If I were a
Reform rabbi ; if I were a leader of the establishment whose money and
prestige have succeeded in capturing for himself the leadership and
voice of American Jewry; if I were one of the members of the Israeli
Government's ruling group; if I were an enlightened sophisticated,
modern Jewish intellectual, I would climb the barricades and join in
battle against that most dangerous of all Jewish holidays - Hanukah.
It
is a measure of the total ignorance of the world Jewish community that
there is no holiday that is more universally celebrated than the "Feast
of Lights," and it is an equal measure of the intellectual dishonesty
and hypocrisy of Jewish leadership that it plays along with the lie.
For if ever there was a holiday that stands for everything that the
masses of world Jewry and their leadership has rejected - it is this
one. If one would find an event that is truly rooted in everything that
Jews of our times and their leaders have rejected and, indeed, attacked
- it is this one. If there is any holiday that is more "un-Jewish" in
the sense of our modern beliefs and practices - I do not know of it.
The
Hanukah that has erupted unto the world Jewish scene in all its
childishness, asininity, shallowness, ignorance and fraud is not the
Hanukah of reality. The Hanukah that came into vogue because Jewish
parents - in their vapidness needed something to counteract Christmas;
that exploded in a show of "we-have-lights-just-as-our-
goyisha-neighbors" and in an effort to reward our spoiled children with
eight gifts instead of the poor Christian one; the Hanukah that the
Temple, under its captive Rabbi, turned into a school pageant so that
the beaming parents might think that the Religious School is really
successful instead of the tragic joke and waste that it really is; the
Hanukah that speaks of Jewish Patrick Henrys giving-me-
liberty-or-death and that pictures the Maccabees as great liberal
saviors who fought so that the kibbutzim might continue to be free to
preach their Marx and eat their ham, that the split-level dwellers of
suburbia might be allowed to violate their Sabbath in perfect freedom
and the Reform and Conservative Temples continue to fight for civil
rights for Blacks, Puerto Ricans and Jane Fonda, is not remotely
connected with reality.
This is not the Hanukah of our
ancestors, of the generations of Jews of Eastern Europe and Yemen and
Morocco and Spain and Babylon. It is surely not the Hanukah for which
the Maccabees themselves died. Truly, could those whom we honor so
munificently, return and see what Hanukah has become, they might very
well begin a second Maccabean revolt. For the life that we Jews lead
today was the very cause, the real reason, for the revolt of the Jews
"in those days in our times."
What happened in that era more
than 2000 years ago? What led a handful of Jews to rise up in violence
against the enemy? And precisely who was the enemy? What were they
fighting for and who were they fighting against?
For years the
people of Judea had been the vassals of Greece. True independence as a
state had been unknown for all those decades and, yet, the Jews did not
rise in revolt. It was only when the Greek policy shifted from mere
political control to one that attempted to suppress the Jewish religion
that the revolt erupted in all its bloodiness. It was not mere liberty
that led to the Maccabean uprising that we so passionately applaud.
What we are really cheering is a brave group of Jews who fought and
plunged Judea into a bloodbath for the right to observe the Sabbath, to
follow the laws of kashrut, to obey the laws of the Torah. In a world
where everything about Hanukah that we commemorate, and teach our
children to commemorate, are things we consider to be outmoded,
medieval and childish!
At best, then, those who fought and died
for Hanukah were naive and obscurantist. Had we lived in those days we
would certainly not have done what they did, for everyone knows that
the laws of the Torah are not really Divine but only the products of
evolution and men (do not the Reform, Reconstructionist, and large
parts of the Conservative movements write this daily?) Surely we would
not have fought for that which we violate every day of our lives. No,
at best Hanukah emerges as a needless holiday if not a foolish one.
Poor Hannah and her seven children; poor Mattathias and Judah; poor
well meaning chaps all - but hopelessly backward and utterly
unnecessary sacrifices.
But there is more. Not only is Hanukah
really a foolish and unnecessary holiday, it is also one that is
dangerously fanatical and illiberal. The first act of rebellion, the
first enemy who fell at the hands of the brave Jewish heroes whom our
delightful children portray so cleverly in their Sunday and religious
school pageants, was not a Greek. He was a Jew.
When the enemy
sent his troops into Modin to set up an idol and demand its worship, it
was a Jew who decided to exercise his freedom of pagan worship and who
approached the altar to worship Zeus. (After all, what business was it
of anyone what this fellow worshiped?) And it was this Jew, this
apostate, this religious traitor who was struck down by the brave,
glorious, courageous, (are these not the words all our Sunday schools
use to describe him) Mattathias, as he shouted: "Whoever is for G-d,
follow me!"
What have we here? What kind of religious
intolerance and bigotry? What kind of a man is this for the
anti-religious Ha'shomer Ha'tzair, the graceful temples of suburbia,
the sophisticated intellectuals, the liberal, open-minded Jews and all
the drones who have wearied us unto death with the concept of Judaism
as a humanistic, open-minded, undogmatic, liberal, universalist (if not
Marxist) religion, to honor? What kind of nationalism is this for
Shimon Peres (he who rejects the 'Galut' and speaks of the proud, free
Jew of ancient Judea and Israel) ?
And to crush us even more (we
who know that Judaism is a faith of peace which deplores violence),
what kind of Jews were these who reacted to oppression with force?
Surely we who so properly have deplored Jewish violence as fascistic,
immoral and (above all) un- Jewish, stand in horror as we contemplate
Jews who declined to picket the Syrian Greeks to death and who rejected
quiet diplomacy for the sword, spear and arrow (had there been bombs in
those days, who can tell what they might have done?) and "descended to
the level of 'evil'" thus rejecting the ethical and moral concepts of
Judaism.
Is this the kind of a holiday we wish to propagate? Are
these the kinds of men we want our moral and humanistic children to
honor? Is this the kind of Judaism that we wish to observe and pass on
to our children? Where shall we find the man of courage, the lone voice
in the wilderness to cry out against Hanukah and the Judaism that it
represents - the Judaism of our grandparents and ancestors?
Where
shall we find the man of honesty and integrity to attack the Judaism of
medievalism and outdated foolishness; the Judaism of bigotry that
strikes down Jews who refuse to observe the Law; the Judaism of
violence that calls for Jewish force and might against the enemy? When
shall we find the courage to proudly eat our Chinese food and violate
our Sabbaths and reject all the separateness, nationalism and religious
maximalism that Hanukah so ignobly represents? Down with Hanukah! It is
a regressive holiday that merely symbolizes the Judaism that always
was; the Judaism that was handed down to us from Sinai; the Judaism
that made our ancestors ready to give their lives for the L-rd; the
Judaism that young people instinctively know is true and great and
real. Such a Judaism is dangerous for us and our leaders. We must do
all in our power to bury it.
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