How Hanukkah Should Inspire Christians Too
We Should Join Our Jewish Family in the War Against Idolatry
This post is the twelfth in an ongoing series on antisemitism and culture. See the previous installments here:
What It Means When the Leader of the Republican Party Dines With THREE Antisemites
When & Why Conspiracy Theorists Sometimes Stumble Onto the Truth
The JFK Conspiracy Theory Which Makes the Most Sense & Why It Matters Today
An Open Letter to Elon Musk Thanking Him for the Correct Decision Shutting Down Neo-Nazi Kanye West
4 Stupid Reasons People Don't Take Antisemitism as Seriously as They Should
Obsessing Over 'the Left' Sabotages the Fight Against Antisemitism
Elon Musk Brings Onboard 'How to Fight Anti-Semitism' Author Bari Weiss to Twitter 2.0
Even the Smartest Brains Can Become Infected with Antisemitism
These writings are part of my ongoing effort to overcome my PTSD by forcing myself to try to write and publish something every day commenting on and analyzing current cultural affairs and their impacts on politics, faith, and, well, everything. “Politics is downstream from culture,” the late Andrew Breitbart popularized among conservative bloggers while he was alive. I’d go a step further: Everything is downstream from culture. The cultures you embrace determine who you are and who you become. You become what you worship.
It’s the start of Hanukkah tonight and I wish my Jewish friends and colleagues a wonderful holiday. What can those of us who do not practice Judaism learn today?
The commonly understood meaning of the Hanukkah story is wrong - not unlike how the popular understanding of Christmas with its decorated tree and jolly fat man giving gifts to children is also a huge misunderstanding.
Nowadays Hanukkah is often thought of by many Jews and Gentiles alike as being primarily about celebrating the miracle of oil lighting a menorah for eight days. This NPR descriptor is what so many seem to think the holiday is primarily about:
Sunday evening marks the beginning of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. Jews celebrate their victory over a tyrant king and the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem. As the story goes, a small quantity of oil to light the Temple's menorah miraculously lasted eight days.
But if we listen to Jews who take their faith more deeply we see that this story is really just a symbol and that the backstory of where the holiday comes from is much more meaningful - just as for we Christians the story of Christ is far more important than Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.
Samuel Griswold at his Suspense and Spirituality substack had a great post today laying out “Why Everyone Should Love Hanukkah.” Check it out:
Here are some excerpts that particularly resonated with me:
Historically, Hanukkah is the first rebellion by a religious minority. As told in the Book of Maccabees, it began when one man, Mattathias, stood up for his beliefs at the risk of losing his own life. He and his family escaped into the hills and were soon joined by many others in open rebellion against the harsh rule of King Antiochus, the Syrian-Greek ruler who had recently conquered the Jewish homeland. In added insult to their belief in an invisible god, Antiochus had even added the descriptive Epiphanes, the “visible god” to his title…
It is ironic then that Hanukkah is thought of as the “Jewish Christmas” in the West, as it is not about conforming, but celebrating religious diversity and freedom of belief. This is the true meaning that should be celebrated and shared with others. Gifts and a “little jar of oil” are just details of a much larger story.
Hanukkah is primarily about Jews refusing to worship false, pagan gods, and risking their lives not to conform to a lie. Thus, it’s strange how today Hanukkah is made to conform so much with the December celebrations of the majority in America.
Jewish News Syndicate Editor-in-Chief Jonathan S. Tobin expressed similar sentiments in his excellent column today, “Hanukkah irony: The holiday’s real message is alien to most American Jews.” Here are a few parts I especially liked, emphasis added:
But even if we are to set aside the pointless, counterproductive arguments surrounding the issue, and take it at face value that the drive for equal time for Hanukkah comes from a place of Jewish pride, the question to be asked is what exactly are American Jews celebrating when they do take down their menorahs from their shelves?
The answer to that is fairly obvious. For most Americans, Hanukkah is merely a chance to share in the annual communal December cheer. It’s a blue-tinseled version of Christmas, marked by the same consumerist excess accompanied by largely meaningless expressions about goodwill and fellowship…
What ought to be of concern is the fact that this Jewish gloss on Christmas–as well as the way in which the large and growing population of intermarried families often merge the two holidays into a hybrid entity they call “Chrismukkah”—has nothing to do with the actual Jewish festival.
It may come as a shock to most American Jews, but Hanukkah is pretty much the opposite of the modern secular celebration of Christmas that most of their neighbors celebrate. Rather than an expression of peace, the revolt of the Maccabees was a battle against foreign oppression and a bloody civil war…
The essence of Jewish identity from our beginnings has always been a willingness to stand up against the idols of popular culture. In the time of the Maccabean revolt, it was the powerful pull of Hellenism.
The true message of Hanukkah is one that Christians and everyone regardless of their faith should learn from and embrace: we have to stand up and oppose the lies which oppress us. We must oppose the idols of our age, all of which are really just reinventions of the idols from ancient times.
Growing up within Christianity, the story of the 10 Commandments was just another Bible story, and much of what the laws represented seemed supposedly irrelevant to us today. The second commandment especially seemed like an anachronism. Why was worshipping stone idols - something almost no one did today - as important a sin as murder, theft, or cheating on one’s spouse?
In his excellent series on the deeper meaning of the 10 Commandments, Dennis Prager explained:
Here are some of the key ideas from the video:
Why is it so relevant today? Because today we have as many false gods as the ancients did. And why it is the mother of all the other commandments? Because if we identify false gods and avoid worshipping them, we will eliminate one of the greatest barriers to a good world -- false gods. So, let's begin by defining a false god. The point of biblical monotheism is that there is only one God and that only this God, the Creator of the universe who demands that we keep these Ten Commandments, is to be worshipped. Why? First, because one God means one human race. Only if we all have the same Creator, or Father, as it were, are we all brothers and sisters. Second, having the same parent also means that no person or group is intrinsically more valuable than any other. And third, one God means one moral standard for all people. If God declares murder wrong, it is wrong for everyone, and you can't go to another god for another moral standard.
When anything else is worshipped, bad things result. Not only things that can obviously lead to evil such as the worship of power, or race, or money, or flag. But also things that are almost always seen as quite beautiful -- such as art, or education or even love. Yes, any of these often wonderful things, when worshipped, can lead to terrible results…
This Commandment made the ethical revolution of the Bible and of the Ten Commandments -- what is known as ethical monotheism -- possible. Worship the God of the Ten Commandments and you will make a good world. Worship a false god -- no matter how noble sounding -- and you will end up with a world of cruelty.
Part of why I’ve grown so sympathetic to Judaism - so much so that I label myself as a “Judeo-Christian mystic” - is because I agree so strongly with the Jewish emphasis on opposing the worship of nature and the submission to false idols. This is a core value that I did not get at all growing up Christian and that I grow very annoyed when other Christians today just don’t get. Idols are dangerous. And if we don’t understand the Jewish wisdom of how to recognize them then we are all too likely to fall into worshipping one by accident. I’ve said it for years: most Christians today are still Pagans and they don’t even realize it.
In the video Prager explains how even good concepts - like art, education, and love - can become destructive idols when we worship them. Another good idea which too many people stumble into worshipping is Liberty. The State of Liberty is rightfully held as an important symbol of the freedom which America offers. But it has no place being incorporated into a menorah as one of the Jews I follow on Twitter pointed out this morning:
But where does the Statue of Liberty originate?
STATUE OF LIBERTY INSPIRATION: THE ROMAN GODDESS LIBERTAS
In the late 1800s, one of the most significant female icons in American culture was the Roman goddess Libertas, a female figure clad in robes. In ancient Rome, she was worshipped as the goddess of freedom, particularly amongst slaves.
Even in the 19th century, this figure could be found on American coins, in popular culture, and on civic art. Representations of her were commonly used symbolically by artists, so it was the perfect inspiration for Bartholdi.
Worshipping idols and the natural world is just normal. And much of the hidden roots of antisemitism come from anger at the Jewish people’s inherent challenge to the idols people worship.
As a quasi-Jew very much practicing the Jewish tradition of idol-smashing all the time, I often elicit some of this anger too. My essay this past week expressing why I have such antipathy toward my home state of Indiana and the “midwest culture” informing it really ticked off a number of people. Some got so mad at me explaining the problems of the region that they un-friended me on Facebook or flat-out ended our professional relationship and friendship. They loved Indiana and the Midwest so deeply that they’d rather cut me out of their life than bear to even understand why I did not.
I suppose this is a huge improvement compared to the ancient world where in the Hanukkah story Jews were murdered for not bending a knee to the Greek gods. But it can still hurt a bit and even be surprising and startling. Don’t be discouraged though: our Jewish family has managed to survive for centuries as idol-smashers and we Christians should follow their lead. Don’t be afraid to tell the truth about the false idols of our age. In doing so you’re following a tradition going back beyond the Maccabees to the prophet Abraham. And this tradition will continue to endure for centuries to come. Happy Hanukkah.