Who are the bad guys in the Hanukah story? And who are the good guys?
These are serious questions with serious consequences.
Most Jews (and certainly most Christians) dismiss the winter holiday as a trivial, feel-good festival about candles, potato pancakes, spinning tops (dreidls),and eight nights of gifts, without coming to terms with its serious, relevant and distinctly uncomfortable messages. While frequently (and fatuously) described as a “celebration of tolerance,” Hanukah is more properly designated as an annual re-dedication to the values of the Religious Right.
No wonder that so many American Jews (with their reflexive, often ignorant liberal instincts) refuse to acknowledge the real Hanukah and its politically incorrect messages. In last week’s Washington Post, a householder from Potomac, Maryland named Kenneth Nechin proudly explained that his home attempts to honor the “deeper meaning” of the holiday: “Religious tolerance, the freedom to practice religion, minorities overcoming majorities who are trying to take your rights away.”
Actually, far from celebrating “diversity” or “tolerance” or “respect for every faith,” Hanukah (the name means “dedication” in Hebrew) marks a singular display of intolerance-- when religious zealots, exalting the values of “that old time religion,” came into the Temple in Jerusalem and drove out all alternate, “creative” forms of worship. In the “For the Miracles” (Al HaNissim) prayer recited at least three times a day by religious Jews during the eight days of the festival, we salute this uncompromising assertion of absolute truth: “Your children came to the Holy of Holies of Your House, cleansed Your Temple, purified the site of your Holiness and kindled lights in the Courtyards of Your Sanctuary.” No, the fervently faithful rebels did not assign a special area for other religious impulses as part of some ancient commitment to multiculturalism.
The confusion and ignorance about the Jewish winter holiday stem in part from unreliable, inconsistent information about the “wicked oppressors” whose overthrow has been celebrated in this season for more than 2000 years. The Washington Post article, for instance, misleadingly summarized Hanukah as “a Jewish holiday celebrating the ancient victory of the Maccabees over the Syrians.” In countless articles and discussions about the origins of the festival, the enemies of the Jewish faith are variously identified as “Syrians,” “Greeks,” “Assyrians” (totally wrong!), “Assyro-Greeks,” “Syro-Greeks,” and so forth. The inability to come up with a clear answer about who fought to suppress the Judean rebels in 165 B.C. makes it harder to take seriously the history behind the holiday and increases the likelihood that even serious people will focus instead on pleasant but puerile aspects of contemporary celebration.
Actually, Hanukah is hardly unique among religious holidays in highlighting evil-doers whose schemes and cruelty God helps to overcome. The corresponding Christmas celebration recalls the tyrannical King Herod, who wants to kill the Christ child at the very moment of his birth and ends up slaughtering “all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under…” (Matthew, II.16). No one experiences confusion or doubt in identifying the chief bad guy (Pharaoh) of the Passover holiday, or the various wicked figures (Roman authorities and the High Priest’s Temple establishment) in the Easter story. In the Jewish festival of Purim (rightly viewed as a parallel “deliverance” celebration to Hanukah) the Book of Esther unequivocally specifies “the evil Haman” as the enemy who plans to destroy the people of Israel.
Ironically, the historical sources for the Hanukah story are far more authoritative, substantive and complete than any non-Biblical records of the Exodus, the tale of Esther and Mordecai, or even the Nativity or Crucifixion. The Hasmonean Revolt – in which Jewish “Puritans” (and that would be an appropriate designation) won an unlikely triumph against those who embraced or accommodated “enlightened” Greek culture-- looked like a significant event even at the time and numerous contemporary historians took note.
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