A Chanukkah Message

To me, this recognition of the dark side of the Macabees is merely an allegoric expression of the unease a growing number of American Jews feel about the actions of modern Israel.  I believe a growing number of American Jews see Israeli leaders as acting unjustly, and the Israeli Jews who support those leaders, as acting as zealots who disdain the best rabbinic universalist and pluralistic values (recognizing the Talmud is full of contradictions and things we like in certain times, not so much in others, and outright horrid positions vis a vis those who are non-Jews).

People in my and my parents' generation had hope for Israel as "a light unto nations,"* and coming into being with the vanquishing of Haman, as if we were living in a real live Purim, where Israel represented the triumph of Jewish people against a tyrant and tyranny in general. And the idea that the Jewish girl in the Purim story, Esther, marries the non-Jewish king, was seen as a triumph of assimilation while maintaining one's identity as a Jew, which is the story we like to tell each other in America.  But, as the Palestinian issue continues to wear on, and with the rise of religious zealots in tandem with right wing Zionists controlling the policies of the Israeli government, this dark side of Hanukkah becomes more and more salient to more and more American Jews.

It is wrong to push too much presentism on an ancient world, but it is interesting to me how some aspects of the ancient world become illuminators for us in the present.

* The great early 20th Century American political writer, Randolph Bourne, wrote often about his disdain of the excesses of the nation-state, particularly in the context of his opposition to the rampant nationalism which led us into World War I, which he also opposed.  His one hope for an exception to his transnationalist position was his support for the Zionist movement.  To say this colloquially, he had hope the Jews would do nationalism right.  Alas...