Love of the Land: The war on Hanukka

The war on Hanukka

Michael Freund
Fundamentally Freund/JPost
16 December 09

For more than 2,000 years, Jews around the world have been faithfully celebrating Hanukka, the annual festival of lights which commemorates the miracles performed for our ancestors during the great Hasmonean revolt against the Seleucid tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes.

It is a holiday rife with meaning for young and old, which in part explains its popularity among all sectors of Jewry, from the most estranged to the most observant. Who, after all, does not draw inspiration from the heroism of the Maccabees? Guided by divine providence, they restored our national and religious sovereignty, defeated the Syrian-Greek invaders and purified the Temple in Jerusalem.

What a stirring example of Jewish faith and fortitude!

AND YET, in recent years, a deeply troubling phenomenon has taken root, as the festival and its underlying themes have come under attack. By defacing and distorting its meaning, a growing number of pundits have essentially declared war on Hanukka, seeking to hijack the holiday to advance their own personal or political agendas.

For the most part, the assault on this beloved holiday has largely been led by devotees of the left, who have sought to shear away Hanukka's historical, religious or even cultural content, and transform it into a vehicle for promoting entirely unrelated issues.

Take, for example, an article in last week's Philadelphia Inquirer, which proclaimed the advent of "Hanukka with a climate-change message," It quoted Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center, who said regarding the holiday: "Can there be a more perfect occasion to focus on energy conservation and breaking our dependence on fossil fuel?" Somehow, I doubt that when Judah the Maccabee and his brothers made their valiant stand two millennia ago, they did so to promote awareness of global warming.

The fact of the matter is that the Maccabees fought to salvage Judaism, not to save the oceans or even the whales. To suggest otherwise is to misrepresent the holiday and its message.

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Related: Hanukkah's Scrooge

Love of the Land: The war on Hanukka

Love of the Land: Chanukah and the One Light Above

Chanukah and the One Light Above

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
12 December 09

For the eight days of Chanukah, it is common to see a candelabra with eight lights and one light above it, shining here and there, in the windows of stores and hallways, in people’s homes and even on intersections. Some are filled with oil, while others are topped with candles. Some tower high overhead and some are child sized. But all have eight lights and one above it, and all commemorate the same occasion.

Many nations have religious holidays and days of national liberation and independence, however rarely do the two come together quite in the way that Chanukah does. That is because Chanukah is both a commemoration of national liberation from the rule of the pagan Syrian-Greek empire ruled by Antiochus IV and a commemoration of the hand of divine influence in both inspiring and accomplishing that liberation.

The Jews throughout history have had a way of getting in the way of great empires. The Egyptians, the Philistines, the Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians had all tried to enslave and destroy the Jewish people. A few thousand years ago after an Egyptian Pharaoh had first gotten the bright idea to clap chains on the Jewish refugees who had been serving as his faithful shepherds and send them off to build the pyramids, and some 2000 plus years before the present day, Antiochus IV, like so many kings before whose sense of power had overwhelmed both their sense of reason and morals, decided that ruling over his empire would be simpler and easier without the Jews in it.

Where Pharaoh had embarked on that process by throwing male Jewish babies into the Nile, to please one of his many gods while carrying out a genocide that was meant to destroy the Jewish people and integrate what was left into Egypt-- Antiochus IV focused not on physical extermination, but cultural annihilation. The fundamental books of Jewish life, the scriptures that gave the Jewish people meaning and identity were destroyed.and banned. Hellenic ways and mores became law. Jewish ones became an offense punishable by death.

Some accepted the decree out of fear or even with enthusiasm. Others however rose up and resisted. And war came between the handfuls of Jewish Maccabee partisans and the armies of Antiochus IV’s Selecuid empire. A war that had its echoes in the past and would have it again in the future as lightly armed and untrained armies of Jewish soldiers would go on to fight in that same land and those same hills and valleys against the Romans and eventually the armies of six Arab nations. The Syrian Greek armies were among the best of their day. The Maccabees were the sons of the priesthood living in the backwaters of Israel, members of a nation that had not been independently ruled since the Babylonian hordes had flooded across the land, destroying everything in their path. Since then a shifting mass of nations and rulers had sat on their thrones while the Jews had bowed their heads.

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Love of the Land: Chanukah and the One Light Above