceeds will go to Jewish Family Services and the Hunger Project at St. Vincent de Paul Village).
Nevarez promises it will be festive — and filled with lights. “We are really trying to illuminate brightness in this dark time,” he says. “That is our focus. How do we bring light to the darkness that we are all feeling right now? That, for me, is the centerpiece of what I believe Hanukkah is.”
Since Hanukkah also is a home holiday, Beth Israel will use the Internet to bring families together virtually to cook latkes and light the nightly candles. There will even be a Hanukkah yule log, complete with music.
Majoring in the minor
To be clear, Nevarez wants us to know that Hanukkah is actually a minor holiday on the Jewish calendar.
The story isn’t even in the Hebrew Bible. Jews have to look to a supplemental collection of writings to find the account of the revolt. And remember, while they won that particular battle, they lost the war.
So how did this event in ancient Jewish history become so pervasive in American pop culture?
Blame it on timing. Or, more specifically, on Christmas.
Hanukkah, which this year runs from Thursday evening to the evening of Dec. 18, often coincides with the Christmas season, when carols are ubiquitously streamed into stores, decorations deck the streets, and even our palm trees and sailboats are bathed in yuletide lights.
It can be a difficult time for Jews. “There are many who feel less than,” Nevarez says. “That’s why I think celebrating Hanukkah is a big deal — to have the Jewish community feel that their story and their narrative is important.”
His dark, wavy hair hints at his own roots. His paternal grandparents came to America from Spain via Puerto Rico, where his father was born. His mother is a first-generation American, the daughter of Eastern Europeans who immigrated to America in the early 20th century.
He told me how he went to college to study architecture but discovered he didn’t like it. Over time, he decided to become a builder of souls instead of skyscrapers and was ordained a rabbi in the Reform movement of Judaism in 2006.
Nevarez found Beth Israel after he and his wife decided to look beyond New York for a place to live and work. It’s been a good match. “Even in the midst of COVID, I’m finding the lay leadership wonderful, my staff partners wonderful.” A few moments later, he adds: “It really is such an amazing place. It’s a fit for sure.”
The conversation returns to the subject of Hanukkah and my mind drifts to what the rabbi had said about the challenge during each of the nights to rededicate themselves. I asked how we all might rededicate ourselves once this oppressor called COVID-19 is defeated.
“I am hopeful we can dig down to our greatest foundations and truths in order to come out the other side together — more united than divided.”
Jews. Christians. Muslims. Sikhs. Hindus. Buddhists. Atheists. And none of the above. There would be nothing minor about that holiday.
Rabbi Jason Nevarez
Dolbee
is the former religion and ethics editor of The San Diego Union-tribune and a former president of the Religion News Association. Email: sandidolbee columns@gmail.com