"In the United States, hanukkah takes on a cosmic significance: here it is the Jewish Christmas, our inclusion into the flurry of lights and holiday music that comes every year, a nod to include Jews in the omnipresent holiday spirit." -- Zeke Gerwein
Every year around Christmas it gets a little uncomfortable to be a Jew. Not uncomfortable in a dangerous way, just uncomfortable like the feeling of watching people get excited about something that doesn’t have anything to do with you. Every year, America is celebrating without you.
Not entirely without you. The Jewish Festival of Lights, Hanukkah, falls within a month of Christmas (due to the Jewish lunar calendar the exact date varies year by year). In the United States, the relatively minor holiday takes on an almost cosmic significance: here it is the Jewish Christmas, our inclusion into the flurry of lights and holiday music that comes every year, a nod to include Jews in the omnipresent holiday spirit.
Hanukkah, ironically one of the few holidays celebrated widely by secular Jews, commemorates Jewish self-determination and deals heavily with themes of assimilation and loss of tradition. At the time of the Maccabees, the Seleucid Greeks had colonized Ancient Judea and forced Jews to worship Greek gods alongside traditional Jewish observance. Though this seems like an obviously drastic step through a modern lense, the Seleucids anticipated little resistance. Many of the Jews in ancient Judea were “Hellenized”, or assimilated. Many of them ate pork, did not observe the Jewish holidays, and made occasional sacrifices to the Greek gods. In response to the Seleucid decree a group of rebels, the Maccabees, rebelled and established an independent state.
Hanukkah is one of the few Jewish holidays based on a text that does not explicitly mention God. Technically speaking, Hanukkah is a ‘festival’ and not a ‘holiday’: not considered sacred enough to induce abstaining from work as traditional Jews do on many other Jewish holidays. With its proximity to Christmas, however, Hanukkah has become a culturally more significant holiday in the United States. It reduces the sense of duality that American Jews feel around the holiday season and provides an alternative to Christmas.
When seen closer, however, Hannukah can bring discomfort to many 21st century American Jews, specifically among the parallels between ancient Hellenized Jews and modern non-religious American Jews. In their rebellion against Greek colonialism, the Maccabees massacred a fair number of Hellenized Jews. Assimilation in the face of occupation was seen as traitorous.
In her article “Actually You Can’t Celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas”, Jordana Horn writes that, “When we light the hanukkiah [menorah], we do it in our windows, to show the world that we are proud to be Jewish and nothing else. We celebrate who we are. We celebrate that despite thousands of years of persecution and hatred, we are still here.”
Any Hebrew school kid will tell you, the crushing forces of guilt are incredibly powerful forces in encouraging Jewish observance. But is it a healthy one?
“What am I if not a Hellenized Jew?” writes Michael David Lukas in his New York Times op-ed, “The Hypocrisy of Hanukkah.” “I eat pork every so often...And while I’ve never offered burned sacrifices to Zeus, I do go to yoga occasionally. When it comes down to it, it’s pretty clear that the Maccabees would have hated me.”
This kind of discomfort with guilt and pressures to become more religious is the flip side to the kind of vervid calls to higher observance like Jordana Horn’s. Either way, as Jews we’re in an uncomfortable position around Christmas. The growing similarities between the way Hanukkah and Christmas are celebrated in the United States is conducive of the larger dichotomy between Jewish assimilation and traditionalism. This divide crops up in most aspects of Jewish life, from bar mitzvahs to intermarriage.
Either way, if there’s anything that Hanukkah shows us is that Jews resent being told what to do.
Not entirely without you. The Jewish Festival of Lights, Hanukkah, falls within a month of Christmas (due to the Jewish lunar calendar the exact date varies year by year). In the United States, the relatively minor holiday takes on an almost cosmic significance: here it is the Jewish Christmas, our inclusion into the flurry of lights and holiday music that comes every year, a nod to include Jews in the omnipresent holiday spirit.
Hanukkah, ironically one of the few holidays celebrated widely by secular Jews, commemorates Jewish self-determination and deals heavily with themes of assimilation and loss of tradition. At the time of the Maccabees, the Seleucid Greeks had colonized Ancient Judea and forced Jews to worship Greek gods alongside traditional Jewish observance. Though this seems like an obviously drastic step through a modern lense, the Seleucids anticipated little resistance. Many of the Jews in ancient Judea were “Hellenized”, or assimilated. Many of them ate pork, did not observe the Jewish holidays, and made occasional sacrifices to the Greek gods. In response to the Seleucid decree a group of rebels, the Maccabees, rebelled and established an independent state.
Hanukkah is one of the few Jewish holidays based on a text that does not explicitly mention God. Technically speaking, Hanukkah is a ‘festival’ and not a ‘holiday’: not considered sacred enough to induce abstaining from work as traditional Jews do on many other Jewish holidays. With its proximity to Christmas, however, Hanukkah has become a culturally more significant holiday in the United States. It reduces the sense of duality that American Jews feel around the holiday season and provides an alternative to Christmas.
When seen closer, however, Hannukah can bring discomfort to many 21st century American Jews, specifically among the parallels between ancient Hellenized Jews and modern non-religious American Jews. In their rebellion against Greek colonialism, the Maccabees massacred a fair number of Hellenized Jews. Assimilation in the face of occupation was seen as traitorous.
In her article “Actually You Can’t Celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas”, Jordana Horn writes that, “When we light the hanukkiah [menorah], we do it in our windows, to show the world that we are proud to be Jewish and nothing else. We celebrate who we are. We celebrate that despite thousands of years of persecution and hatred, we are still here.”
Any Hebrew school kid will tell you, the crushing forces of guilt are incredibly powerful forces in encouraging Jewish observance. But is it a healthy one?
“What am I if not a Hellenized Jew?” writes Michael David Lukas in his New York Times op-ed, “The Hypocrisy of Hanukkah.” “I eat pork every so often...And while I’ve never offered burned sacrifices to Zeus, I do go to yoga occasionally. When it comes down to it, it’s pretty clear that the Maccabees would have hated me.”
This kind of discomfort with guilt and pressures to become more religious is the flip side to the kind of vervid calls to higher observance like Jordana Horn’s. Either way, as Jews we’re in an uncomfortable position around Christmas. The growing similarities between the way Hanukkah and Christmas are celebrated in the United States is conducive of the larger dichotomy between Jewish assimilation and traditionalism. This divide crops up in most aspects of Jewish life, from bar mitzvahs to intermarriage.
Either way, if there’s anything that Hanukkah shows us is that Jews resent being told what to do.
