Chanukah - Rabbi Dr Walter Rothschild

CHANUKAH REVERSED?

This year we have another “Conjunctio Magna” - the technical term for the coincidence of two major celestial events. According to astronomical research, there was one of these in the year 4 BCE, and some believe that the so-called “Star of Bethlehem” was such an event in the night sky, a conjunction of two planets or stars. In 2024/5785 there is Chanukkah and Christmas at the same time. Of course, Chanukkah came BEFORE Christmas, and the two have little to do with each other (although both require lights and both begin on the 25th of each month), but we can't help but feel that Christians have conquered this festival and made it their own, with Angels, nutcrackers in Russian military uniforms, chocolate and foil Santa Claus, reindeer with LED lights, Christmas trees, tinsel and candles and whatnot. Oh, and somehow, almost unnoticed these days, there is the idea of the birth of a Messiah.

In the past, it was always dangerous for Jews when Passover and Easter coincided. These pious believers claimed first that their Messiah had not really died, and then they accused the Jews of having killed him! A multiple contradiction but unfortunately typical of lazy theology and it often led to attacks on the local Jews. Should we Jews now in return organize a big demonstration at Easter and accuse the Italians of being the legal successors of a Roman occupying army that arrested, tortured and cruelly executed an unarmed Jewish dissenter almost two thousand years ago? That would be just as logical.

And Chanukkah? ''Mai Chanukah?'' asks the Talmud, although Chanukkah does not fall in May. ''What is that?'' The rabbis weren't so sure themselves anymore. It would be celebrated, yes, but Why? Is it just about light and lights? Or is it also about a spiritual story? If so, which one? For us, too, the question arises as to whether it is about more than just sufganiot, candles and presents. The Maccabees of that time seem to have been the Fundamentalists of their time, fighting - successfully - against influences they labeled “pagan” or ''Greek''. And they were right. Yet the Temple they ''rescued'' and rededicated was destroyed again two centuries later and Judaism learned to live without it.

So where do we stand today when it comes to fundamentalism? Are we like Maccabees or Hellenists and how are these terms to be defined? Are the Greeks of today also to blame for the Hellenism that spread its influence through the Middle East at that time? What do the multitudinous fragmented splinter groups in Syria now have to do with the ''Syrians'' of then?

The irony of history is that today we have to fight FOR our Western, liberal values and AGAINST dogmatic ritualism and fundamentalism. Even in Eretz Yisrael. Even if it seems attractive to some meshuggaim right now, Judaism is no longer really about the rebuilding of the Third Temple or the purification of the altar, but about the restoration of Jewish ethics and self-purification. And it needs to defend itself if necessary.

In Israel there is currently (again) an internal dispute; there are very pious Charedim who claim that they are the only true Jews, and very secular Chilonim who claim that THEY are the only true Jews, and meanwhile the Dati-Le'umi who are ''pious, but not too pious'' .... Of course they are all wrong, because only I personally am the only true Jew, but not everyone wants to see that. At least, not yet. And so we enter into the spirit of Chanukkah. And commemorate an endless inner-Jewish dispute......

Rabbi Dr. Walter Rothschild Berlin