Almond: Hanukkah really is about a violent insurgency. It’s about the lengths to which the oppressed will go to defend their beliefs. But it’s also about a strain of unchecked aggression that infects those who are convinced that God is on their side.

December 9, 2007 9:10 am henrymunsonjr Religion and Nationalism, Religion and Violence

Steve Almond, A Very Osama Hanukkah | Jewcy.com, December 4, 2007

Osama Bin Laden may be the person on the planet most attuned to the joys of Hanukkah. As it turns out, the traditional Hanukkah spiel about the oil-that-was-only-supposed-to-last-for-one-day-but-lo-and-behold-it-lasted-for-eight-wowza is mostly Talmudic PR. Contrary to popular myth, the holiday arose from the exact struggle Bin Laden is waging today: an armed rebellion against an imperial power, driven by religious fanaticism and suicidal self-assertion….Judah himself eventually dies, but his brothers Jonathan and Simon carry on the insurgency. Their methods could hardly seem more familiar:

They watched and suddenly saw a noisy crowd with baggage; the bridegroom and his friends and kinsmen had come out to meet the bride’s party with tambourines and musicians and much equipment. The Jews rose up against them from their ambush and killed them. Many fell wounded and after the survivors fled toward the mountain, all their spoils were taken. Thus the wedding was turned into mourning, and the sound of music into lamentation.

Again, from where I’m sitting this sounds a lot like, well, terrorism….

As an assimilated and not-very-observant Jew, I grew up hearing almost exclusively about the miracle of the oil.

The only thing I knew about the Maccabees was that they were heroic defenders of the faith who had something to do with the Jewish Olympics. The modern holiday has been recast as a cheery Festival of Lights, a counterpart to the bright tinsel of Christmas. It’s the same impulse that leads Christians to repackage Easter as a vista of bunnies and candy eggs, rather than the commemoration of a brutal public murder.

But this kind of soft-pedaling distorts our history and distracts us from the true meaning of our holidays. Hanukkah really is about a violent insurgency. It’s about the lengths to which the oppressed will go to defend their beliefs. But it’s also about a strain of unchecked aggression that infects those who are convinced that God is on their side.

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