Of all the holidays on the Jewish calendar, Hanukkah, which began last Sunday evening, has always been one of my favorites. Even when I was younger and far less observant, I appreciated the holiday’s well-known rituals and customs: lighting the menorah, spinning the dreidel, eating potato latkes and so forth. My given Hebrew name — “Maccabee,” because Judah Maccabee was nicknamed “the hammer” — is also synonymous with the hero of the holiday’s story.
Because of the holiday’s timing and the general desire by corporate America and elected officials to include Jewish Americans in annual Christmastime festivity, Hanukkah is the most commercialized and among the most frequently discussed of all the Jewish holidays. The commercialization of Hanukkah is anodyne, if a bit of a distraction. More problematic is the time-tested tradition of American politicians distorting the holiday’s meaning — often, for self-serving reasons.
For as long as I can remember, liberal politicians have taken pains to invoke the imagery of the Hanukkah menorah’s light in order to pontificate about abstract universalist principles such as justice and freedom and, as President Obama put it two years after leaving office, about an occasion to “recommit ourselves to building a brighter future for our families, our communities and our world.” Sometimes they even get the most basic facts of the Hanukkah story egregiously wrong, as the Jewish then-second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, did two years ago.
I have always found this recurring humiliating ritual to be worse than embarrassing. It’s offensive.
Hanukkah, I’ve always thought, is the Jewish people’s quintessential particularist and nationalist holiday. It is a tale about the Maccabean revolt against the Greek-Syrian Seleucid Empire, which occupied Judea and attempted to Hellenize the Jews — to crush them physically and subdue them spiritually. Many are familiar with the miracle that followed the Maccabees’ victory: The scant oil found in the courtyard, upon repurifying and rededicating the Temple, lasted eight nights. But the more impressive miracle was the military victory over the Seleucids and the Hellenized Jews who joined them.
The core message of Hanukkah, then, is one of traditionalism and cultural preservation in the face of menacing and assimilationist forces, both within and without. That’s the real meaning of the holiday — not exchanging gifts or waxing poetic about universalist platitudes.
Yet paradoxically, especially in light of tragic recent events, something occurred to me for the first time: This stridently particularist Jewish holiday does have broader — indeed, global — relevance. It’s just not the relevance liberal politicians have ascribed to Hanukkah. Indeed, it’s the exact opposite.
The Maccabees were able to prevail and thereby preserve Judaism, against the odds, because they had purpose and conviction. They believed that Judaism stood for something important: They believed that ethical monotheism was important, the Hebrew Scriptures were true, and the Land of Israel belonged to the Children of Israel. In short, the Maccabees had national and civilizational pride, and it was because of that pride that they fought so valiantly and refused to bend the knee to Hellenistic assimilation. They rejected the universalist cri de coeur that all cultures and peoples are equal — and perhaps interchangeable.
In recent decades, and even more acutely in recent years, Western civilization has had to learn that lesson anew. Human beings, while all made in God’s image and thus all deserving of dignity and moral worth, are immensely complicated. We are not reducible to widgets on an economics chalkboard. Our inherited cultural traditions and learned customs and mannerisms are often very different from one another. We don’t all value the same things, pursue the same goals, hold the same social standards or believe in the same political institutions.
We are, in short, different. The Maccabees understood that there was something special about the truths, values and principles that Judaism introduced to the world. They were not willing to sacrifice those truths, values and principles to the siren song of Hellenistic universalism. Western nations today must learn that same lesson anew. The modern Maccabees senselessly slain last Sunday at Sydney’s Bondi Beach appear to be yet the latest victims of modern Hellenism, as one culture tries to erase another.
It doesn’t have to be this way. A culture can be proud without being chauvinistic. And a people can be self-confident without being imperious. If there are going to be fewer Bondi Beach-style massacres, moving forward, Western cultures and nations are going to have to rediscover and reprioritize what made them great in the first place. They’re going to have to remember that human beings, and the specific societies they constitute, are unique. They cannot, and should not, be swapped or frivolously bartered like goods in a marketplace. We have our traditions, values and ways of life that are worth cherishing and preserving from one generation to the next.
It might not be politically correct, but that is how we can apply the true lesson of Hanukkah.
Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. X: @josh_hammer
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