Christmas, Hanukkah overlap this year. But the faiths are always intertwined in Columbus
Jews and Christians will both be celebrating this year on Dec. 25, with Christmas and the first night of Hanukkah falling on the same day, which only happens a few times each century.
But while the intertwining of those faiths is rare on the calendar — Hanukkah is determined by the Jewish Calendar and only falls on Christmas once every 19 years or so — it’s common in Columbus’ houses of worship. With a Christian singer performing at Temple Israel and a Jewish singer performing at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, the two mesh often.
Members of the two places of worship regularly work together to uplift the broader community and find value in learning more about people from different cultural backgrounds.
“Our primary duty is to serve our memberships,” Temple Israel Rabbi Larry Schlesinger said. “But what might even be considered a higher duty is to reach beyond the full four walls of our individual sanctuaries and join hands with others striving to create peace on Earth and goodwill towards all men and women.”
With the holidays falling on the same day this year, that gives both communities more opportunity to work together, Rev. Grace Burton-Edwards of St. Thomas told the Ledger-Enquirer.
“The relationship’s always there,” she said. “But it’s nice that we’ll all be celebrating at the same time this year.”
‘You should know that I’m Jewish’
When Michelle Folta moved from Texas to Columbus in 2015, she might as well have been moving to Mars.
No one in her family had left Texas. Still, she was looking forward to furthering her career in music education at Columbus State University and directing the children’s choir Voices of the Valley.
Within one or two weeks of being the music education professor at CSU, one of her students asked her if she had a church job in Columbus. Folta told him she didn’t and was still trying to get settled.
The student invited her to meet with St. Thomas’ music director, Rick McKnight, who died from cancer in July, about singing at the church.
Folta agreed, but she was hesitant.
“That’s fine,” Folta told the student. “But you should know that I’m Jewish.”
Before meeting McKnight, Folta was guarded and defensive. She’d had bad experiences singing at churches in Texas.
“I’m sitting there during Easter services,” Folta said. “And I’ve sung for a long time … there would be little one-shots like ‘the Jews killed Jesus.’”
So, when Folta met McKnight at Iron Bank Coffee Co., she defensively told him her boundaries and all the things she wouldn’t do. The entire time, McKnight sat there listening to her smirking.
Eventually, he responded.
“You’re perfect,” McKnight told her. “Come to rehearsal next week, and you can get started.”
More than just a job
Debbie Anderson and her husband, Ron, moved from Milwaukee to Columbus in 1996.
Not long after moving, Anderson became a member of St. Thomas and began singing in the choir. Both she and her husband had backgrounds in theater.
Ron was the education director at the Springer Opera House before he died from cancer in 2016, while Anderson was primarily a gig worker.
One day in the early 2000s, Anderson received a call from Flo Hiatt, the music director at Temple Israel at the time.
In Milwaukee, Anderson had sung at Temple Emmanuel, a 5,000-member Reform Jewish temple.
It was just a job back then.
They needed a soprano. So, after verifying the pay, Anderson sang there for two years.
But Anderson never met the members throughout her time singing at Temple Emmanuel.
“All of the singers were gentiles,” she said. “And we could not be in there.”
Instead, they were in a small room without seeing or speaking to the members. A system was in place to signal to the organist that it was time to play. Anderson would come in, do her job, and then leave.
It was different at Temple Israel in Columbus.
“I assumed (Hiatt) called for me to do the backup singing for whoever the full-time cantor was who was Jewish,” Anderson said.
After attending a service, she discovered she actually would be the cantor.
Anderson was not trained as a Jewish cantor.
“I know how to speak Hebrew,” she said, but, “I don’t know how to read it in its real alphabet.”
Hebrew is read from right to left, Anderson said, but music goes left to right. So, the prayers are translated phonetically in the music rather than written in Hebrew.
There were initially four singers who rotated services, Anderson said. Over the years the rosters rotated. She’s now the music director for both Temple Israel and St. Thomas.
Building a community
In contrast to Milwaukee, Anderson has gotten to know the members of Temple Israel very well over the years.
She’s become a part of all of their important family moments, Anderson said. She sung at children’s bar and bat mitzvahs and saw them become adults with their own children.
Anderson is now 70 years old, and many of the members were in their 70s when she began singing there. She now mourns members of the older generation who have died.
She sang at their funerals.
“You just become a part of important times in their lives,” Anderson said. “And when you appreciate and understand how the music of the faith is connected to all that, and that you’re the one singing it, it just becomes different.”
Folta had a similar experience at St. Thomas.
When she first began directing Voices of the Valley, Folta realized the choir’s roster only consisted of three kids.
“This is a trio,” she said. “It’s not a choir.”
The only person in town that she knew was McKnight. So, Folta called him for help. After their next rehearsal at St. Thomas, he brought everyone into a conference room to rally the troops.
What followed next was like a movie montage of church members rallying together to recruit their friends, children and grandchildren for Voices of the Valley.
“You guys don’t even know me,” Folta thought. “You don’t even know if I’m any good. How can you possibly invest in someone you don’t know.”
Folta had 27 new singers in her children’s choir by the end of the night.
Members of the church and choir have become like family to Folta over the years.
“What is at the core of the St. Thomas choir was the relationships and the people,” she said. “The people were always paramount, and music was just the vessel to get us all together.”
Finding similarities, valuing diversity
Anderson was raised in a strict fundamentalist Baptist Church that created a lot of fear in her rather than an appreciation for the love of God, she said.
“I was taught that if you weren’t a part of that, then you were going to hell,” Anderson said. “It didn’t matter even if you were in other Baptist churches, you were going to hell.”
She’d begun rejecting Christianity and the lessons from childhood when she was in her 20s living in Milwaukee. She worked through those teachings with a therapist and took classes.
Anderson joined an Episcopal church in Milwaukee that helped her reclaim her Christianity, she said. The church was more tolerant, she said, and people weren’t kicked out for having different beliefs.
St. Thomas provided a similar experience, Anderson said. But singing at Temple Israel is what gave her even more understanding of Christianity because so much of her religion was born from Judaism, she said.
“I feel like I have deepened my understanding of who Jesus was because I’ve been so involved in Judaism in the last 20 years,” Anderson said. “That makes me cry in a good way.”
Christianity comes from Judaism, Burton-Edwards said, so the two religions are “very close cousins.”
They share biblical stories and many practices, she said.
“It’s clear that our patterns and forms of worship are so informed by that Jewish heritage,” Burton-Edwards said. “It just makes so much sense for Christians and Jews to be able to worship together. It doesn’t feel unusual to me.”
St. Thomas and Temple Israel have always had a close relationship which existed before Anderson began singing at Temple Israel, she said.
They’ve also shared ministry with other congregations in Columbus. The Wynnton Neighborhood Network is comprised of seven to eight Christian congregations and two Jewish congregations aiming to provide food for the broader community.
People have a tendency to focus on divisions rather than what is common to all, Schlesinger said. What is common between both religions and others is that people long to live meaningful lives with peace and harmony, he said.
“What unites are those basic longings and hopes,” Schlesinger said.
Columbus is not only racially diverse, Anderson said, but it’s also very religiously diverse.
Along with the Wynnton Neighborhood Network, different religions can be seen working together through another program called the Thompson-Anderson-Pound Art Program, which brings children from diverse cultures and faiths together.
The program helps children discover the value of self and diversity in their community through the arts and is supported by volunteers from area Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and other faith communities in Columbus.
When the art program began, they thought it would only run for one year, Anderson said.
She’s the current director of the program, which will celebrate its 35th year in 2025.
Folta teaches a class on diversity at CSU. Helping students break down stereotypes and walls to find out they have a lot in common with people of other backgrounds is one of her favorite parts of the class.
“We are way more similar than we are different,” Folta said.
Being exposed to different faiths has taught Anderson that the common theme is compassion, she said.
“Humans, in whatever way they believe it, have developed connections to God all over the world in different ways,” Anderson said.
This story was originally published December 23, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
