Hanukkah - A missed opportunity and seized opportunities

We are about to conclude the eight-day festival of Hanukkah, commemmorating the victory of the Hasmoneans over the Seleucid empire in the second century B.C.E. Can anybody think of any other culture that commemmorates events that happened so long ago? It is said that Napoleon, having stumbled into a synagogue on Tisha B'Av and seen Jews crying, asked why. When he was told that they were crying over a temple that was destroyed some 1700 years ago, he answered that a people that still cries over a temple destroyed 1700 years ago will certainly live to see its restoration. From his mouth to God's ears.

We often overlook that the Hasmonean struggle was against Jewish traitors - Hellenists - even more than against the Greeks themselves. It began when Matityahu (Matthew in English) ran up to a pagan altar and killed a Jew who was about to sacrifice a pig to a Greek idol. The Greeks forbade brit milah, circumcision, and Maccabean soldiers forcibly circumcised the sons of Jews who may not have desired to have their sons circumcized. If the Hasmoneans had not persisted so doggedly, the Jewish people would have been swallowed by Hellenistic culture as were all other conquered peoples, Christianity would not have arisen, and the world would be a different place.

But when I step back and try to see those events objectively, I wonder if I myself and many other observant Jews who share my outlook would not have been Hellenists ourselves. Not all Hellenists were idolaters; many were attracted to the more attractive elements of the culture - art, music, theater, athletics and so on. The fact is that Jews and Greeks got along quite well under Alexander the Great (to this day we name baby boys Alexander), the Ptolemies and even the early Seleucids. We paid taxes and practiced our religion unmolested. Many Jews studied the Greek language and used it to communicate with the rest of society, while using Hebrew and Aramaic to communicate with one another. True, we had to coexist with out-and-out avoda zara (idolatry), but until the rise of Christianity we always have. And we were unable to participate in Greek sports because their athletes competed naked ("gymnasium" is derived from gymnos, the Greek word for naked) and circumcized men were not allowed to compete. Many Hellenized Jews had themselves painfully decircumcized in order to participate; our sources strongly condemn those who "abrogate the covenant of our father Abraham" (mefer brito shel Avraham Avinu). Now, imagine if Antiochus IV Epiphanes ("God revealed") would have been more tolerant and less chauvinistic. Jews and Greeks would have interacted more, and each would have absorbed whatever was most beautiful and uplifting in the other's culture. Jewish youth would have competed in Greek sporting events, but with clothes and without sacrificing to idols. Intelligent Greeks, who were beginning to see that the world was an orderly place governed by natural law, would have questioned their belief in a panoply of gods forever warring with one another; the Greeks made their gods in their own image instead of the other way around. Antiochus missed a terrific opportunity to achieve in the second centure B.C.E. the synthesis that was achieved in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries C.E. Rav Kook taught that it was desirable to "bring the beauty of Yefet [the ancestor of the Greeks] into the tents of Shem." But then we wouldn't have the latkes, the sufganiot and the dreidels.

Battle was joined, initially to restore the religious autonomy that we enjoyed under the Persians and the Greeks up until Antiochus. Against all odds, the Maccabees defeated both the Greeks and their Jewish collaborators and were able to rededicate the Temple three years after the Greeks defiled it. But the Greeks were still ensconced in the Akra fort in or near Jerusalem, and in their many pagan cities (polises) throughout Judah. The Hasmoneans realized that as long as the Greeks held the high ground they would be a constant threat, militarily and culturally. They saw an opportunity to throw them out of the country altogether and they seized it, restoring Jewish political independence for the first time since the fall of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E. The later Hasmonean rulers adopted Greek names (Hyrcanus, Aristobolus and such) and Greek customs, and became Tzedokim (Sadducees), so it might be argued that the Hellenists won after all, but we enjoyed an unparalleled flowering of Torah scholarship as well as material prosperity. As Mahatma Gandhi reportedly asked the British viceroy of India, who would not prefer their own bad government to the good government of strangers?

Hanukkah presents us with at least two opportunities to seize. One is the rediscovery that we have bodies and we have to make and keep them strong to optimize our avodat Hashem. Hey, if God wanted disembodied Holy Ghosts he would have made them. It is said that any literary or cultural movement that comes to the larger society gets to us one or two generations later. Physical fitness became prominent in the mass culture in the 1960s and 1970s; that's when I started lifting and running. But I would see few other Jews at the races. Once in a while a race would be held the Sunday of Hanukkah, and I would run it in a top I made for the purpose, complete with tzitzit; click here and here. When people would ask about the tzitzit, I would explain that in Greek times Jewish athletes would have themselves decircumcized in order to run with the Greeks, so now I'm running while proudly showing the world who I am. Today more and more observant Jews are running (and working out in gyms) and there is even a Jewish running club in Brooklyn: JRunners.

The second opportunity concerns bridging the chasm between religious and secular Jews here and especially in Israel. Hanukkah is a holiday that appeals powerfully to both camps. To us it represents the miraculous victory of Torah over evil forces that would have destroyed it. To the secularists it represents the equally miraculous victory of Jewish fighters restoring Jewish sovereignty on Jewish soil. But they are two sides of the same coin. We can study Torah under foreign domination, but with the proverbial Greeks in the Akra, a constant threat hanging over our heads. And the Torah itself becomes distorted, since authentic Torah is predicated on normality, i.e. Jews running their own affairs and working their own soil.

Carpe diem.

Mourning in the Morning

These past three weeks we carried out certain mourning practices commemmorating the destruction of Jerusalem and the First and Second Temples, in 586 B.C.E. and 70 C.E. respectively. No shaving, haircuts, live music, and for the last week no meat or wine, except on Shabbat. Some of us do not wash clothes, wear freshly laundered clothing or shower. Tonight and tomorrow we will fast, sit on the floor, read Eicha and say Kinnot.


Every year at this time I experience considerable cognitive dissonance. We are mourning in the morning of our redemption - reishit tzmihat ge'ulateinu. It hits us in the face no matter how much we try to pretend otherwise. For 62 years we have had our state, and it is flourishing beyond anybody's wildest dreams. Until 1967 it was truncated, with Jerusalem split down the middle. I remember my teacher telling me that the Beit Hamikdash burned down long ago, and I, all of six years old, asking why the Fire Department didn't put the fire out. I was also told that one wall was left standing, but we could not get to it because it was in Arab hands. Later I learned of the armistice, according to which Jews were to be allowed access to the kotel. But the Jordanians never kept their commitment and for nineteen years the best we could do was climb to the top of Mount Zion or the YMCA tower, look out to the Old City and the Dome of the Rock, and imagine the kotel in the general vicinity. Then came the Six Day War and all of Jerusalem was ours. We could go to the kotel, broadened and beautified. We still do not have a Beit Mikdash because two mosques occupy the site, and Israel's government left the mosques under the control of the Muslim Waqf, thinking that the Arabs would then make peace with us. The Jewish Quarter, destroyed by the Jordanians, is all rebuilt and the Jewish presence in Jerusalem is greater even than when the Batei Mikdash stood. Even the Muslim Quarter sports a Young Israel synagogue. Torah study and Torah institutions rival anything that existed during the Temple periods. We like to castigate ourselves for not deserving the presence of God among us that the Temple embodies. However, in fact the people living then were no better than we. A case can be made that they were more wanting. Certainly while the First Temple stood many if not most Jews worshiped idols and Torah observance was sadly neglected. When Cyrus gave the Jews permission to return from Babylon and rebuild the Temple, only a tiny minority actually did so; the rest preferred the comforts of what they had come to think of as home - sounds familiar? And the Second Temple period featured plenty of assimilation of Greek and Roman culture; even the Hasmonean kings adopted Greek names along with their Hebrew ones. The Temple succumbed to military defeat, made inevitable by disunity and internal bickering; for every two Jews you have three opinions. Disunity and internal bickering certainly continue to hinder us today and we need to work on ourselves there, to put it mildly, but the orgies of self-flagellation popular at this time of year are quite uncalled for.


To put things in perspective, just recently the Jewish Press carried on its front page a picture of a pro-Israel demonstration with people holding up Israeli flags in front of the Roman Colosseum! Imagine - Israeli flags at the Roman Colosseum - financed according to some scholars with the spoils Titus brought to Rome from the destroyed Jewish Temple! If only Titus and Vespasian could get up and have a look!









Whose flag flies on top of Masada - Rome's or ours?













The Old City's Young Israel synagogue, in the Muslim Quarter (!), midway between Sha'ar Sh'khem and the kotel.








Finally, here is an armored unit of Zahal, the Israel Defense Forces, being sworn in at Masada.
Whose flag, whose language, and whose fine, fit young men?

I was, praise God, privileged to raise a son who was sworn in to the Israeli Army in a similar ceremony at the kotel. I can hardly imagine a greater joy for a Jewish man, except for the rebuilding of the Temple itself. May that come about quickly in our time, and before I am too old and weak to place one brick on top of another.

Yom Ha'atzmaut 5769

Last week I spent the evening and morning of Yom Ha'atzmaut as I usually do, at my alma mater, Yeshivah of Flatbush. Before Ma'ariv a teacher spoke about the significance of the day. He cited Rav Kook, who taught that the first war waged by the Jews in the conquest of Eretz Yisrael was against Sihon Melekh Heshbon. If we had put our faith in rational calculations - heshbon - we would not have won, not then and not now (see earlier post). A hazan (cantor) who also graduated the Yeshivah led us in Ma'ariv, including Hallel and the conclusion modeled after the end of Yom Kippur, as prescribed by the Israeli Rabbanut. After tfila we had an "Israeli cafe night" that was, if anything, too successful in that there were too many people for the available space. Much money was raised for Todah L'Tzahal.
The following morning tfila again followed the Rabbanut's prescription, including Hallel and the haftara for the last day of Pesah read with ta'amim but without a brakha. A festive breakfast followed, a tradition at Flatbush that I first saw as a student in 1967 (see earlier post), the twentieth anniversary of the state. 41 years later, all but one of my teachers have either retired or passed on. The students, and in some cases their parents, were not even born when I was a student there. Nevertheless, they would pull me into their dancing circles and I was able to keep up. Sometimes one kid would link arms with me for a two-person whirl. I am still able to feel the joy of Yom Ha'atzmaut as only a strong, healthy man can.
In the afternoon I suited up in a home-made sleeveless shirt with "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" and the Israeli flag across the chest and "61 YEARS YOUNG" on the back and ran through Brooklyn's Cobble Hill neighborhood and Atlantic Avenue. This is traditionally the borough's Arab stronghold, though like most neighborhoods in New York it has become considerably homogenized. I sometimes run there "out of uniform" during my lunch breaks at work, and I see Arabic-looking people going in and out of mosques, Arabic bookstores and the like. One might wonder why I would go out of my way to do something some might consider provocative, even looking for trouble. I certainly had no need to assert my right as an American to walk in any neighborhood in America; nobody was contesting that right. We learn the answer from Hannukah, like Yom Ha'atzmaut a time set aside to thank God for restoring Jewish independence through the victory of "the [relatively] weak over the strong, the few over the many." It is not enough to light Hannukah candles on the kitchen table as we do with Shabbat candles, though that is what we do in times of mortal danger, God forbid. We have to light them in a window facing outward, when people passing by can see. Pirsumei nisa is not preaching to the choir; it has to be "in your face," projecting outward to precisely those who would make themselves our adversaries. But on another level, our adversaries too benefit from the miracle. The ge'ula is not only for us; it's for the whole world, urbi et orbi. Emanations from our reborn state spread out and envelop the world in new strategies for arid-zone agriculture, new medical discoveries, new computer tech, the list goes on and on, as in the time of the Beit Ha-mikdash, where it is said that if the Romans had only known of the blessings they were getting from it they would have posted guards around it day and night.
I met up with a volunteer from Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group for non-motorized (bicycling, walking, running) transport, doing a survey of traffic violations. He asked me where I got the shirt and we exchanged Hag Sameah salutes. And, barukh Hashem, I came to absolutely no harm. Nobody did anything, nobody said anything. It was as if God cast a spell on the Arabs and kept them in their homes (see Bereshit 35:5). I am reminded of what happened and did not happen over twenty years ago, when my newborn daughter developed a serious infection and for a while things were touch-and-go. She was in Long Island College Hospital, in Cobble Hill. It was summertime, and I ran to the hospital to be with my wife and daughter. The run took me down Atlantic Avenue, which was more Arabic then than it is today. I don't remember if I was wearing my Israeli flag shirt, but I wore my kippa proudly on my head, which at the time had enough hair to hold it on with a couple of bobby pins. I might have collected a dirty look or two, but nobody touched a hair of my head. And when I reached the hospital I turned to God: Okay, I conquered my fear and ran down Atlantic Avenue to show these people how You are giving Your people health and strength (Tehilim 29:11). Now You conquer whatever is bugging You and give me a healthy child. And He did.

You were shown to know

In last week's Parsha (Va'ethanan), in the part that is also read on Tish'a B'Av (the first paragraph of which I read in a low voice when I'm the ba'al korei), Moshe Rabbeinu is addressing the people for the last time, reviewing the events of the last 40 years. He utters a famous phrase that we read at the Hakafot on Simhat Torah, and that Sefaradim recite every Shabbat when the Sefer Torah is taken out of the Aron Kodesh: Ata horeita lada'at ki Hashem hu ha-Elokim ein od milvado. You were shown to know that Hashem is God and there is none beside Him. The Avot were told, and had to believe in Hashem's promises for their descendants, but those Moshe Rabbeinu was addressing were shown, and therefore knew. Some were children and teenagers in Egypt, and experienced God's intervention in human affairs first hand with Yetzi'at Mitzraim, at a very impressionable time of life (see also previous post). Even those born in the wilderness saw first hand the manna, the traveling well, the clothes that were neither outworn nor outgrown, the feet whose soles remained baby smooth despite constant walking.

Much ink is spilled over the need to believe in God and in His omnipotence, even when we are not given much reason to believe, and we have plenty of what appears to be evidence to the contrary. Throughout Inquisitions, pogroms and the Holocaust Jews have believed, even though it would have been so much easier, and seemingly more sensible, to give up on being Jewish. I am reminded of a story I heard about a religious Jew in a concentration camp. Hanukkah was approaching and he scrounged and saved bits of margarine day by day, so that when Hanukkah came he would have enough to light one Hanukkah light. Hanukkah - the holiday when we celebrate Jewish sovereignty and freedom to be Jews - in the pit of hell. And this Jew was concerned about lighting the candle. He believed - even though he had every reason in the world not to. (As an aside, had he asked a halakhic question of a poseq about whether to save the margarine, the answer would almost certainly have been no. When you're starving in a concentration camp and you can get a bit of something edible, you have to eat it and not burn it.) Three years later - the State of Israel was re-established and the significance of Hanukkah becomes crystal clear. No need to believe. Ata horeita lada'at. We were shown. We know.

In 1967 Israel was surrounded by enemies armed to the teeth, poised to drive it and its Jews into the sea. We were all afraid, and the religious were praying and fasting. Then came the smashing victory, the destruction of our enemies and the liberation of Yerushalayim. No need to believe that Hashem was with us. We were shown, and we knew. Hashem was in charge, and nothing in the world happened independently of Him. And what effect did all that have on us, after the initial euphoria abated? We still agonize over whether to wear our kippot to work or to job interviews, sometimes even whether to wear them on the street. People are incredulous when they hear that I wear my kippa in the public school classroom where I teach. Too many Orthodox colleagues do not wear it. Israel suffers a high profile terrorist attack, and Christian pilgrims still visit but Jewish tourists stay away. Israel's leaders fall all over themselves appeasing bloody terrorist murderers, as if God was not in the picture. A downturn in the business cycle (capitalism, to paraphrase Winston Churcill, being the worst economic system on earth except for all the others) and we all go into a panic, as if no one was in charge. Ata horeita lada'at. We were shown. So why the anxiety? Why the defeatism? Are we ever going to learn to take yes for an answer?

Fighting yesterday's battles today

Rabbi Naphtali Hoff published a front-page essay in last week's Jewish Press seizing on Hanukkah to knock the Maccabiah, the Olympic-style Jewish sports extravaganza held every four years (the year following the real Olympics) in Israel. I published a reply on the site that might appear as a letter to the editor in the next issue:

Fighting yesterday's battles today(12/9/2007)

Regarding Rabbi Naphtali Hoff's front page essay in last week's issue, the superficial irony of a Jewish Olympic-style athletic festival bearing the Maccabees' name did not escape my notice. However, closer examination shows that Rabbi Hoff is barking up the wrong tree. As a student of history, Rabbi Hoff certainly knows that we and the Greeks got along quite well under Alexander the Great (to this day we name baby boys for him), the Ptolemies and the early Seleucids. Only when Antiochus IV Epiphanes set out to obliterate Torah observance did the Maccabees rise in revolt. As Rabbi Hoff correctly states, the name Maccabee is made up of Hebrew initials for "Who is like You among the mighty, Hashem?" However, another meaning is "hammer of God." One does not become a hammer of God by cultivating physical weakness. Certainly in our time, when our way of life was nearly obliterated two generations ago because we were too weak to defend it, and we continue to be beset with enemies intent on our destruction, the Maccabiah's fostering of Jewish strength and pride is to be encouraged.Today's athletic contests are not those of Antiochus. There are no sacrifices to idols and athletes do not compete naked. No Jewish athletes today are having themselves decircumcised. The demise of Hellenistic paganism is so complete that a Greek-American Congressman (and decathlon champion) was named Bob Mathias, i.e. Matityahu. We gain nothing by fighting yesterday's battles today. The Maccabiah serves as a stepping stone for many Jewish athletes on the way to greater success; Mark Spitz swam in the Maccabiah and went on to win an unprecedented seven medals in the Munich Olympics in 1972. More to the point, for many Jewish athletes the Maccabiah is their first visit to Israel and their first connection with Judaism. We can extinguish the spark or we can fan it. I prefer to fan it.

Thanksgiving

I think I wrote on another blog that I'd have a post about Thanksgiving, but I got busy, so sorry it's late.
When I was growing up we all celebrated Thanksgiving and took it for granted. All of a sudden it's a subject of controversy, with many haredim saying it's not kosher. Not kosher to thank God for the blessings we enjoy in this country? Crazy. But we should be accustomed to haredi craziness by now. It comes down to whether or not we American Jews consider ourselves Americans. Jews in Poland, Lithuania, Russia and the other hellholes of Eastern Europe did not consider themselves Poles, Lithuanians, Russians and so forth, and neither did the Gentiles in those countries. Often they were not even literate in the languages of the countries they had been living in for centuries. Indeed, the Yeshiva of Volozhin closed down rather than teach students Russian, i.e. teach the Russian language, not teach Torah in Russian. That is the mindset that the detractors of Thanksgiving are acting upon. And it is not our mindset. We consider ourselves Americans in every sense. And so do our Gentile neighbors. We pay taxes, serve on juries, vote in American elections and so forth. American Jews served proudly in uniform in all of America's wars; the Holocaust museum in Battery Park in Manhattan contains an exhibit dedicated to American Jews who fought in World War II (one of them was my father a"h). In fact, when Asser Levy and his group of 23 first settled in New Amsterdam, the Dutch authorities proposed a special tax in lieu of guard duty. Asser Levy basically told them to take their tax and shove it; the Jews would do guard duty along with everybody else. And so they did. So yes, I do celebrate Thanksgiving, without apologies. And I eat turkey, in accordance with the majority opinion that it is kosher (al ha-rishonim anu mitzta'arim. . . .).
But we've been taking too much for granted. Recent events in Jewish life make me give some thought to what we have to be thankful for, so let me list a few:
1. No policeman will ever come to my door to search for banned books. I am free to read and study whatever I wish.
2. Short of indecent exposure, no "religious police" will ever arrest me for the way I am dressed. I am free to run in America's streets and parks in short pants and a sleeveless top (yup, Jews have muscles, get used to it). If my daughter chooses to go out wearing pants, that is her business and not that of the cops (yeshiva spies are another matter, but that's another tale).
3. Our women will not be pushed into a burning building because they are not sufficiently veiled, as was the case in Saudi Arabia a few years back.
4. Anybody can sit anywhere he or she pleases on a public bus.
5. Anybody who takes it on himself to set fire to a store or pour bleach on a woman's clothing can expect to be arrested, prosecuted and sent to prison.
6. We have the courage to stand up for our rights and freedoms, and even when we make aliya, we bring American values. Hence, we will not sit still for the shenanigans of those who would impose their medieval shtetl mentality on the rest of us.

I hope all of you had a happy Thanksgiving and I wish you a happy (and non-controversial?) Hanukkah.

Early Hannukah present

Maccabi Tel-Aviv will play an exhibition in New York against the Knicks on Thursday October 11, 2007. If the Knicks are laughing, they should check with the Toronto Raptors, whom Maccabi Tel-Aviv defeated previously. Maccabi also won the Euroleague championship five times, the latest being 2005. Proceeds will benefit Migdal Ohr, a youth village that works with disadvantaged and immigrant children. Tickets can be purchased through the N.Y. Knicks.

Comin' on strong

"Hammer of God" playing
Toronto Raptors

Editorial Comment: This is how Israel deals with poor, immigrant and refugee children. Our enemies teach theirs to be terrorists and suicide bombers.

Barukh ha-mavdil bein Yisrael
la-amim.