What Hanukah Really Celebrates
Backwardness, primitivism, and irrationality, writes Hitchens on Slate:
Jewish orthodoxy possesses the interesting feature of naming and combating the idea of the apikoros or "Epicurean"--the intellectual renegade who prefers Athens to Jerusalem and the schools of philosophy to the grim old routines of the Torah. About a century and a half before the alleged birth of the supposed Jesus of Nazareth (another event that receives semiofficial recognition at this time of the year), the Greek or Epicurean style had begun to gain immense ground among the Jews of Syria and Palestine. The Seleucid Empire, an inheritance of Alexander the Great--Alexander still being a popular name among Jews--had weaned many people away from the sacrifices, the circumcisions, the belief in a special relationship with God, and the other reactionary manifestations of an ancient and cruel faith. I quote Rabbi Michael Lerner, an allegedly liberal spokesman for Judaism who nonetheless knows what he hates: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 theater of Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes.But away with all that, says Lerner. Let us instead celebrate the Maccabean peasants who wanted to destroy Hellenism and restore what he actually calls "oldtime religion." His excuse for preferring fundamentalist thuggery to secularism and philosophy is that Hellenism was "imperialistic," but the Hasmonean regime that resulted from the Maccabean revolt soon became exorbitantly corrupt, vicious, and divided, and encouraged the Roman annexation of Judea. Had it not been for this no-less imperial event, we would never have had to hear of Jesus of Nazareth or his sect--which was a plagiarism from fundamentalist Judaism--and the Jewish people would never have been accused of being deicidal "Christ killers." Thus, to celebrate Hanukkah is to celebrate not just the triumph of tribal Jewish backwardness but also the accidental birth of Judaism's bastard child in the shape of Christianity. You might think that masochism could do no more. Except that it always can. Without the precedents of Orthodox Judaism and Roman Christianity, on which it is based and from which it is borrowed, there would be no Islam, either. Every Jew who honors the Hanukkah holiday because it gives his child an excuse to mingle the dreidel with the Christmas tree and the sleigh (neither of these absurd symbols having the least thing to do with Palestine two millenniums past) is celebrating the making of a series of rods for his own back. And this is not just a disaster for the Jews. When the fanatics of Palestine won that victory, and when Judaism repudiated Athens for Jerusalem, the development of the whole of humanity was terribly retarded.
It is a bit disingenuous to describe the Greeks this way. It wasn't so much the discussions of Aristotle that the Jews objected too - in fact the Christians a while later took anything Greek they could, and referred to anyone who didn't as 'Primitive'.
The Hellenists of the time were attempting to destroy any vestige of Jewish religion at the edge of the sword. In fact, the whole Jewish rebellion happened because a certain Maccabee was threatened with his life if he did not sacrifice a swine.
Hitchens is stretching and omitting the facts as he pleases to suit his point. Love religion or hate it, Hitchens is skewing the historical context.
Zen at December 12, 2009 12:54 AM
Jews celebrate a one-day supply of oil lasting for eight days. Christians celebrate a virgin getting knocked-up. You ask me, the Jewish belief is much more plausible.
Patrick at December 12, 2009 1:25 AM
LOL; equal opportunity bashing of all the major religions. As a wise man once said: "God is santa claus, for adults."
Bengoshi at December 12, 2009 7:43 AM
yeah, and?
so lets say none of it happened... does he assume that something better would have happened in it's place? Lose the dark ages, but also the Renaissance? It's all well and good to wish that a bad historical thing never happened, but assuming whatever took it's place would HAVE to be better is foolish. Besides, what does he think of the Pantheon? It's not like most people in the world at that time didn't believe in some kind of god or gods. It's not like they didn't go to war over this or that, usually believing that their religion was on their side. Plus the barbarians were obviously always around too.
It's also entirely possible that civilization would have simply ended in Europe and the Med, as the barbarians destroyed everything, and then the Black Death showed up to kill everyone. That leaves a lot of other people in the world who believe in various gods and go about their own lives and civilizations. Were the Inca or Maya, somehow much happier shiney happy people? Seems like there was human sacrifice involved there.
Or are we going to blame the Macabees for that too?
SwissArmyD at December 12, 2009 8:16 AM
I'm currently reading "Turning Points in Western Technology" (DS Cardwell), which argues that the Greek and Roman societies were actually inhibitors to science-based technological development, whereas Christianity (and, by extension, Judaism, though the author doesn't explicitly say that) provided a much more positive mental framework for such development:
"Christianity laid positive duties on men while at the same time rejecting the enrvating fatalism of so many ancient and Eastern religions. It provided the right spiritual armor for a man confronting nature in the raw. There is one sovereign Deity who is the ultimate protector and savior. One does not need to--indeed one must not--appeals to a host of minor deities, godlings, spirits, ghosts."
david foster at December 12, 2009 8:59 AM
"In fact, the whole Jewish rebellion happened because a certain Maccabee was threatened with his life if he did not sacrifice a swine."
The whole story is probably BS, However, you are not telling the next part. Mattathias killed a Jew who was willing to make a sacrifice. He ran away with his sons and started the rebellion.
Muslim riots against others frequently start because someone claims that a Koran was desecrated of a Muslim girl was raped.
I come from a traditional Jewish background. I refuse to have anything to do with Chanukah because it is a celebration of a victory of the Jewish Taliban.
.
David H at December 12, 2009 9:47 AM
Only axe-grinding Jews and nervous atheists enjoy this kind of puerile axe-grinding - but if you represent rationality, you should at least be accurate.
The Greek culture of the time was brutal, misogynist, and embraced slavery, sexploitation, and dishonesty.
No great bargain.
As the old (probably Jewish) saying goes, "If the Greek gods steal, by whom do their followers swear."
Ben-David at December 12, 2009 12:58 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/12/12/what_hanukah_re.html#comment-1682031">comment from Ben-DavidDoes Hitchens come off as "nervous" to you? I'm certainly not a "nervous atheist."
Amy Alkon at December 12, 2009 2:01 PM
By the way, Amy, there's an ad on this site that's the most obnoxious in the world. It's the one that shows a really bad drawing of a woman in a swimsuit, and she slims down.
The reason it's obnoxious is because you have to sit through a presentation and there's no way to bypass it, not if you want to eventually find out the price, what's included, etc.
Personally, I'd rather just be able to skip to the end when I get the idea and read the details I'm curious about. By the end of the presentation I was fuming. I was looking for a "Contact Us" link just so I could tell him how much I thought his presentation sucked.
Patrick at December 12, 2009 2:38 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/12/12/what_hanukah_re.html#comment-1682036">comment from PatrickThey revolve, and I don't choose them - they're content driven - but thank you for clicking on it!
Amy Alkon at December 12, 2009 2:58 PM
Ben David
And Greek culture differed from any other culture of the time ......how?
Richard Cook at December 12, 2009 4:33 PM
There would hve been need for the Renaissance if not for the Black Ages. How much farther along would we be if they hadn't burned the library?
Even now (and recent past), how much farther along would we be if Darwin would have been believed. And egregious as this sounds, how far behind if Hitler had been strangled at birth. (The references to the NAZI death camps in recent sudies are numerous but subtle.)
Either way science is not trusted by the general public; but at the same time scince declres theory as fact.
Both have issues, but I trust proven, or substantiated fact.
Jim P. at December 12, 2009 5:32 PM
No biggie about the ad, darlin'. Just thought an ad that offensive needed to be mentioned. I feel that if you want to sell me something, I should have the option of cutting to the chase. I could have been already sold on the product and anxious to get to the place to order it, but if I were, my interest went out the door when I was being held virtual prisoner having to listen to his blather.
Patrick at December 13, 2009 2:31 AM
Goddess:
Does Hitchens come off as "nervous" to you?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Hitchens alternates between the "reasonable man frustrated with bedlam" act and the petulant "where's my prune juice" rant of a crotchety alter-kocker.
Nothing of his that I've read deviates from these two voices.
Ben-David at December 13, 2009 10:47 AM
Richard Cook:
And Greek culture differed from any other culture of the time ......how?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Judaism was not misogynist - by the time of the Maccabees there was already a well-established tradition of equality of women in property ownership and tort law, and marriage contracts protecting women from abandonment and poverty.
The Jewish sages had already continued the Torah's direction of legislatively restricting slavery.
And the Torah set clear standards of moral and ethical behavior that were completely unknown in most of the surrounding pagan cultures - but especially in Greece, where the gods themselves practiced deception.
Ben-David at December 13, 2009 10:54 AM
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