Chanukah's Universal Message

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Rabbi Michael Lerner rabbilerner

vrnparker

Chanukah's Universal Message

Sun, 5 Dec 2004 03:24:22 -0500 (EST)

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Chanukah's Universal Message: When Hope Triumphs Over Cynical Realism

Holiday Season Greetings!

Chanukah starts Tuesday evening, Dec.7th and goes

for 8 days. We light one Chanukah light the first

night, two the second night, etc.

Christmas and Chanukah share a spiritual message:

that it is possible to bring light and hope in a

world of darkness, oppression and despair. But

whereas Christmas focuses on the birth of a single

individual whose life and mission was itself

supposed to bring liberation, Chanukah is about a

national liberation struggle involving an entire

people who seek to remake the world through struggle

with an oppressive political and social order: the

Greek conquerors (who ruled Judea from the time of

Alexander in 325 B.C.E.) and the Hellenistic culture

that they sought to impose.

Though the holiday celebrated by lighting candles

for 8 nights recalls the victory of the guerrilla

struggle led by the Maccabees against the Syrian

branch of the Greek empire, and the subsequent

rededication (chaunkah in Hebrew) of the Temple in

Jerusalem in 165 B.C.E., there was a more difficult

struggle which took place (and in some dimensions

still rages) within the Jewish people between those

who hoped for a triumph of a spiritual vision of the

world embedded (as it turned out, quite imperfectly)

in the Maccabbees and a cynical realism that had

become the common sense of the merchants and priests

who dominated the more cosmopolitan arena of Jerusalem.

The cynical realists in Judea, among them many of

the priests charged with preserving the Temple,

argued that Greek power was overwhelming and that it

made far greater sense to accommodate to it than to

resist. The Greek globalizers promised advances in

science and technology that could benefit

international trade and enrich the local merchants

who sided with them, even though the taxes that

accompanied their rule impoverished the Jewish

peasants who worked the land and eked out a

subsistence living. 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 theatre of Aeschylus, Euripides, and

Aristophanes. To the Maccabbees, the guerrilla band

that they assembled to fight the Greek Empire and

its Seleucid dynasty in Syria, and to many of the

Jewish supporters of that struggle, the issue of

Greek militarism, social injustice and oppression

were far more salient than the accomplishments of

Greek high culture. Whatever might be the value of

Athenian democracy, the reality that it exported to

the world through Alexander and his successors was

oppressive and exploitative. A useful counter to the

current movie white-wash of Alexander would be to

read the historical novel "The Ptolemies" (the name

of the Greek dynasty that ruled Judea after the

death of Alexander until the other Hellenistic

dynasty of the Seleucids conquered it from them)

written by Duncon Sprott (Knpof, 2004). Among other

things, it gives a useful reminder of the context in

which the Greek Hellenists opposed Jewish

"mutilation" of the body with circumcision(which

they punished with death): the common custom in some parts of

ancient Greece to abandon and let starve to death

those babies whose features were not "perfect,"

because the ancient Greek view of bodily perfection

at the time of the birth of Alexander required that

only those babies deemed likely to grow into

beautiful beings deserved to live.

The "old-time religion" that the Maccabbees fought

to preserve had revolutionary elements in it that

went far beyond the Greeks in articulating a

libratory vision: not only in the somewhat abstract

demand to "love your neighbor as yourself,love

the stranger," and pursue justice and peace, but

also concretely in Torah prescriptions to abolish

all debts every seven years, allow the land to lie

fallow every seven years, refrain from all work and

activities connected to control over the earth once

a week on Sabbath, redistribute the land every fifty

years (the Jubilee) back to its original equal

distribution.

The identification with the oppressed, enshrined in

Judaism in its insistence that Jews were derived

from slaves who had been liberated, and in its focus

on retelling the story of being oppressed that was

central to the Torah, seemed atavistic and naïve to

the more educated and enlightened Jewish urban

dwellers, who pointed to the reactionary tribalistic

elements of Torah and sided with the Greeks when

they declared circumcision and study of Torah

illegal and banned the observance of the Sabbath.

The miracle of Chanukah is that so many people were

able to resist the overwhelming "reality" imposed by

the imperialists and to stay loyal to a vision of a

world based on generosity, love of stranger, and

loyalty to an invisible God who promised that life

could be based on justice and peace. It was these

"little guys," the powerless, who managed to sustain

a vision of hope that inspired them to fight against

overwhelming odds, against the power of technology

and science organized in the service of domination,

and despite the fact that they were dismissed as

terrorists and fundamentalist crazies. When this

kind of energy, what religious people call "the

Spirit of God," becomes ingredient in the

consciousness of ordinary people, miracles ensue. It

is this same radical hope, whether rooted in

religion or secularist belief systems, that remains

the foundation for all who continue to struggle for

a world of peace and social justice at a time when

the champions of war and injustice dominate the

political and economic institutions of our own

society, often with the assistance of their

contemporary cheerleading religious leaders. It is

that radical hope that is celebrated this Chanukah

by those Jews who have not yet joined the

contemporary Hellenists.

Unfortunately, once the Jews had actually succeeded

in overcoming the Hellenists, the military leaders

(led by the brothers of Judah the Maccabbee)

established a dynasty that became corrupted and

oppressive on its own. Like the French Revolution,

the American Revolution, and many other struggles

with noble ideals, the people who fought these

struggles were limited and (like all the rest of us

and everyone else on the planet) had their own

internalized distortions, so the regimes that they

eventually created were less wonderful than the

ideals that had originally motivated the struggle.

We need not dismiss the original ideals as hollow or return to a cynical realism that proclaims the

uselessness of struggling for ideals, nor need we

deny the subsequent distortions, in order to

celebrate these moments in which people were able to

transcend the past and mobilize to support their own

highest ideals. Celebrating these milestones in

human history can recharge our own batteries and

remind us of the need to continue to struggle

against the cynical realism of our own times.

Yet the celebrations have to be honest and focused

both on what was really behind the struggle, what

are its positive lessons, and what its possible

distortions. In Jewish history, Chanukah was always

a minor holiday, and yet it was one of many aspects

of Jewish culture which helped to sustain hope

during the many centuries of Jewish homelessness and

persecution. It had particular poignancy for Jews

during the Holocaust--a memory of the moment when

Jews had been more successful in struggling against

oppression. Yet it was given a different meaning by

the Zionist movement, which made Hanukah into a

major holiday--seeing in those Maccabbees the

historical precedent for a new kind of Jew that was

emerging in Israel--tough, able to fight, able to

overcome odds through military prowess. Soon enough

that would and did produce a new kind of cynical

realism--in which power and domination over others

was accepted as the vindication for past suffering,

and Jews became the Hellenists proclaiming the

ultimacy of nuclear arms and superior military

prowess and scorning at the ideas of reconciliation

and atonement for the sins we had committed in our

domination over the other. The arrogance of the

Maccabees in power is being relived today,

tragically, and as that happens, the power of the

original message of Chanukah gets lost.

Nor has Chanukah faired well in the U.S., where it

lost its powerful message for still another reason:

the deep desire of a significant section of the

Jewish population to "fit in" to the grand

celebration of American materialism and power. In

that culture, the anti-Hellenistic idea of Chanukah,

its rejection of the ultimacy of power and

domination, its insistence on being in the world in

a different way (even to the extent that we would

die for the right to NOT fight or NOT exercise

domination and control over any aspect of our lives

one day of the week--Shabbat), seemed totally out of

place and counter-productive to our "making it" in

America. So it was not surprising that Jews, many of

whom felt ambivalent about not being Christian,

tried to turn this into a major holiday to provide

their kids with a compensation for not being

Christian by buying them lots of Chanukah gifts

("see--we have gifts for eight days, not just for

one!!"). Joining in the grand materialistic melee of

holiday season consumption, Jews could prove how

patriotic and like-everyone-else we were by acting

as consummate consumers. Nor do I want to deny that

this desire to fit in was at least partly a

reflection of abiding Jewish fears of

oppression--and therefore deserving not of ridicule

but of compassion. Yet in the process, at least some

Jews lost touch entirely with the real spiritual

revolutionary message of the original struggle.

Today, we at Tikkun seek to reclaim this message,

not only for Jews but also as a universal message:

the way things are is not the only way things can

be, the overwhelming power of the ruling elites of

the world (and their coterie of cheerleaders who run

alot of the media and disproportionately influence

the universities and control most of the

corporations) can be overcome when the Spirit of God

becomes ingredient in the consciousness of the

majority of people and they realize that the part of

their consciousness that aspires for a world of

kindness, justice, peace, ecological sanity and

loving connection to others (a part that is normally

drowned out by the vocies of cynical realism that

most of us also have in our heads) is worth fighting

for and could actually win!

Let the light of that RADICAL HOPE shine through in

your lives during this holiday season!!!

Holiday gifts!

Send this message to your friends, encourage others

to read it and put it on their websites, and let

people know of this other way of thinking about the

holidays.

And then, if you would, please help us spread this

way of thinking. You can do that by buying gift

subscriptions to Tikkun magazine for friends,

relatives, co-workers: just send us your holiday

list and we'll be so happy to send them a gift sub

to the magazine ($25 each). Send it by email with

your credit card number and exp. date (or, if you

worry about the security of doing that, call our

office at 510 644 1200 during work hours

Monday-Friday 9:30-5;30 Pacific Standard Time) or

send us a list and a check to cover them at Tikkun,

2342 Shattuck, Suite 1200, Berkeley, Ca. 94704.

Ok, it's buying. But it's different to spend your

holiday gifts buying people a whole new way of

thinking that they can find in Tikkun than just

buying some material object that they probably don't

really need and won't really open them to a new

perspective on reality! Moreover, it's a way of

supporting a voice that really needs your support.

And whle you are at it, why don't you take this

moment to actually become a dues-payng member of The

Tikkun Community. First, go to our website

www.tikkun.org and read our Core Vision. If you get

excited about it, as I think you might, please

Second sign up right there on that website or call

our office to join (510 644 1200).

Joining the Tikkun Community and buying gift subs

are two ways that you can spread the light of hope

during this holiday season.

The Chanukah message is for secular humanists,

atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians,

Hindus, Kwanza, Native Americans, wica, goddess

worshippers and all others--not just Jews and not

just for people connected with some formal religious

community. Just like the Tikkun Community

itself--it's for you and people you know!

Blessings for a fulfilling and spiritually meaningful holiday season!

Rabbi Michael Lerner

Tikkun

 

email:

rabbilerner (AT) tikkun (DOT) org

phone:

510-644-1200

web:

http://www.tikkun.org

 

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