Posts Tagged → Hanuka
Without Chanuka there is no Christmas
Decades ago in graduate school, I was friends with a lovely classmate named Christine. Christine was from Kenya, studying graduate economics at Vanderbilt, with the expectation of returning to her country and taking up an important post in the Kenyan government. Smart, beautiful, articulate, kindly, Christine was the embodiment of what the rest of the world would like Africa to become, and what its leaders had hoped it could be.
One thing about Christine that surprised me was that, as religious a Methodist as she was (yes, Africa has more true blue religious Methodists than America, where Mainline Protestantism has become a Socialist anti-Christianity movement), she knew nothing of the Old Testament AKA the Torah. Christine thought that Christianity simply appeared to the world, and had its own kind of virgin birth, if you will. No connection to anything else, no roots in any other religion, or place.
One can easily blame the simple minded missionaries who taught Christine’s grandparents a Christianity devoid of its own history. As for Christine, you don’t know what you don’t know, correct? However, everyone has a responsibility for their beliefs, and now in our modern Internet age, where all questions can be answered to some degree of accuracy within a few seconds, and to a much higher degree of surety within a couple minutes, every one of us simply has to maintain some level of curiosity about the world around us, to stay informed. We must stay informed.
Christine taught me something that bears telling again today: Christmas owes its existence to the Orthodox Jews who successfully fought and won a brutal civil war against the Leftwing Democrats of their day, 2300 years ago.
Known as “Apikorsim”, Hellenists, Hedonists, whatever, the in-essence Democrat Party socialist Jews of 2300 years ago tried to impose a Godless paganism on the religious (Orthodox) Jews of Israel/Judea.
And the Orthodox Jews fought back.
Their leaders were known as the Maccabees/ Hasmoneans, largely drawn from the Jewish priests, and they prevailed against a much larger, better organized, better armed force by utilizing guerilla warfare. The Maccabees slowly whittled down the liberal Jews and their Greek allies through hit-and-run tactics and merciless head-long frontal attacks by highly motivated, battle-hardened warriors.
And so, when the Orthodox Jews prevailed on the battlefield, recaptured Jerusalem, re-dedicated the Temple there, and restarted the holy service in the Temple, Torah Judaism was saved. And because Torah Judaism was saved, a certain religiously observant Jew named Yeshua was born about 250 years later. And because that Jew went on to become a religious ascetic (a Nazirite like Samson), he became an outspoken critic of the religious ways or failings of his fellow Jews, and the occupying Romans, as he saw them.
The rest is history, if you know anything about the Second Temple period of Judaism or the early years of Christianity.
Point being, because Orthodox Jews fought the Leftist Jews of their time, Christianity was eventually born and eventually Christmas was created (observed the 25th day of December, just as Chanuka is always the 25th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev on a lunar calendar, which means Kislev 25th always floats around relative to the Gregorian calendar we use in America and Europe).
Tonight marks the beginning of Chanuka and the end of Christmas Day. Without Chanuka, there would be no Christmas. It is important for everyone to remember history, and to know how we all got here to where we stand today. I wish that Christine would have known history, or had been educated to want to know history, because that sensitivity or intellectual curiosity would have saved her life…a story for another day.
Happy Chanuka, America and world.
Judah Maccabee, the kind of unintentional but direct father of Christmas
This miraculous Thanksgiving, break the binary
Today is Thanksgiving in America, our uniquely American holiday based on the Puritans’ survival experience with Native Indians on the Atlantic coast roughly 400 years ago. While it has sadly become a holiday of cheap mattress sales, the fact is that most Americans still understand what a uniquely bountiful land of opportunity America is, and they give thanks to our Creator for it.
In 2024, we also give thanks today for a truly miraculous peaceful victory over bipartisan forces of darkness and evil in our recent national election. No matter that every official lever of power, corporate finance, media marketing, and cultural curatorship was pushed or pulled against Donald Trump, he nonetheless prevailed with a majority of the national vote as well as the Electoral College (folks, without the Electoral College there would be no UNITED States, because individual states in rural flyover country would have no incentive to unite with the more populous coastal enclaves).
And his opponent burned through more than a BILLION dollars of campaign funds, to no avail. Truly a miraculous election result…
Through our recent election, official power is being removed from the corrupt, violent hands of the impure and given into the hands of our peaceful citizens, the rightful owners of all things government, as was originally intended in 1776. This miraculous result is on a scale of only a few moments in history, where the good guys won against overwhelming odds, and which then resulted in good values being transmitted through the following generations, resulting in the free America we now enjoy and love.
The 479 BCE united Greek final stand against the invading Persians at Plataea is one such moment, and the orthodox Jews’ 175 BCE successful stand against the Seleucid Greeks and their “leftist” assimilated Hellenic Jewish allies is another, a long fought guerilla war commemmorated as Hanuka.
After Plataea, forms of democracy, free thought, and individual representation in government (the “Greek ideal”) became more broadly accepted. When the Maccabees defeated the hedonist Hellenist Jews and pagan Greeks in Israel and Jerusalem, Torah Judaism prevailed and survived, giving the world the widespread monotheism it now relies upon for the rule of law and individual rights we all take for granted.
A good case can be made that this month’s election resulted in a similar scale defeat of evil. Yes, this election was not about the next four years, but rather about the next 250 years of America as a constitutional and free nation. We were that close to losing everything.
However, we cannot get too caught up in the battle lines as they were drawn up on November 5th, 2024. We must break the Republican-Democrat binary that is really a corrupt Uniparty united against We, The People.
Yes, the Republican Party has some elected officials who stand for freedom and liberty, and no, I cannot think of one single elected Democrat who stands for freedom and liberty. But that only means that the majority of elected Republicans and all of the elected Democrats are united against pro-citizen freedom fighter Donald Trump.
Trump is our champion, a representative of and champion for all American citizens. He is the modern incarnation of our first president, George Washington. We must stay focused on him and active in implementing his agenda.
When President Trump is gone, it is hard to know who will again so fully pick up the mantle of We, The People. So it is incumbent upon us today to really give thanks for this reprieve we have all miraculously enjoyed, and to work hard these next two years to ensure that our freedoms and our government of, by, and for The People, are fully conveyed to the next generations of Americans.
Give no power to political parties, give no longevity to career officials, but give aggressive support only to those few who actually represent us. Give thanks that we have this one opportunity for the restoration of good and proper government, right now, for many generations to come.
Hanuka 2023, every USA conservative is a Jew
The past seven years have seen increasingly aggressive censorship and violence against American conservatives, especially on college campuses. Since the October 7th Hamas massacre of Israelis, American Jews find themselves under violent attack, especially on college campuses. Conservatives and American Jews don’t often occupy the same space, but now they do, and they should support each other.
Historically, Jews have been the canary in the coalmine for civilizational health. Countries where Jews have enjoyed freedom have done exceedingly well, and countries that murdered, robbed, raped, and expelled their Jews have fallen by the wayside. The proofs for this assertion are legion, and they include ancient Rome (what is Italy today?), 15th century Spain (what is Spain today?), modern Germany, Soviet Russia, and almost every single Muslim country today. And yes, modern Germany is rapidly swirling down the toilet. England is swaying wildly on the fence, and America is not far behind.
Western civilization is failing, and one of the victims, the beleaguered Jew, is the most prominent symbol of the evil forces that are tearing our western nations apart.
As a result of Hamas’ October 7th massacre of Israelis and their still unending rocket barrages on Israeli civilians, and then Israel’s just response to that blitzkrieg, the world has been engulfed by a mostly Islamic movement to dehumanize Jews and delegitimize Israel and Western Civilization. A bunch of white sadists and envious losers have joined in the pro-Hamas, pro-genocide, pro-Apartheid marches.
In case you have not been paying attention, Jewish-owned restaurants in Australia, Britain, Canada, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, have been targeted by violent mobs chanting about Israel and killing Jews. This same effort has also engulfed nearly every single American university, where conservatives and free speech have been aggressively banned for the past seven years. It has been interesting to see this intersection of Jew haters against freedom of speech, because their actions have shined a bright light on the plight of all American conservatives.
Turns out, American conservatives share the same fox hole as American Jews. Both are subject to unfair and unconstitutional vilification, dehumanization, and suppression of their basic human rights by the very people who claim to be the most tolerant, most open minded, most caring. Ahem.
The other day three major university presidents (UPenn, MIT, Harvard) sat before Congress and each testified that people calling for the genocide of Jews on their college campuses was not necessarily against their college policies. What a disgrace. It was shocking to see these cookie cutter leftist women presidents smirking and being coy while playing their word games. Had the words black, Hispanic, gay, transgender, lesbian, Muslim etc. been substituted for the word Jew in this policy discussion, well my gosh, of course that would have violated their college policies against hate, bullying, and harassment.
But not Jews. Nope. With Jews, these very sophisticated and exclusive women leaders had to judge the “context” in which the calls for genocide happened. Was the Jewish student actually being genocided on MIT or Harvard’s campus, like hanging from a lamp post with a rope around his neck? Well, that would certainly violate their school policy against hate, harassment, and bullying. But up until that physical violence, why, calls for genocide against Jews is just free speech, they said.
University presidents who never gave a hoot about free speech, but who rather inflicted un-American McCarthy-esque speech codes against their ideological opponents are suddenly all for free speech when it comes to calling for massacring the Jews. And this strange thing has naturally and refreshingly caused quite a backlash.
What is happening here is that the Jew is the breakwater for the American conservative, who has been illegally pounded into dust for years by the same racist , Stalinist, Hitlerite Diversity-Iniquity-Equity university/ media/ government people as were testifying before Congress the other day.
If America can agree that treating Jews differently and much worse than everyone else is wrong, then I think we are also about to agree that the evil Stalinist Diversity-Inclusivity-Equity critical race theory nonsense that put both Jews and conservatives on the chopping block was a huge un-American mistake. It is time for this nonsense to end, and for the rule of law and constitution to return.
Tonight is the first night of Hanuka, a 2,300-year-old Jewish festival that is about religious freedom in Israel earned by the edge of the sword. There is nothing joyful or miraculous or oily about Hanuka. This holiday was and still is only about the need to fight like hell with everything you have if you want to survive. The ancient Jews prevailed militarily against the enemies of all that is good, in the land of Israel, and this is what is celebrated this week.
Sounds like a good message to American conservatives and Jews alike: Fight back against the evil that is engulfing America, including the college campuses that are supposed to be beacons for learning, or you will lose everything. Firing these three evil university presidents at UPenn, MIT, and Harvard will be a good step forward.
The real Hanuka needs to stand up
Hanuka is represented today as the “Jewish Christmas,” and why not, right? Why not have more fun, more celebration, more love, more gifts. And everyone enjoys a lighter moment instead of things being so heavy and deep.
Problem is, Hanuka suffers from the same dumbing-down that has also made a mockery of Christmas and turned it too into an orgy of materialism. Religious observers in both faith groups need to reclaim what is theirs, because at the core both Hanuka and Christmas are about core values. And if there is one thing that America has lost is its core values, resulting in our culture terrifyingly spiraling down the drain. Religious holidays used to serve the purpose of instilling religious values, may we all return to that soon.
Historically Hanuka was not about silver and blue tinsel or a disarmingly childish sounding “festival of lights” that evokes fairies twirling in tutus with flashy lights sparkling all around. Rather, in reality Hanuka is precisely the opposite image, because it marked a turning point in a bloody civil war between Jews in Israel. For three generations, two Jewish groups representing divergent philosophies were locked in a brutal civil war for control of the Temple and the religious customs and practices that Jews would follow.
On the one hand were liberal secularists, Hellenists, who represented a light Jewish identity dominated by Greek culture and behavior, including unbridled sexuality. They were enabled by Greeks descended from Alexander the Great’s conquering of the region. Opposing them were the “Maccabees,” named after an orthodox Jewish family patriarch who defiantly confronted, and killed, a whole bunch of Hellenist soldiers for control of Israel and the Temple Mount. His sons carried on the tradition of fighting and killing Hellenists for several generations before the matter was settled.
The “festival of the lights” miracle stuff results from the story of the Maccabees finding one sealed pitcher of kosher olive oil for lighting the giant gold menorah in the Temple, and having it last more than the one or two days that it should have lasted, given its limited volume. Read into that fact what one will, this has become a conveniently plain vanilla and non-threatening focus of the holiday, which at one time celebrated the “decisive winning of the righteous and pure over the evil and impure.”
The bottom line is that Hanuka commemorates a Jewish civil war for control of the Jewish future, either as a feel-good universalist ethnic identity destined for dead-end assimilation, or as a daily living Biblical (Torah) truth identity. Both Jews and Christians exist today because the orthodox Jews (Hasmoneans) who inaugurated Hanuka gave rise to the religiously observant Jews who later begot Joshua Of Nazareth (or the Nazirite) and today’s Orthodox Jews. Had the Maccabees lost their civil war with the Hellenists, there would have been no Hanuka, no surviving Judaism, no Joshua Of Nazareth, and no Christianity.
Without Christianity there is no Western Civilization, and without Western Civilization there is no light in this world and all of the Enlightenment science that makes our lives so comfy today. God only knows where the world would be now, had the Maccabees not won their war against the liberal Jews of their time. Which raises two questions. First, why don’t today’s Christians celebrate Hanuka? They should. Christmas is set for the 25th of December, which closely matches the Hebrew calendar’s 25 of Kislev for the start of Hanuka, and I don’t see any contradiction in it. Second question is when do we all begin to push back against today’s destructive Hellenists, who like their predecessors in Israel 2,200 years ago are playing an outsize role in the destruction of the American and Western Civilizations?
Happy Hanuka, everyone!
Whatever your religious belief, our nation now basks in goodness
Christmas is America’s national holiday, and while there are many Christians reminding fellow citizens that there is a more spiritual and faith based core to the holiday, it is, in fact, a glorious time of year no matter what your religious beliefs may be.
Seven days ago, Hanuka began on the 25th day of the Hebrew month Kislev, as usual. Just after Hanuka ends this year, tomorrow night, Christmas will then begin on the 25th day of the Gregorian month of December, as usual.
The two holidays are naturally linked, as early Christians both tied their new religion to the parent faith with a holiday (“Holy Day”) on nearly identical dates, and then separated from it from Hanuka with a new holiday, “Christ’s Mass,” which has been turned into a conjunction, Christmas.
Much has been said about the Judeo-Christian roots of America, and our Christmas holiday is just one more example of that shared religious basis of our nation’s founding. It is a testament to the tolerant and open sensibility at the root of American identity, to shared values among many different people.
You don’t have to be Jewish to like Jewish-style rye bread, and you don’t have to be Christian to enjoy Christmas. Every American should enjoy Christmas, and wish one another a Merry Christmas. There is no declaration of faith in that, but rather it is a declaration of love for all things good and for a shared, common identity in a truly good nation.
Probably the only really good nation on the planet: We have the rule of law, more opportunity than anywhere else, the highest standard of living, etc. Christmas crowns that all at the end of the year, and it reminds us that the sum total of our year is simply good.
In that spirit of goodness, I wish all my fellow Americans and our many guests here Happy Hanuka, and Merry Christmas!