Tonight is the first night of Chanukah. Co-incidentally, Hanukkah, Chanukkah and a host of similar sounding if varying-spelled Jewish holidays also begin this evening. (It may be that one of my least favorite Jewish questions is, "How is Chanukah spelled?" The correct answer is, "in Hebrew." We're just trying to approximate the same sounds with English letters when we write it in English).

In any case, whichever holiday we're celebrating this evening, it will involve the lighting of candles. Because no one creates a winter solstice type holiday without including light. In fact, Chanukah is called the festival of lights. So, tonight at CubeSpace, we will be lighting the first candle of Chanukah (to be followed by more candles on subsequent nights).

Today also seems like a good day for me to go out and get the CubeSpace Christmas Tree. So, over the next day or so, we'll be doing some tree decoration. I'd like to invite anyone who feels so inspired to contribute their own decorative touches. After all, when the chief decorator of the Christmas tree is a rabbi, there's very little that seems out of bounds in terms of others contributing (actually, because I'm a rabbi, and it's not my tradition, I'm a little more sensitive than others might be to offending people for whom Christmas is a religious holiday, and therefore try to maintain a spirit of decoration which will offend neither Christians nor druids--whence the tradition of the tree originally came).

All in all, we at CubeSpace are making the transition to the "Holiday Spirit." Come and join us, especially on December 18th, 4:30 - 8:00 for our Holiday party.