UnHitchens(ed)

Bah, Hanukkah--the holiday celebrates the triumph of tribal Jewish backwardness
From FreeRepublic

original article

High on the list of idiotic commonplace expressions is the old maxim that "it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." How do such fatuous pieces of folk wisdom ever get started on their careers of glib quotation? Of course it would be preferable to light a candle than to complain about the darkness. You would only be bitching about the darkness if you didn't have ­a candle to begin with. Talk about a false antithesis. But at this time of year, any holy foolishness is permitted. And so we have a semiofficial celebration of Hanukkah, complete with menorah, to celebrate not the ignition of a light but the imposition of theocratic darkness.

Jewish orthodoxy possesses the interesting feature of naming and combating the idea of the apikoros or "Epicurean"—the intellectual renegade who prefers Athens to Jerusalem and the schools of philosophy to the grim old routines of the Torah. About a century and a half before the alleged birth of the supposed Jesus of Nazareth (another event that receives semiofficial recognition at this time of the year), the Greek or Epicurean style had begun to gain immense ground among the Jews of Syria and Palestine. The Seleucid Empire, an inheritance of Alexander the Great—Alexander still being a popular name among Jews—had weaned many people away from the sacrifices, the circumcisions, the belief in a special relationship with God, and the other reactionary manifestations of an ancient and cruel faith. I quote Rabbi Michael Lerner, an allegedly liberal spokesman for Judaism who nonetheless knows what he hates:

Along with Greek science and military prowess came a whole culture that celebrated beauty both in art and in the human body, presented the world with the triumph of rational thought in the works of Plato and Aristotle, and rejoiced in the complexities of life presented in the theater of Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes.

But away with all that, says Lerner. Let us instead celebrate the Maccabean peasants who wanted to destroy Hellenism and restore what he actually calls "oldtime religion." His excuse for preferring fundamentalist thuggery to secularism and philosophy is that Hellenism was "imperialistic," but the Hasmonean regime that resulted from the Maccabean revolt soon became exorbitantly corrupt, vicious, and divided, and encouraged the Roman annexation of Judea. Had it not been for this no-less imperial event, we would never have had to hear of Jesus of Nazareth or his sect—which was a plagiarism from fundamentalist Judaism—and the Jewish people would never have been accused of being deicidal "Christ killers." Thus, to celebrate Hanukkah is to celebrate not just the triumph of tribal Jewish backwardness but also the accidental birth of Judaism's bastard child in the shape of Christianity. You might think that masochism could do no more. Except that it always can. Without the precedents of Orthodox Judaism and Roman Christianity, on which it is based and from which it is borrowed, there would be no Islam, either. Every Jew who honors the Hanukkah holiday because it gives his child an excuse to mingle the dreidel with the Christmas tree and the sleigh (neither of these absurd symbols having the least thing to do with Palestine two millenniums past) is celebrating the making of a series of rods for his own back. And this is not just a disaster for the Jews. When the fanatics of Palestine won that victory, and when Judaism repudiated Athens for Jerusalem, the development of the whole of humanity was terribly retarded.

And, of course and as ever, one stands aghast at the pathetic scale of the supposed "miracle." As a consequence of the successful Maccabean revolt against Hellenism, so it is said, a puddle of olive oil that should have lasted only for one day managed to burn for eight days. Wow! Certain proof, not just of an Almighty, but of an Almighty with a special fondness for fundamentalists. Epicurus and Democritus had brilliantly discovered that the world was made up of atoms, but who cares about a mere fact like that when there is miraculous oil to be goggled at by credulous peasants?

We are about to have the annual culture war about the display of cribs, mangers, conifers, and other symbols on public land. Most of this argument is phony and tawdry and secondhand and has nothing whatever to do with "faith" as its protagonists understand it. The burning of a Yule log or the display of a Scandinavian tree is nothing more than paganism and the observance of a winter solstice; it makes no more acknowledgment of the Christian religion than I do. The fierce partisanship of the holly bush and mistletoe believers convicts them of nothing more than ignorance and simple-mindedness. They would have been just as pious under the reign of the Druids or the Vikings, and just as much attached to their bucolic icons. Everybody knows, furthermore, that there was no moving star in the east, that Quirinius was not the governor of Syria in the time of King Herod, that no worldwide tax census was conducted in that period of the rule of Augustus, and that no "stable" is mentioned even in any of the mutually contradictory books of the New Testament. So, to put a star on top of a pine tree or to arrange various farm animals around a crib is to be as accurate and inventive as that Japanese department store that, as urban legend has it, did its best to emulate the Christmas spirit by displaying a red-and-white bearded Santa snugly nailed to a crucifix.

This is childish stuff and if only for that reason should obviously not receive any public endorsement or financing. The display of the menorah at this season, however, has a precise meaning and is an explicit celebration of the original victory of bloody-minded faith over enlightenment and reason. As such it is a direct negation of the First Amendment and it is time for the secularists and the civil libertarians to find the courage to say so.

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my response as it appears on FreeRepublic

Hitchens makes so so many mistakes in this article, I don't know where to begin. The apikoris is not one who prefers Hellenism but one who denies religious authority by replacing it with his own ideas, of which may include replacing the idea that not G-d (chas v'shalom) made up religious concepts but man. This is not necessarily the same as Hellenism which admired the Torah and traditions of the Jews except those that "needed" G-d as a reason, (ie. Shabbos, Circumcision) those things referred to as "chukim".

Jewish children were named for Alexander since he too came to admire Judea and did not attack her. As an honor to Alexander, Jewish boys were named for him.

Michael Lerner is not a "rabbi" but a phony. Having said that, his idea is not too far off base. The Assyrian-Greeks were brutal but it was the attack on Torah which encouraged the Maccabi revolt. Hitchens seems to write off the fact that the revolt was begun by one family and mostly carried out by their spiritual leadership of the people. The brutality of the empire may had led others to join but it was a war to liberate Judea from the oppressive anti-G-d empire which was the driving force. A good liberal would have to admit that a nation which prefers a national religion by choice should be allowed to have it whether he (Hitchens) likes it or not. Judaism, on the other hand, makes no pretense of merging democracy into theology. This is Hitchens hang up. However, the leadership of the Union of Reformist Judaism may differ on that point.

It is also true that the Hasmonean monarchy fell into corruption. But it did so, after it adopted the Hellenist philosophy and diverged from its Torah origins. So much for the purist secularist leadership.

Blaming Torah then for the takeover by Rome is a stupid conclusion on many fronts. First it presumes Rome had no intention of expanding into Judea. This is ridiculous. Second, it was the corruption of Helenism that made Judea target. It was the zeal of the religious which made it a most costly venture for Rome. Had Judean monarchy and the Priesthood remained as learned and religious as the masses, who knows if Rome would have been permitted to succeed. We learn that sinas chinam, unwarranted hatred, refusal to get along as Jews, caused and still causes exile. Rome was merely the instrument of destruction.

When the fanatics of Palestine won that victory, and when Judaism repudiated Athens for Jerusalem, the development of the whole of humanity was terribly retarded.

First, there was no such thing as Palestine then or now. Second, it was the restoration of the Temple and Jewish religion which preserved humanity. It is the Torah which brings peace to the world. It is Edom, (ie. Rome) which brought and still brings destruction to the world. Okay, it is a theological point which CH would reject, however, I would stress the point that our Noahide friends make that the world would look greatly different if the non-Jews upheld the Noahide code. Upholding the code of every nation for itself, every person for itself, the underpinning of secularism and it's eventual cause of demise which is a most frightening reality.

The reality of Chanukah is not to teach about oil, with which Hitchens scoffs. It is about proclaiming that even in exile, the Jew brings light into the world. It is indeed the light in the darkness. It is the light emanating from the Bais HaMikdash which lights the world, not enlightenment of the athiests like Hitchens which darkens the world and serves as a test for the Jew's ultimate mission to make this world fit as a dwelling place for G-d.