Bah, Hanukah!

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Friday, December 18, 2009

The war between the Maccabees and the Selucids has been over for more than 2,000 years, but this year at least, the story of Hanukah was still able to create controversy both on the editorial pages of the New York Times and in the blogosphere.

Christopher Hitchins, the well known proponent of atheism, wrote an article on Slate entitled: “Bah, Hanukah. The holiday celebrates the triumph of tribal Jewish backwardness”

It was so over the top that it raised the ire even of left-wing Jews, including Michael Lerner of Tikkun magazine. Appearing at about the same time, was David Brooks’ op ed on Hanukah in the New York Times. It was much more grounded historically, but still controversial enough to elicit several letters to the editor, including two from Reform rabbis -- taking opposite positions on the issues.

Hitchens, you may recall from the God controversies, has nothing good to say about religion so we should not be surprised at his siding with the Seleucid empire. He praises Hellenism for weaning people away from what he terms, ”the sacrifices, the circumcisions, the belief in a special relationship with God and the other reactionary manifestations of an ancient and cruel faith.”

Hitchens finds in Hanukah nothing to celebrate since for him “Hanukah is not the ignition of a light, but the imposition of theocratic darkness.”

Further he holds the Maccabees responsible for Christianity and Islam, “Had it not been for this no-less imperial event, we would never have had to hear of Jesus of Nazareth…..Without the precedents of Orthodox Judaism and Roman Christianity, on which it is based and from which it is borrowed, there would be no Islam, either.” (Roman Christianity at the roots of Islam is a uniquely ahistorical accusation. He’s right that it wasn’t the Protestants, but historians are pretty certain that it was the smaller Christian sects of the time that influenced Islam. Remember Arabia at that time was more in the sphere of Byantium than Rome – but I digress.)

Further in Hitchen’s mind, “the development of the whole of humanity was terribly retarded” by what he terms this “pathetic little miracle.”

There is one further obstacle to my joining the Hitchen’s fan club. Hitchens sees the seasonal displays of Christmas trees and manger barn scenes as innocent exercises in paganism and the celebration of the winter solstice, but he takes issue with Hanukah displays: “The display of the menorah at this season has a precise meaning and is an explicit celebration of the original victory of bloody–minded faith over enlightenment and reason. As such it is a direct negation of the First Amendment and it is time for the secularists and the civil libertarians to find the courage to say so.”

David Brooks, whose article appeared on the New York Times’ editorial page last Friday, draws on contemporary scholarship related to the Maccabean revolt. Still he managed to offend much of the Jewish community by suggesting that there are parallels between Judah Maccabee’s band of guerilla fighters and what he describes as “a bunch of angry, bearded religious guys, fighting an insurgency campaign against a great power in the Middle East”. Brook’s critics complain that he praises the benefits of Hellenism overly much, though to be fair, he does also cite Antiochus IV’s decrees “defiling the Temple, confiscating wealth and banning Jewish practice under penalty of death”. Brook’s explains that these decrees were without precedent or reason, unless perhaps a reaction to Antiochus’ paranoid fear that Judea was preparing to side with Egypt in revolt against his empire.

Brooks is grappling with the gap between the simple story we are told as children, of the few prevailing over the many, the weak over the strong, the righteous over the arrogant, and the reality of the Maccabean victory leading to the establishment of the Hasmonean dynasty. This was a government so harsh and cruel, that several centuries later, the rabbis of the Talmud will do their utmost to minimize Hanukah and transform its meaning. They will downplay the Hasmonean dynasty’s military victories, and recast the celebration as a miracle of God’s intervention.

I have little use for Hitchens who in blaming Judaism for all subsequent manifestations of the Abrahamic faiths, joins other anti-Semites in finding the Jews at the bottom of all that is wrong with our world.

From David Brooks, by contrast, I think we can learn some important lessons. First, he reminds us that, despite appearances, Hanukah is not really a children’s holiday. We can light the menorah, spin the dreidel and wrap gifts to our hearts content, but we can’t create a simple narrative of this holiday without a willful blindness to the complexities of that time and place. Jews did fight against fellow Jews as well as against the evil empire, and when the Maccabees won, they abused the power they had gained, forcing other peoples they conquered to convert to Judaism, something that was totally out of keeping with Jewish values, and unprecedented in Jewish history. Further it was the corruption and divisions within the Hasmonean dynasty that opened the way for Roman intervention in the area, leading to the eventual destruction of Judea and 2,000 years of Jewish powerlessness.

David Brooks concludes: “The lesson of Hanukah is that even the struggles that saved a people are dappled with tragic irony, complexity, and unattractive choices. “ That message hits home for me this year as I listened to our president trying to define a just war while accepting a peace prize, and as I myself struggle to define a moral course of action in Afghanistan. With the complexities of the world before us perhaps Hanukah is the right holiday for our times.