Political tensions, anxiety, and loneliness are on the rise,

but problems like these aren't new, and the solutions don't have to be either.

For thousands of years, societies have asked questions about how to live, thrive, and love.

And it was spiritual traditions that offered wisdom and tools to help people find their way.

Tools that science is now discovering offer real benefits. Join me, Dave Dosteno, to

explore how we can all use this wisdom, whatever our beliefs. Listen to How God Works from PRX,

wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello and welcome back to chutzpahd. Real life lived better, where each week we apply

Jewish tradition and a little bit of frankincense and mure to answer a letter sent by you,

the listener, about an issue that is live in your life. I'm Rabbi Shira Stutman. And I'm Hannah Rosen.

Please keep sending us your questions. We love them. We are loving them. Send them to chutzpod

at gmail.com. Hannah. Yeah. How do you celebrate Christmas? You know, in the most

comically stereotypical way, I'll do a shout out to Peter Chang's,

our favorite Chinese restaurant. I call for, you know, I wake up at like six in the morning to make

sure I can get in my Peter Chang's order because that's what my son is really into. I get Chinese

food. I enjoy the quiet. I mean, it's just like a comical

American stereotype. Now, of course, now I have a partner who is not Jewish, who has like really

cute nephews. So I'm reconsidering because they're so cute that like I kind of want to, you know,

see them get excited and run down

the stairs and all those things you read about in, uh, Christian propaganda booklets.

Start the complaint letters coming.

Anyway, exactly. So I'm reconsidering. How about you? Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, for me,

it's sort of like President's Day, you know, it's a day that you're off of work or school. So it's a little bit different than a sort of typical weekday. But other than that, it's like, all right, you can't go to the store because it's closed, but we sort of just go about our lives. So have you traditionally made it up with Hanukkah? Like, do you make a big deal of Hanukkah in your family? Oh, Chara.

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