Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.076 August 12, 1993 1) Sukkah lights and cultural transfer (Naomi Cohen) 2) Sukka lights (Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Aug 11 14:43:23 1993 From: ncohen@sjuphil.sju.edu (Naomi Cohen) Subject: Sukkah lights and cultural transfer A few years ago, my parents (of the Philadelphia area) began putting strings of white "Christmas" lights on their sukkah. They got the idea from friends who had learned it from fellow parents at the Lakeshore Hebrew Day School in New Orleans. Noticing the December decorations in the neighborhood, their then 5-year old son reportedly said, "Look, Mommy, sukkah lights!" Naomi Cohen 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 11 Aug 93 16:35 GMT From: Roslyn Kalifowicz-Waletzky <0005943838@mcimail.com> Subject: Sukka lights Dear Naomi, I adore your story and I thank you so much for sending it to me. It's wonderful because it shows so many aspects of what I was referring to in my little essay: namely, how easily cultural borrowing happens; how easily they are accepted by unself-conscious people (e.g., children); how erasable cultural/ religious associations can be among those whose modus operandi is aesthetics-- something that is not given sufficient weight in academics or even popular culture; how much cultural artifacts are ethnically transportable when they either don't contain or have deleteable offensive content; how a manufactured or natural product that has been usurped by one ethnic or religious group for its ritual or symbolic use can always be "liberated" of its imposed symbolic value by another group; how quickly and easily ritual meanings are assignable to artifacts by those not burdened by previous associations, etc., etc.. I don't know how it is in New Orleans or Philadelphia, but here in New York I noticed that starting about 15 years or so ago, since someone began manufacturing strings of small white lights which were used to decorate the trees in front of high-profile buildings and restaurants in midtown Manhattan during the Christmas season, the trees I thought looked gorgeous. Obviously, other people thought so too and this tree decoration spread more and more, (especially along Sixth Ave.). A great many of the luxury residential buildings on the Upper East Side built in the '80's seem to have installed such tree decorations around Christmas time. Presumably, since this decorative look had such a positive response in treeless Midtown Manhattan, this "Christmas decoration" spread all over Manhattan and in many places extends all year round. (Az es kenen nisht vaksn ken grine bleter tsvishn the volknkratser, kultivert men kleyne vayse likhtlekh.) The reason for this is probably a very flamboyant (Jewish) restauranteur named Walter LeRoy Jr. (actor Mervyn LeRoy's son) who took this decorative idea and played it to the hilt. He decorated all the trees around his restaurant "Tavern on the Green", located in Central Park, with miles of these gorgeous small speckled white lights, resulting in what can only be described as "a winter wonderland" all year round. Walter LeRoy Jr. is a phenomenal promoter and businessman, and he knows what wins. The restaurant is a tourist mecca but it truly deserves an evening visit any old time just to see the lighted glory. So here is someone, along with others too I'm sure, who usurped this Christian symbolic artifact, secularized it and now anyone can use them any time of the year. These lights are smaller than the traditional stringed 7 watts (or so) Christmas light bulbs one can buy anywhere. But then again I use those 7 watt multi-colored Christmas lights to light my electric menorah on Khanuka. Although I always think about the Christmas association when I need to replace the burned-out lempelakh because of 1)my own association with that size bulb and 2) the bulb package marking "For Christmas" or "Christmas Lights" (or something like that) on it, I still use them. But then I think I think that in replacing the original light bulbs, I am maintaining a Jewish artifact (an electric menorah) as "it was meant to be used" and one that is "different" from its Christian use, and there's no problem for me with that. So the corollary goes, why not put lights on your sukka? I've wanted to do that myself but I haven't gotten it together yet. Having said what I just said the question for me is, why do I still feel uncomfortable in using those Christmas size light bulbs on my own sukka but, in contrast, would love to use Walter LeRoy's type of stringed light bulbs that probably cost twice as much? Probably because I want the sukka to be expressly Jewish both for me and for my non- Jewish neighbors on both sides of our attached brownstone. My six and a half year old would probably also say "Kuk mame, sukke likht" (my kids speak Yiddish with us) but I myself can't quite do that so easily. That's why Moses took the Jews around the desert for forty years az di alte zoln oysshtarbm un a nayer dor zol emes kenen opshatsn dem sizn tam fun frayhayt. Anyway, these are the kinds of semiotic/cultural negotiations that Jews who want to live in both the Jewish and non-Jewish world make all the time on all levels in all categories. Zayt gezunt, Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.076