Earlier in December, an email hit the log which was put away until the time appropriate to Chanukah. Now is that time. So here is a Vort on Chanukah;<\/p>\n
Down With Hanukah<\/strong> If I were a Reform rabbi; if I were a leader of the establishment It is a measure of the total ignorance of the world Jewish community The Chanukah that has erupted unto the world Jewish scene in all its This is not the Chanukah of our ancestors, of the generations of Jews What happened in that era more than 2000 years ago? What led a At best, then, those who fought and died for Chanukah were naive and But there is more. Not only is Chanukah really a foolish and What have we here? What kind of religious intolerance and bigotry? And to crush us even more (we who know that Judaism is a faith of Is this the kind of a holiday we wish to propagate? Are these the Where shall we find the man of honesty and integrity to attack the ********************************************************* May it be in this year and beyond, that our brethren; the refugee families from Gush Katif and the Shomron, as well as our dear brother, Jonathan Pollard be central in our thoughts, prayers, chassadim and actions. May our prayers that he soon know freedom and long life in Eretz Yisrael be fulfilled quickly.<\/p>\n B’Ezrat Hashem, may we soon know the day when Torah is the law of the land; when we see the day when our Brethren, expelled by the evil regime from Gush Katif and the Shomron towns, know freedom, success, happiness and long life in Eretz Yisrael for all time and are restored to bigger and more beautiful homes and neighborhoods, Bati Knesset, Yeshivot in Gush Katif and the Shomron. May our brethren from Gush Katif and the Shomron rise up today to do battle for the Jewish mind and soul, together with all intellectually honest and enlightened Jews, just as the Maccabees did in doing battle against the Greeks.<\/p>\n May this abominable period of history called hitnatkut be as a bad dream and may we be zocha in this coming year to take giant steps toward fulfilling Hashem’s blueprint of B’nai Yisrael as a Unique people — an Am Segula, not to be reckoned with as with “the nations.” .<\/p>\n May we be zocha the Moshiach, the Ge’ula Shlaima, “Yom Hashem V’Kol HaGoyim”, the Ultimate Redemption, bim hay v’yameinu — speedily, in our time”, — Achshav, Chik Chuk, Meiyad, Etmol!!!<\/p>\n
\n By Rabbi Meir Kahane <\/p>\n
\nwhose money and prestige have succeeded in capturing for himself the
\nleadership and voice of American Jewry; if I were one of the members
\nof the Israeli Government’s ruling group; if I were an enlightened
\nsophisticated, modern Jewish intellectual, I would climb the
\nbarricades and join in battle against that most dangerous of all
\nJewish holidays – Chanukah.<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nthat there is no holiday that is more universally celebrated than
\nthe “Festival of Lights,” and it is an equal measure of the intellectual
\ndishonesty and hypocrisy of Jewish leadership that it plays along with the lie.
\nFor if ever there was a holiday that stands for everything that stands for
\neverything that the masses of world Jewry and their leadership has rejected – it is
\nthis one. If one would find an event that is truly rooted in everything that
\nJews of our times and their leaders have rejected and, indeed, attacked – it is this one. <\/strong>
\nIf there is any holiday that is more “un-Jewish” in the sense
\nof our modern beliefs and practices – I do not know of it.<\/p>\n
\nchildishness, asininity, shallowness, ignorance and fraud is not the
\nChanukah of reality. The Hanukah that came into vogue because Jewish
\nparents – in their vapidness needed something to counteract
\nChristmas; that exploded in a show of “we-have-lights-just-as-our-
\ngoyisha-neighbors” and in an effort to reward our spoiled children
\nwith eight gifts instead of the poor Christian one; the Chanukah that
\nthe Temple, under its captive Rabbi, turned into a school pageant so
\nthat the beaming parents might think that the Religious School is
\nreally successful instead of the tragic oke and waste that it really
\nis;<\/strong> the Chanukah<\/strong> that speaks of Jewish
\n Patrick Henrys giving-me-liberty-or-death and that
\npictures the Maccabees as great liberal saviors who fought so that
\nthe kibbutzim might continue to be free to preach their Marx and eat
\ntheir ham, that the split-level dwellers of suburbia might be allowed to
\nviolate their Sabbath in perfect freedom and the Reform and Conservative
\nTemples continue to fight for civil rights for Blacks, Puerto Ricans and
\nJane Fonda, is not remotely connected with reality.<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nof Eastern Europe and Yemen and Morocco and Spain and Babylon. It is
\nsurely not the Chanukah for which the Maccabees themselves died. <\/strong>
\nTruly, could those whom we honor so munificently, return and see what
\nChanukah has become, they might very well begin a second Maccabean
\nrevolt. For the life that we Jews lead today was the very cause, the
\nreal reason for the revolt of the Jews “in those days in our times.<\/strong>”<\/p>\n
\nhandful of Jews to rise up in violence against the enemy? And
\nprecisely who was the enemy? What were they fighting for and who were
\nthey fighting against?<\/strong> For years the people of Judea had been the
\nvassals of Greece. True independence as a state had been unknown for
\nall those decades and, yet the Jews did not rise in revolt. It was
\nonly when the Greek policy shifted from mere political control to one
\nthat attempted to suppress the Jewish religion that the revolt
\nerupted in all its bloodiness. It was not mere liberty that led to
\nthe Maccabean uprising that we so passionately applaud. What we are
\nreally cheering is a brave group of Jews who fought and plunged Judea
\ninto a bloodbath for the right to observe the Sabbath, to follow the
\nlaws of kashrut, to obey the laws of the Torah.<\/strong> In a word everything
\nabout Chanukah that we commemorate and teach our children to
\ncommemorate are things we consider to be outmoded, medieval, and
\nchildish!<\/p>\n
\nobscurantist. Had we lived in those days we would certainly not have
\ndone what they did for everyone knows that the laws of the Torah are
\nnot really Divine but only the products of evolution and men (do not
\nthe Reform, Reconstructionist, and large parts of the Conservative
\nmovements write this daily?) Surely we would not have fought for that
\nwhich we violate every day of our lives. No, at best Chanukah emerges
\nas a needless holiday if not a foolish one. Poor Hannah and her seven
\nchildren; poor Mattathias and Judah; poor well meaning chaps all —
\nbut hopelessly backward and utterly unnecessary sacrifices.<\/p>\n
\nunnecessary holiday, it is also one that is dangerously fanatical and
\nilliberal. The first act of rebellion, the first enemy who fell at
\nthe hands of the brave Jewish heroes whom our delightful children
\nportray so cleverly in their Sunday and religious school pageants,
\nwas not a Greek. He was a Jew. When the enemy sent his troops into
\nModin to set up an idol and demand its worship, it was a Jew who
\ndecided to exercise his freedom of pagan worship and who approached
\nthe altar to worship Zeus (after all, what business was it of anyone
\nwhat this fellow worshiped?) And it was this Jew, this apostate, this
\nreligious traitor who was struck down by the brave, glorious,
\ncourageous, (are these not the words all our Sunday schools use to
\ndescribe him?) Mattathias, as he shouted: “Whoever is for G-d, follow
\nme!”<\/p>\n
\nWhat kind of a man is this for the anti-religious Ha’shomer Ha’tzair,
\nthe graceful temples of suburbia, the sophisticated intellectuals,
\nthe liberal, open-minded Jews and all the drones who have wearied us
\nunto death with the concept of Judaism as a humanistic, open-minded,
\nundogmatic, liberal, universalist (if not Marxist) religion, to
\nhonor? What kind of nationalism is this for Shimon Peres (he who
\nrejects the ‘Galut’ and speaks of the proud, free Jew of ancient
\nJudea and Israel)?<\/p>\n
\npeace which deplores violence), what kind of Jews were these who
\nreacted to oppression with force? Surely we who so properly have
\ndeplored Jewish violence as fascistic, immoral and (above all) un-
\nJewish, stand in horror as we contemplate Jews who declined to picket
\nthe Syrian Greeks to death and who rejected quiet diplomacy for the
\nsword, spear and arrow (had there been bombs in those days, who can
\ntell what they might have done?) and “descended to the level
\nof ‘evil” thus rejecting the ethical and moral concepts of Judaism.<\/p>\n
\nkinds of men we want our moral and humanistic children to honor? Is
\nthis the kind of Judaism that we wish to observe and pass on to our
\nchildren? Where shall we find the man of courage, the lone voice in
\nthe wilderness, to cry out against Chanukah and the Judaism that it
\nrepresents – the Judaism of our grandparents and ancestors?<\/p>\n
\nJudaism of medievalism and outdated foolishness; the Judaism of
\nbigotry that strikes down Jews who refuse to observe the Law; the
\nJudaism of violence that calls for Jewish force and might against the
\nenemy? When shall we find the courage to proudly eat our Chinese food
\nand violate our Sabbaths and reject all the separateness, nationalism
\nand religious maximalism that Chanukah so ignobly represents? Down
\nwith Chanukah! It is a regressive holiday that merely symbolizes the
\nJudaism that always was; the Judaism that was handed down to us from
\nSinai; the Judaism that made our ancestors ready to give their lives
\nfor the L-rd; the Judaism that young people instinctively know is
\ntrue and great and real. Such a Judaism is dangerous for us and our
\nleaders. We must do all in our power to bury it.<\/p>\n
\nFrom MB:<\/strong><\/p>\n