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 those 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.
CHANUKAH
SAMEACH: May each candle that you lite brighten your life. I pray for the
miracle of good over evil in the times we are living in today. May we all
celebrate next year in Eretz Yisrael, a country that is liberated and annexed
in all our Biblical boundaries.
Barbara and Chaim
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Barbara Sandra Ginsberg
Otzma Yehudit for Anglos
