What the Hanukkah!

 

Advent and Hanukah began on the same day this year, December 2nd. Hanukkah is a "kinda" holiday in Judaism, of less significance than others with what seems to be a lovely minor miracle of replenished oil as fuel for the menorah in the temple. Lots of Jews who may not be observant through the rest of the year will light the candles of Hanukkah which often coincides with the days around Christmas rather than the beginning of Advent. The lighting of Advent and then Christmas candles has led some Christian congregations (including those I've served) to include a menorah as a reminder of Jesus' Jewishness. 

I was intrigued when I saw an opinion piece in the New York Times this past weekend by novelistMichael David Lukas, who is Jew-ish, called The Hypocrisy of Hanukkah.

 For most of the past 2000 years, Hanukkah was an afterthought on the Jewish calendar, a wintertime festival of lights during which people spun tops and ate greasy food to commemorate what has to be one of God’s least impressive miracles — a small container of oil lasted for eight nights! More recently, as Jews have become assimilated into American society, the holiday has evolved into a kind of Semitic sidekick for Christmas, a minor festival pumped up into something it was never meant to be so that Jewish kids won’t feel bad about not having a tree...

 According to most modern scholars — and a few rabbis I called on to help me out — the story of Hanukkah is based on a historical conflict between the Maccabees and the Hellenized Jews, the former being religious zealots who lived in the hills of Judea and practiced an ancient form of guerrilla warfare, the latter being mostly city-dwelling assimilationists who ate pork, didn’t circumcise their male children and made the occasional sacrificial offering to pagan gods. 

Some of the details are up for debate, depending on which texts you consult. But everyone agrees that the Maccabees won out in the end and imposed their version of Judaism on the formerly Hellenized Jews. So Hanukkah, in essence, commemorates the triumph of fundamentalism over cosmopolitanism. Our assimilationist answer to Christmas is really a holiday about subjugating assimilated Jews.The more I thought about all this, the more it disturbed me. For what am I if not a Hellenized Jew? (O.K., an Americanized Jew, but what’s the difference, really?)...

 

 It really is a thought-provoking and rather humorous reflection on the "holiday season" which has become such a mash-up of consumerism and nostalgia with religion sprinkled in as what seems to be a rapidly diminishing garnish. Lukas' closing thoughts could easily be adapted by Christians to address the conundrum of Christmas:

 So this year, for lack of a better alternative, I’m going to try to embrace Hanukkah in all its contradictions. When I light the candles, I’m going to celebrate the possibility of light in dark times, the importance of even the smallest miracles. And when everyone else is singing about the Maccabees, I’ll be saying a prayer for the Hellenized Jews and for the “renegade Jews” of our day.