Isn’t it ironic: When U.S. Jews celebrate Hanukkah. By Rabbi Avi Shafran. Haaretz, November 21, 2013. Also at RabbiAviSharfran.com. Also here.
Shafran:
There’s
a striking irony in the fact that Hanukkah is one of the most widely celebrated
Jewish holidays among American Jews.
Cynics
have contended that it’s Hanukkah’s proximity to the Christian winter holiday,
with all the latter’s ubiquitous glitz, baubles and musical offerings, that has
elevated Hanukkah – seen by some as a “minor” celebration, since it’s a
post-Biblical commemoration – to the pantheon (if a Greek word is appropriate
here) of popular Jewish observances.
In
fact, though, Hanukkah is not minor at all; a wealth of Jewish mystical
literature enwraps it, and laws (albeit rabbinical in origin) govern the
nightly lighting of the holiday’s candles and the recital of Al Ha'nisim (“For
the miracles”) in our prayers over Hanukkah’s eight days.
As to
whether many American Jews are enamoured of Frosty the Snowman, well, it’s an
open question. Me, I prefer my winter nights silent.
But
onward to the irony, which is not only striking but significant.
I
recall hearing a Reform rabbi on a public radio program a couple of years ago
extolling Hanukkah as a celebration of “pluralism” and “tolerance.” After all,
the Greek-Syrian Seleucid enemy of the Jews at the time of the Hanukkah
miracle, he explained, were intolerant of Jewish religious practices; by
resisting them, the Jews were, according to his logic, fighting for
open-mindedness, Q.E.D. Well, yes, but the Jewish rebellion wasn’t aimed at
establishing some sort of Middle-Eastern First Amendment but rather to fiercely
defend the study and practice of the Torah. And to rid the Temple of idols.
Judaism has no tolerance at all for some things, idolatry prime among them.
What is
more, the Jewish uprising also – and here we close in on the irony – was to
counter the influence on Jews of a foreign culture.
To the
Jewish religious leaders who established the observance of Hanukkah, a greater
threat than the flesh-and-blood forces that had defiled the Holy Temple was the
adoption by Jews of Hellenistic ideals.
For the
Seleucids not only forbade observance of the Sabbath, circumcision, Jewish
modesty laws and Torah study, they held out to Jews the sweet but poison fruit
of Greek culture, and some Jews devoured it whole.
The
enemy, in other words, didn’t just install a statue of Zeus in the Temple, but
an assimilationist attitude in some Jewish hearts. And Hanukkah stands for the
fight against that attitude.
It’s
easy to dismiss the ancient Greek soap-opera that passed for divine doings, the
gods who were described as acting like the lowest of men. It isn’t likely that
many Jews (or Greeks, for that matter) really believed the tales of celestial
hijinks that passed for spirituality at the time.
But the
ancient Greeks had something much more enticing to offer. Hellas celebrated the
physical world; it developed geometry, calculated the earth’s circumference,
proposed a heliocentric theory of the solar system and focused attention on the
human being, at least as a physical specimen. It philosophized about life and
love.
But
much of Hellenist thought revolved around the idea that the enjoyment of life
was the most worthwhile goal of man, yielding us the words “cynic,”
“epicurean,” and “hedonist” - all Greek in origin.
Western
society today revolves around pleasure too. It adopts the language of “freedom”
and “rights” to disguise the fact, but it’s a pretty transparent fig leaf.
To be
sure, most Jews in the U.S. remain stubbornly, laudably, proud of their
Jewishness. But, all the same, they have been culturally colonized by a sort of
contemporary Hellenism, American style.
Which
bring us – if you haven’t already guessed – to the irony.
Because
Hanukkah addresses neither pluralism nor tolerance (admirable though those
concepts may be in their proper places), but rather Jewish identity and
continuity, the challenges most urgently faced by contemporary American Jews.
And its
message stands right in front of them, in the flickering flames.
The
“miracle of the lights,” Jewish tradition teaches, was not arbitrary. Abundant
meaning for the Jewish ages shone from the Temple candelabra’s supernatural
eight-day burning of a one-day supply of oil. For light, our tradition further
teaches, means Torah, its study and its observance – not “contemporized,” and
not edited to conform to the Zeitgeist, but as it has been handed down over the
centuries.
When
American Jews light their Hanukkah candles they may not consider that the
holiday they are acknowledging speaks most poignantly to them. But they should.
