My Journey, by Rabbi Harry Sky

With jolly bearded men perched on housetops, lights shimmering across the snow and advertisements promoting holiday shopping at every turn, this season can be a time of dilemma, if not downright confusion, for those who do not celebrate Christmas.

Which is why, for Jews, Hanukkah is such a perfect festival, tailor-made for this time of year. While some dismiss it as a minor holiday, raised to importance precisely because of its connection to Christmas, Harry Sky, rabbi emeritus of Portland’s Temple Beth El, where he served for 30 years, sees it as an essential celebration of differentiation. He writes about Hanukkah, Judaism and much more in “My Journey,” a collection of sermons and musings along with a brief autobiography, published this fall in association with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute of the University of Southern Maine.

A few days before the start of Hanukkah on Friday evening, Sky reflected on his life and the holiday in a phone conversation from his home in Falmouth.

While Hanukkah may appear to be “just a little story of a lamp that burns for eight days instead of one,” says Sky, “it’s much more than that.” He says the story of the holiday is a lesson stemming from what he sees as “the first real attempt in

Jewish history to live as a minority within a majority culture.”

What was asked of Jews living then was to act like the conquering Greeks. This was not necessarily bad – up to a point. “But if it means erasing who we are,” doing such deeds as sacrificing pigs, worshiping multiple gods, says Sky, “that kind of assimilation we won’t go for.” While some Jews accepted the Greek ways, the Maccabees resisted, launching the rebellion that ended with the miracle of a tiny portion of lamp oil burning for eight full days, hence the lighting of the candles, one more each night, over the eight days of the holiday. Says Sky, “Hanukkah is like a little light burning in the darkness, reminding us what to hold onto.”

The very insistence on Jewish authenticity as a minority culture within the larger world allows for an essential sensitivity to others, Sky adds. By their place in the world, Jews are always aware of the needs, rights and value of separateness and dissent. “It has nothing to do with us being better or worse than anyone else,” he says.

Following that belief, he has spent his entire career reaching out.

“I never could tolerate a sense of gradation when it came to people,” says Sky. “If we’re all basically alike, if everyone is entitled to his or her place lying under a vine and fig tree, that means that as a human I have to assure that this kind of equality takes place. I have to be personally and politically active.”

Like many teachers, Sky makes strong pronouncements that he illustrates with stories. He tells a story about his early days as the rabbi of Temple Beth El: “I joined the ministerial association. The one who most recently joins becomes the president, so I became the president. We wanted to reach out as much as possible, hoping that clergy of all persuasions would come join us,” he recalls.

But the Catholic clergy stayed apart. Sky went to Bishop Daniel J. Feeney, head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland at the time. They had a friendly conversation, then Sky posed his request: “We would very much be honored if you would allow your priests to be part of our association.”

The bishop thought for a moment, then said, “‘I can’t do it.'”

According to Sky, the bishop spoke about how his mother, as a young, poor, immigrant, had been mistreated when she worked for a Protestant family.

He couldn’t forget it, says Sky: “As if to say it was in the nature of Protestants to behave that way!”

Sky had no problem finding his answer: “‘Bishop,’ I said to him, ‘I am a descendant of a people who have gone through thousands of years of history, and I can’t say it was always pleasant living among non-Jews. If I can take a chance, why don’t you let your priests take a chance?'”

That year, the ministerial association included Catholic priests.

“You have to take chances,” Sky adds. “If you don’t take chances, how are you going to expect anything to change?” But taking chances is not always about desperate risk; it’s also about play. When kids play, they take a chance – and break barriers.

“That’s as natural to human beings as anything else. If you have lost sense of play, then you’ve lost a good part of what life is about.”

By 1964, Sky became involved in the civil rights movement. Later, he lobbied for the inclusion of women as rabbis in Conservative temples. Most recently, he’s been advocating for seniors, establishing the Senior College in Portland, known as the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Now nearing 80, Sky is the rabbi in residence at Portland’s Congregation Etz Chaim and the rabbi on call at Rockland’s Adas Yoshuron Synagogue. He’s also working on two additional books.

What gives him the strength? “When I was a child, one of the songs we used to sing is, ‘Never say you’re on the final road.'”

Underlying Sky’s work as a rabbi, teacher and writer is a search for meaning and understanding. This search takes him deep into Judaism, but also deep into his dreams, for relatively late in his life, Sky became a student of Jungian psychology. The mingling of these searches, into the community of Judaism, the study of Torah and the sense of self, gives “My Journey” its power.

It is a search that never ends, for each question raises a multiplicity of additional ones. “I’ll search until I die,” says Sky, his voice urgent. Self-understanding is a continuing process – and not one that can be told by others. “To find what it is that you’re supposed to do, look within. God gave us a mechanism, which I call the light, the spark.”

What better time to see this than in the darkness of the year, when the lights raised into the darkness can remind us that we are all on a search for peace, understanding and acceptance.

“My Journey” was published by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. It costs $18.