Queering Hanukkah

What this episode covers

As we come to the beginning of Hanukkah, Brian invites us to reimagine the Festival of Lights as a celebration of resistance, resilience, and the sacred spark within every queer body. When queering Hanukkah, we can explore how the Hanukkah story itself is rooted in defiance against erasure, and how its rituals can be reclaimed as affirming practices that honor queer joy, creativity, and survival. Resources: Learn more about Rituals for Resistance & Resilience here Join us and be part of Queering Advent! Find more info here. This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions. 1 (9s): Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G. Murphy, 2 (13s): And I’m Father Shannon TL Kerns. We’re the co-founders of queer theology.com and your hosts from Genesis, 1 (18s): Revelation. The Bible declares good news, LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how 2 (23s): Tuning each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. 1 (33s): A few days ago, I texted one of my friends who was also Jewish and asked if he wanted to come over for a lot ’cause and food and candles on the first native Hanukkah with some other friends. Wait, when does Hanukkah start? He asked, yes, I’m terrible for not knowing. He added, but you know what? Not knowing when Hanukkah starts is also a quintessentially Jewish experience for many Jews. It, it starts tonight, by the way, now if you know me, you know that I’m a big fan of counting holidays. I like to count the days of land count, the days of the Ooma count, the days of Advent, and of course, count the Knights of Hanukkah. It might be that that soothes some part of my A DHD brain, but for me, there’s also something deeply grounding about the practice of paying attention to the passing of time. 1 (1m 13s): Maybe you count the days since a partner or friend or a family members passing. Maybe you count the days of your sobriety. Maybe you count the days until your gender affirming surgery. I’m a bit obsessed with the idea that everything can be spiritual, that the divine is already at your fingertips. In our rituals for resistance and resilience workshop, I outline seven steps to transform a routine into ritual. Sure, you can pray the rosary or go to Shabbat services, but if that’s, but if those don’t resonate with you, perhaps you could take some inspiration from counting the days of Advent or Hanukkah and create your own sacred countdown or other type of spiritual practice. In Hanukkah, we remember two things. The more feel good story that we remember is that after the temple in Jerusalem was taken back by the Jews from occupation under this lucid empire in the second century, b, c, E, there was hardly any oil left that could be used to light the menorah, which is a seven branched candelabra that burned daily in the temple. 1 (2m 9s): Out of all the oil that was left, there was only enough for one night, but it would take seven more days to make and sanctify more oil. Still, they lit the menorah anyway, and somehow miraculously it burned for eight nights long enough to replenish the oil and keep it burning. A few years ago, my rabbi gave a talk on Hanukah. She shared how she started her rabbinet in the midst of the AIDS crisis and as a lesbian rabbi, she was one of the few clergy who would visit many gay men, sick or dying of aids. While we lost a devastating number of L-G-B-T-Q people to the AIDS epidemic, many survived against incredible odds. There’s a clip that I can’t get out of my head of Peter Staley organizing with Act Up in the 1990s where he says, I’m going to die from this, and yet over 30 years later, he’s still here. 1 (2m 59s): The world has tried over and over and over again to snuff out queer people, neglect our healthcare conversion therapy, shame us into silence. Burn books abou