A Holiday of Resistance

The first night of Chanukah marks the beginning of a holiday that for many of its celebrants has no identity, that celebrates 'celebration', with no thought to what it is celebrating. For many Americans, Chanukah appears to overlap with Christmas. But there is no similarity between the two other than the season. The more appropriate analogy is to the 4th of July overlaid with Thanksgiving, a celebration of divine aid in a military campaign against tyrannical oppression. The overt militarism of the Chanukah story has often made it an uncomfortable fit for both religious and secular Jews. And both have found it easier to strip away its dangerous underlying message. The message that a time comes when you must choose between the destruction of your culture and a war you can't win. And then a war must be fought, if the soul of the nation is to survive. Because there are worse things than death and slavery, the fates waiting for the Maccabees and their allies had they failed. The fates that came anyway when the last of the Maccabees were betrayed and murdered by Caesar's Edomite minister, whose sons went on to rule over Israel as the dynasty of Herod.

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