Rabbi Meir
Kahane Writings (5732-33) (1971-73)
Down with
Chanukah
Written December
15, 1972
If I were a
Reform rabbi; if I were a leader of the Establishment whose money and prestige
have succeeded in capturing for him the leadership and voice of American Jewry;
if I were one of the members of the Israeli Government’s ruling group; if I
were an enlightened sophisticated, modern Jewish intellectual, I would climb
the barricades and join in battle against the most dangerous of all Jewish
holidays – Chanukah.
It is a measure
of the total ignorance of the world Jewish community that there is no holiday
that is more universally celebrated than the “Feast of Lights”, and it is an
equal measure of the intellectual dishonesty and of Jewish leadership that it
plays along with the lie. For if ever
there was a holiday that stands for everything that the mass of world Jewry and
their leadership has rejected – it is this one.
If one would find an event that is truly rooted in everything that Jews
of our times and their leaders have rejected and, indeed, attacked – it is this
one. If there is any holiday that is
more “unJewish” in the sense of our modern beliefs and practices – I do not
know of it.
The Chanukah
that has erupted unto the world Jewish scene in all its childishness,
asininity, shallowness, ignorance and fraud – is not the Chanukah of
reality. The Chanukah that came into
vogue because of Jewish parents – in their vapidness – needed something to
counteract Christmas; that exploded in a show of
“we-can-have-lights-just-as-our-goyish-neighbors” and in an effort to reward
our spoiled children with eight gifts instead of the poor Christian one; the
Chanukah that the Temple, under its captive rabbi, turned into a school pageant
so that the beaming parents might think that the Religious School is really
successful instead of the tragic joke and waste that it really is; the Chanukah
that speaks of Jewish Patrick Henrys giving-me-liberty-or death and the
pictures of Maccabees as great liberal saviors who fought so that the kibbutzim
might continue to be free to preach their Marx and eat their ham, that the
split-level dwellers of suburbia might be allowed to violate their Sabbath in
perfect freedom and the Reform and Conservative Temples continue the fight for
civil rights for Blacks, Puerto Ricans and Jane Fonda, is not remotely
connected with reality.
This is NOT the
Chanukah of our ancestors, of the generations of Jews of Eastern Europe and
Yemen and Morocco and the crusades and Spain and Babylon. It is surely not the Chanukah for which the
Maccabees themselves died. Truly, could
those whom we honor so munificently, return and see what Chanukah has become,
they might very well begin a second Maccabean revolt. For the life that we Jews lead today was the
very cause, the REAL reason for the revolt of the Jews “in those days in our
times.”
What happened
in that era more than 2000 years ago?
What led a handful of Jews to rise up in violence against the
enemy? And precisely who WAS the
enemy? What were they fighting FOR and
who were they fighting AGAINST?
For years, the
people of Judea had been the vassals of Greece.
True independence as a state had been unknown for all those decades and,
yet, the Jews did not rise up in revolt.
It was only when the Greek policy shifted from mere political control to
one that attempted to suppress the Jewish religion that the revolt erupted in
all its bloodiness. It was not mere
liberty that led to the Maccabean uprising that we so passionately
applaud. What we are really cheering is
a brave group of Jews who fought and plunged Judea into a bloodbath for the
right to observe the Sabbath, to follow the laws of kashruth, to obey the laws
of the Torah. IN A WORD EVERYTHING ABOUT
CHANUKAH THAT WE COMMEMORATE AND TEACH OUR CHILDREN TO COMMEMORATE ARE THINGS
WE CONSIDER TO BE OUTMODED, MEDIEVAL AND CHILDISH!
At best, then,
those who fought and died for Chanukah were naïve and obscurantist. Had we lived in those days we would certainly
not have done what they did for everyone knows that the laws of the Torah are
not really Divine but only the products of evolution and men (do not the
Reform, Reconstructionist and large parts of the Conservative movements write
this daily?) Surely we would not have
fought for that which we violate every day of our lives! No, at best Chanukah emerges as a needless
holiday if not a foolish one. Poor
Hannah and her seven children; poor Mattathias and Judah; poor well meaning
chaps all but hopelessly backward and utterly unnecessary sacrifices.
But there is
more. Not only is Chanukah really a
foolish and unnecessary holiday, it is also one that is dangerously fanatical
and illiberal. The first act of rebellion, the first enemy who fell at the
hands of the brave Jewish heroes whom our delightful children portray so
cleverly in their Sunday and religious school pageants, was NOT a Greek. He was a Jew.
When the enemy
sent its troops into the town of Modin to set up an idol and demand its
worship, it was a Jew who decided to exercise his freedom of pagan worship and
who approached the altar to worship Zeus (after all, what business was it of
anyone what this fellow worshipped?) And
it was this Jew, this apostate, this religious traitor who was struck down by
the brave, glorious, courageous (are these not the words all our Sunday schools
use to describe him?) Mattathias, as he shouted: “Whoever is for G-d, follow
me!”
What have we
here? What kind of religious intolerance
and bigotry? What kind of a man is this
for the anti-religious of Hashomer Hatzair, the graceful temples of suburbia,
the sophisticated intellectuals, the liberal open-minded Jews and all the
drones who have wearied us unto death with the concept of Judaism as a
humanistic, open-minded, undogmatic, liberal, universalistic (if not Marxist)
religion, to honor? What kind of
nationalism is this for David-Ben-Gurion (he who rejects the Galut and speaks
of the proud, free Jew of ancient Judea and Israel)?
And to crush us
even more (we who know that Judaism is a faith of peace which deplores
violence), what kind of Jews were these who reacted to oppression with
FORCE? Surely we who so properly have
deplored Jewish violence as fascistic, immoral and (above all!) UN-JEWISH,
stand in horror as we contemplate Jews who declined to picket the Syrian Greeks
to death and who rejected quiet diplomacy for the sword, spear and arrow (had
there been bombs in those days, who can tell what they might have done?) and
“descended to the level of evil,” thus rejecting the ethical and moral concepts
of Judaism.
Is this the
kind of a holiday we wish to propagate?
Are these the kinds of men we want our moral and humanistic children to
honor? Is this the kind of Judaism that
we wish to observe and pass on to our children?
Where shall we
find the man of courage the one voice, in the wilderness to cry out against
Chanukah and the Judaism that it represents-the Judaism of our grandparents and
ancestors? Where shall we find the man
of honesty and integrity to attack the Judaism of Medievalism and outdated
foolishness; the Judaism of bigotry that strikes down Jews who refuse to
observe the law; the Judaism of violence that calls for Jewish force and might
against the enemy? When shall we find
the courage to proudly eat our Chinese food and violate our Sabbaths and reject
all the separateness, nationalism and religious maximalism that Chanukah so
ignobly represents? …Down with
Chanukah! It is a regressive holiday
that merely symbolizes the Judaism that always was; the Judaism that was handed
down to us from Sinai; the Judaism that made our ancestors ready to give their
lives for the L-rd; the Judaism that young people instinctively know is true
and great and real. Such Judaism is
dangerous for us and our leaders. We
must do all in our power to bury it.
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