For those liberals who believe that Jewish identity should be limited to donating to help Haiti, agitating for illegal aliens and promoting the environment; Chanukah is a threatening holiday. They have secularized it, dressed it up with teddy bears and toys, trimmed it with the ecology and civil rights of their new faith. Occasionally a Jewish liberal learns the history of it and writes an outraged essay about nationalism and militarism, but mostly they are content to bury it in the same dark cellar that they store the rest of the history of their people and the culture that they left behind.
Holidays aren’t mere parties, they are messages. Knots of time that we tie around the fingers of our lives so that we remember what our ancestors meant us to never forget. That they lived and died for a reason. The party is a celebration, but if we forget what it celebrates, then it becomes a celebration of celebration. A hollow and soulless festival of the self. The Maccabees fought because they believed they had something worth fighting for. Not for their possessions, but for their traditions, their families and their G-d. The celebration of Chanukah is not just how we remember them, but how we remember that we are called upon to keep their watch. To take up their banner and carry their sword.
History is a wheel and as it turns, we see the old continents of time rising again, events revisiting themselves as the patterns of the past become new again. Ancient battles become new wars. And old struggles have to be re-fought again until we finally get them right.
Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
And those who do know history will find new ways to screw up.
Heh. Read about the history of the Maccabees. Short version: it is (probably) good for the Jews that they won, but the Maccabees were enemies of liberty. They were asshole collectivists. Read about their tyrannical draconian behavior.
Now that we are so far removed from them in history, Hanukah is a great holiday: I teach my daughter that *one* of the lessons of Hanukah is that you never ever ever give up. And I compare Hanukah to the 4th of July, as a celebration of a military victory and independence. But my daughter is four. When she is older, I’ll encourage her to think about things in more complex terms.
If I had a daughter, I’d tell her about the miracle of the eight days at the Marriott. Every morning I’d leave for work with the bed a mess, but every evening when I returned, the bed was made – though the door was still firmly locked. That alone defies explanation, yet there was a related daily miracle going on with the mini-bar.
Servants. They always slip in and refill things when nobody is looking, like it’s their job!