What Hanukkah is About
22 Nov 2018 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneLike many children of mixed Jewish+Christian backgrounds, I was raised celebrating both Hanukka and Christmas.
So I wasn't left out of the omnipresent Christmas miasma that covers the US after Halloween, or of the zillion Christmas parties and celebrations that people thoughtlessly assume apply to everyone; but still, it was enough to make that thoughtlessness annoying.
And having been brought up agnostically humanist as well, I'm very sympathetic - in the instantaneous emotional “Haha, YEAH” feeling - to the Tumblr post that I saw screenshotted on Twitter yesterday:
image transcript below (1)
The interpretation that Hanukka is about religious freedom, even in the modern US sense of religious plurality, is logical enough. Talmud and rabbinical tradition presented the Maccabean Revolt to us as re-establishing the right to practice after conquerors' attempted forced conversion. My Humanistic Jewish grandmother's formula dedicates the candles specifically to fighting for “the Right”2.
It was actually out of curiousness about where she got her ideas and materials for the family Hanukka and Pesach ceremonies my dad grew up with that I stumbled upon organized Humanistic Judaism a few years ago, and learned for the first time from the Society for Humanistic Judaism’s Hanukka page:
I had difficulty understanding how that would have worked. The history I remembered was that a Greek king conquered Judea, outlawed Judaism entirely so that people were forced to play with dreidels as their only form of worship (??) (I remember a picture book of some people hiding dreidels under books when a soldier peeks in through a doorway), and converted the Temple into a Greek temple. Who could Maccabee be oppressing? I wondered.
Wikipedia on the Maccabean Revolt:
Wiki’s Hanukkah article, under subheading Story:
And the main division among these factions was (according to article Hellenistic Judaism) the application of biblical laws, but the Jewish Encyclopedia on Hellenism offers a little more detail of just what it was the traditionalists represented by the Maccabees and Ptolemaic-allied Jews opposed:
(All bolding above is mine.)
So the Maccabees and the traditionalists they represented were a political faction allied with Egypt (which had recently lost Judea to the Greek empire in 200 BCE) who opposed the influx of Greek literature, art, architecture, wrestling, and even the use of Greek language.
They had seized political control of Judea around 170 BCE and expelled to Syria the leaders of their opposing faction, the Tobiads; so the Tobiads had lobbied Antiochus IV to intercede, and he did, plundering Jerusalem, slaughtering traditionalist priests and outlawing circumcision and possession of Jewish scripture in 167. This led to the Maccabean Revolt (according to Wiki’s Hanukkah article.)
Wikipedia adds of the aftermath of the Maccabean Revolt that
We can still certainly say that remembering the Maccabean Revolt and its context, then, is about religious freedom, but certainly not in so simple a way as presented.
In fact, having recently watched an engaging documentary series on Irish history from the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion c. 1170, I can see parallels.
Warring domestic factions appealing to foreign connections and neighboring imperial powers to settle their internal disputes. A religion dominated by a corrupt, wealthy aristocrats fighting with other corrupt, wealthy aristocrats. A conservative faction championing “traditional” values and opposing sociocultural change, villifying other religious authorities with more liberal and progressive interpretations of the religion who just so happen to have more intercultural connections with diverse people of other religions and other places. Traditionalists opposing immigration, insisting that their sect is the correct one in any minor variation in religious tradition from place to place, wanting to destroy art and literature to prevent foreign ideas from infecting the faithful. Even demonization of the appearance of foreign language signage for the benefit of immigrants.
So it is still a story about religious freedom. I could pull out, for example, “Religious plurality is preferable to the carnage and strife that are the inevitable results of power struggles between religions trying to outlaw each other”. I want to also put in a vote for “You can’t always win your internal political struggles, but inviting a foreign/conquering/evil empire in to back you up is always bad for your nation even if it results, best-case scenario, in lots of money and power for you”. Also “Religions and cultures are incredibly tenacious and incredibly adaptable”, because the brief window of self-governance that Judah Maccabee achieved via guerrilla warfare was impressive even if he was a religious zealot; and the fact that more progressive and culturally open strains of Judaism had evolved and were there, speaking Greek in the temple and pissing traditionalists off, is also pretty amazing, even if Hellenistic Judaism later ceased to be a thing.
transcript of screencap image & footnotes ↓
1. Transcript of screencap image:
Tweet: “Remember that War on Christmas thing? For those who were not aware, here’s what Chanukah is about, minus the oil light miracle. #Maccabeatyouroppressiveass” attached: screenshot of Tumblr post:
fuck-customers: The next person who tries to correct me when i say “Happy Holidays” is going to be told Happy Hanukkah instead. Very tired of hearing, “No, it’s MERRY CHRISTMAS.” I’m pretty sure Judaism was around a lot longer than your Buckstar’s boycotting butt, Karen.
batzendrick: My boss once shared a great story about that. This happened when he was in a layover in North Carolina back when the “War on Christmas” bullshit was first becoming prominent. He had gone to get a pack of cigarettes, and after he paid for it:
2. I tried googling the complete text of my grandmother’s candle-lighting dedication, but I couldn’t find it; my dad thinks she might have modified or written it. We’ve always sung it, but my parents aren’t musically trained and she died when I was 8 (before any musical training I received and before my sister was born), so nobody can agree on whether the melody we sing now is the one they sang with her. Words:
So I wasn't left out of the omnipresent Christmas miasma that covers the US after Halloween, or of the zillion Christmas parties and celebrations that people thoughtlessly assume apply to everyone; but still, it was enough to make that thoughtlessness annoying.
And having been brought up agnostically humanist as well, I'm very sympathetic - in the instantaneous emotional “Haha, YEAH” feeling - to the Tumblr post that I saw screenshotted on Twitter yesterday:
image transcript below (1)
The interpretation that Hanukka is about religious freedom, even in the modern US sense of religious plurality, is logical enough. Talmud and rabbinical tradition presented the Maccabean Revolt to us as re-establishing the right to practice after conquerors' attempted forced conversion. My Humanistic Jewish grandmother's formula dedicates the candles specifically to fighting for “the Right”2.
It was actually out of curiousness about where she got her ideas and materials for the family Hanukka and Pesach ceremonies my dad grew up with that I stumbled upon organized Humanistic Judaism a few years ago, and learned for the first time from the Society for Humanistic Judaism’s Hanukka page:
For Humanistic Jews, Hanukka is a tribute to human power and courage. Judah Maccabee was a man who was willing to fight for what he believed, although like his enemy Antiochus Epiphanes, he was a religious zealot who denied freedom of worship to those who opposed him.
I had difficulty understanding how that would have worked. The history I remembered was that a Greek king conquered Judea, outlawed Judaism entirely so that people were forced to play with dreidels as their only form of worship (??) (I remember a picture book of some people hiding dreidels under books when a soldier peeks in through a doorway), and converted the Temple into a Greek temple. Who could Maccabee be oppressing? I wondered.
Wikipedia on the Maccabean Revolt:
Modern scholars, however, argue that the king intervened in a civil war between traditionalist Jews in the countryside and Hellenized Jews in Jerusalem.[4][5][6] As Joseph P. Schultz puts it:
"Modern scholarship ... considers the Maccabean revolt less as an uprising against foreign oppression than as a civil war between the orthodox and reformist parties in the Jewish camp."[7]
Professor John Ma of Oxford University argues that the main sources indicate that the loss of religious and civil rights by the Jews in 168 BC was not the result of religious persecution but rather an administrative punishment by the Seleucid Empire in the aftermath of local unrest, and that the Temple was restored upon petition by the High Priest Menelaus, not liberated and rededicated by the Maccabees.[8]
Wiki’s Hanukkah article, under subheading Story:
What began in many respects as a civil war escalated when the Hellenistic kingdom of Syria sided with the Hellenizing Jews in their conflict with the traditionalists.[45] As the conflict escalated, Antiochus took the side of the Hellenizers by prohibiting the religious practices the traditionalists had rallied around. This may explain why the king, in a total departure from Seleucid practice in all other places and times, banned a traditional religion.[46]
And the main division among these factions was (according to article Hellenistic Judaism) the application of biblical laws, but the Jewish Encyclopedia on Hellenism offers a little more detail of just what it was the traditionalists represented by the Maccabees and Ptolemaic-allied Jews opposed:
Hellenism in its Eastern dress was not always the Hellenism of Greece proper. It was in some respects a bastard culture. It led its new votaries to the highest flights of philosophy; but through the allegorical explanations which, coming from Stoicism, were applied to the Bible, especially in Alexandria, a real danger menaced the development of Jewish life and thought, the danger of Antinomianism (see Jew. Encyc. i. 630). By the introduction of Grecian art a door was opened to debauchery and riotous living; and though Judaism was hardly menaced by the introduction of direct idolatry, the connection of this culture with sublimated Greek polytheism became a real danger to the Jewish religion. This well-grounded fear inspired the rise of the Hasidæans and explains the change of sentiment on the part of the Rabbis toward the use of the Greek language[...]. [...] Jason [...] is said to have[...] built an arena in Jerusalem, which the priests were wont to frequent in place of the Temple (II Macc. iv. 13, 19). The introduction of the Greek games was peculiarly offensive to the religious party, not only because of the levity connected therewith, but also because Jewish participants were under the necessity of concealing the signs of their origin.
(All bolding above is mine.)
So the Maccabees and the traditionalists they represented were a political faction allied with Egypt (which had recently lost Judea to the Greek empire in 200 BCE) who opposed the influx of Greek literature, art, architecture, wrestling, and even the use of Greek language.
They had seized political control of Judea around 170 BCE and expelled to Syria the leaders of their opposing faction, the Tobiads; so the Tobiads had lobbied Antiochus IV to intercede, and he did, plundering Jerusalem, slaughtering traditionalist priests and outlawing circumcision and possession of Jewish scripture in 167. This led to the Maccabean Revolt (according to Wiki’s Hanukkah article.)
Wikipedia adds of the aftermath of the Maccabean Revolt that
[The] kings of the Hasmonean Dynasty continued their conquest to the surrounding areas of Judea. Those who remained of the Jewish party favoring Hellenistic influence, forced to submit to Mosaic Law, repeatedly called upon the Seleucid Empire for assistance. At the time, however, the Seleucid Empire was weakened by political infighting and other wars, including against Ptolemaic Egypt, reducing their ability to reconquer Judea.
We can still certainly say that remembering the Maccabean Revolt and its context, then, is about religious freedom, but certainly not in so simple a way as presented.
In fact, having recently watched an engaging documentary series on Irish history from the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion c. 1170, I can see parallels.
Warring domestic factions appealing to foreign connections and neighboring imperial powers to settle their internal disputes. A religion dominated by a corrupt, wealthy aristocrats fighting with other corrupt, wealthy aristocrats. A conservative faction championing “traditional” values and opposing sociocultural change, villifying other religious authorities with more liberal and progressive interpretations of the religion who just so happen to have more intercultural connections with diverse people of other religions and other places. Traditionalists opposing immigration, insisting that their sect is the correct one in any minor variation in religious tradition from place to place, wanting to destroy art and literature to prevent foreign ideas from infecting the faithful. Even demonization of the appearance of foreign language signage for the benefit of immigrants.
So it is still a story about religious freedom. I could pull out, for example, “Religious plurality is preferable to the carnage and strife that are the inevitable results of power struggles between religions trying to outlaw each other”. I want to also put in a vote for “You can’t always win your internal political struggles, but inviting a foreign/conquering/evil empire in to back you up is always bad for your nation even if it results, best-case scenario, in lots of money and power for you”. Also “Religions and cultures are incredibly tenacious and incredibly adaptable”, because the brief window of self-governance that Judah Maccabee achieved via guerrilla warfare was impressive even if he was a religious zealot; and the fact that more progressive and culturally open strains of Judaism had evolved and were there, speaking Greek in the temple and pissing traditionalists off, is also pretty amazing, even if Hellenistic Judaism later ceased to be a thing.
transcript of screencap image & footnotes ↓
1. Transcript of screencap image:
Tweet: “Remember that War on Christmas thing? For those who were not aware, here’s what Chanukah is about, minus the oil light miracle. #Maccabeatyouroppressiveass” attached: screenshot of Tumblr post:
fuck-customers: The next person who tries to correct me when i say “Happy Holidays” is going to be told Happy Hanukkah instead. Very tired of hearing, “No, it’s MERRY CHRISTMAS.” I’m pretty sure Judaism was around a lot longer than your Buckstar’s boycotting butt, Karen.
batzendrick: My boss once shared a great story about that. This happened when he was in a layover in North Carolina back when the “War on Christmas” bullshit was first becoming prominent. He had gone to get a pack of cigarettes, and after he paid for it:
“Merry Christmas.”
“Happy holidays.”
“No. I said Merry Christmas.”
"Do you know what Hanukkah is about?”
“No, what?”
“Some people tried to make us worship their way, so we rose up and killed them. Happy Hanukkah.”
2. I tried googling the complete text of my grandmother’s candle-lighting dedication, but I couldn’t find it; my dad thinks she might have modified or written it. We’ve always sung it, but my parents aren’t musically trained and she died when I was 8 (before any musical training I received and before my sister was born), so nobody can agree on whether the melody we sing now is the one they sang with her. Words:
On this night
Let us light
n little Hanukka candle[s].
‘Tis a sight
Oh, so bright
n little Hanukka candle[s].
To the Right
Give your might
Say the Hanukka candles!
So tonight
Let us light
n little Hanukka candles.
