The Feast of Dedication 

The Rev. Ron Sala

Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford

December 1, 2002 

 

 

We’re all familiar with the much-touted advances in worker productivity these days, which have come from computers. Sometimes, though, I can’t help but wonder how much more productive we could all be if it weren’t for all the Internet humor people spend their time circulating. I don’t know anyone responsible for actually writing these jokes and lists—maybe our computers write them by themselves. But the scarcity of authors is more than made up for by the Internet’s rabbit-like powers of reproduction.

Once in a while, something comes across my desktop that’s moderately humorous. One such piece is called “Top 10 Reasons Hanukkah is Better Than Christmas.” At the risk of some embarrassment, here goes:

No matter how silly a joke is ministers have the bad habit of trying finding some meaning in it. I’m no exception. The meaning that strikes me here is the valuing of differences. Of course Hanukkah isn’t better than Christmas—or vice versa. But there is a delicious variety in the experience of these two very different holidays that the list points up. Driedls and pine needles, blitzes and fruitcakes. There are so many ways of celebrating heritage and the beauty of life!

But of course, people don’t always see the value in each other’s cultural expressions, or even tolerate them to exist. Such a history of intolerance and persecution is the origin of Hanukkah itself.

In the fourth century before the Common Era, Philip of Macedon invaded Greece, including the great culture capital of Athens. Like any good father, Philip wanted the best education for his son, Alexander. And the best is what he got, in the form of no less a distinguished tutor than Aristotle himself. Alexander loved learning. He absorbed the epics of Homer, learned more than anyone had before about the natural world, and by the time his father died became perhaps the most scholarly ruler to ever occupy a throne.

While his father was a great military leader, Alexander’s conquests were unsurpassed. He extended his territory from Macedonia and Greece to Egypt and the Middle East, all the way to the border of India. But Alexander didn’t just want to conquer lands, but hearts and minds as well. He adopted the Hellenistic culture of Athens as his “New World Order.” He believed, with other Hellenists, that there were two kinds of people in the world: Greeks and barbarians in need of Greek civilization.

And as we all know, the Greeks had a great civilization: theatre, fine literature, athletics, philosophy. Much of what we take for granted in our modern world as civilization came out of one Greek mind or other. But Hellenistic culture had a darker side as well. As we’ve already considered, there was the tendency to devalue any idea not of Greek origin. The self-evident superiority of their own civilization blinded them to the possibility that other peoples might have valid viewpoints as well.

There were also some specific cultural practices that Greeks took for granted that strike us today as highly immoral. For instance, infanticide was common. Newborns would often be left outside in clay jars to die of exposure or starve to death. They might be deformed in some way. (To the Greeks, physical perfection was a prime value). Or there might be too many mouths to feed or too many heirs to divide the inheritance among.

There was also pederasty, the pairing of grown men with boys for sexual gratification. A whole philosophy grew up around this practice in which the men would become mentors and military trainers for the boys they cavorted with.

Philosophically, religiously, and culturally, Greeks and Jews had many differences.

When the Greeks marched into tiny Israel, there was no military resistance. But when, in the years after Alexander’s death, the occupiers tried to enforce cultural assimilation, they were surprised at the response. Unknown to them, they had come across a people just as dedicated to culture and learning as they—and just as dedicated to their own unique worldview and way of life.

The Jews were and are a small people, but their impact on our contemporary world has been just as important as that of the world-conquering Greeks. Winston Churchill said,

No other two races have set such a mark upon the world. Each of them from angles so different have left us with the inheritance of its genius and wisdom. No two cities have counted more with Mankind than Athens and Jerusalem. Personally, I have always been on the side of both.

But it was difficult to be on the side of both in 199 BCE, the year in which one branch of Alexander’s military legacy, the Seleucids, wrested control of Israel from another branch, the Ptolomies. Whereas the Ptolomies had a spotted record toward the Jews, at times tyrannical and at times relatively tolerant, the Seleucids were determined that Judaism be wiped out. They passed harsh laws against the practice of the Jewish religion and even placed a statue of Zeus in the Temple in Jerusalem. When the authorities demanded that a certain elder named Mattisyahu betray his faith by offering a sacrifice to one of the Greek gods, he refused. But another Jew stepped forward to do it instead. Enraged, Mattisyahu took up a sword and killed the man, along with a number of Greek soldiers. The Jewish revolt had begun.

The Jews didn’t stand a chance. They were a small people, vastly outnumbered, destined, it seemed, to suffer the same fate as so many small peoples before and since—humiliation and death. But that’s not how it turned out. With their proverbial backs to the wall, faced with the destruction of all they held dear, Jewish fighters managed to recapture their Temple after two years of conflict.

It was in 165 BCE that the famous miracle of the oil was to have taken place. The Hebrew word “Hanukkah” means “dedication,” for it commemorates the rededication of the Temple. Tradition tells us that upon reentering their desecrated Temple, Jewish rebels found but one day’s supply of the consecrated oil they needed for the menorah. New oil would take seven days to prepare, but we’re told that small amount of oil lasted eight days till the new oil was ready.

What a potent symbol of resistance in the face of persecution that miracle is! It seems to say that, no matter the odds, we are aided in our struggle for freedom and dignity by a deep, miraculous source in the midst of the community of faith.

And faith was what the Jewish resistance needed. To once again borrow from Churchill, it was not the beginning of the end for them, but only the end of the beginning. They would continue to struggle with their oppressors for the next quarter century, until they were able to establish an independent state.

It’s frightening to think how close Judaism came to being obliterated at the time of the first Hanukkah. It’s also difficult to imagine the many ways we would all be impoverished if it had been. In his book, The World’s Religions, Huston Smith reflects on the impact the Jewish legacy has had on our world today. Smith writes,

[It] has been estimated that one-third of our Western civilization bears the marks of its Jewish ancestry. We feel its force in the names we give to our children: Adam Smith, Noah Webster, Abraham Lincoln, Isaac Newton, Rebecca West, Sarah Teasdale, Grandma Moses. Michelangelo felt it when he chiseled his “David” and painted the Sistine Ceiling; Dante when he wrote the Divine Comedy and Milton, Paradise Lost. The United States carries the indelible stamp of its Jewish heritage in its collective life: the phrase “by their Creator” in the Declaration of Independence; the words “Proclaim Liberty throughout the land” on the Liberty Bell.

“The real impact of the ancient Jews, however,” Smith writes, “lies in the extent to which Western civilization took over their angle of vision on the deepest questions life poses.”

Of course, the urge to suppress or even destroy people unlike oneself is not confined to the time of the original Hanukkah of 165 BCE. Shimon Apisdorf writes of one Hanukkah under the worst of conditions:

At the conclusion of every sixteen-hour work day, in the hell called Bergen Belsen, the block commander liked to have some fun with his Jews.

The meal at the end of the day consisted of old dry bread, filthy watery soup and a pat of something like margarine made from vegetable fat. The margarine was scooped out of a large tub, and after the meal had been distributed and the tub was empty, the commander allowed the starving prisoners to jump into the empty tub and lick the remaining margarine from the walls of the tub. The sight of starving Jews licking up bits of margarine provided nightly entertainment for the commander and his guards.

One prisoner, however, refused to be a part of the commander[’]s show. Though like all the rest he was a withered, starving shadow of a man aged far beyond his years, still, he would never allow himself to scavenge for a lick of margarine. The other prisoners called him Elijah. In some unspoken way, the others drew strength from Elijah’s refusal to join the frenzy.

Then, one night, something happened that seemed to shatter whatever spirit remained in the prisoners. Elijah cracked. All at once he threw himself into the greasy vat and furiously rolled around like a crazed beast. And how the commander howled; it was a deep belly laugh of satanic satisfaction. The last of the Jews had been broken.

Later, after the guards had left and the Jews were in the their barracks, Elijah pulled out a jacket and began to pluck off the buttons. The others looked on in silence—Elijah had gone mad. One by one he separated threads from the buttons of the jacket—and then he looked up.

His eyes were on fire. “Do you know what tonight is?” he demanded. “Tonight is the first night of Chanukah and I’ve been saving little bits of fat to use as candles.”

That night Elijah led the others in the lighting of the Chanukah flames. The candles were made of scraps of old margarine Elijah had saved; the wicks were made of thread; and the fresh margarine Elijah had furiously scavenged for that evening was the oil.

“And Elijah’s flames are still burning,” Apisdorf concludes.

But, of course, hate-inspired violence did not end with the Holocaust of the Second World War.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “Somewhere in America… Every hour someone commits a hate crime. Every day eight blacks, three whites, three gays, three Jews, and one Latino become hate crime victims.” And “Every week a cross is burned.”

Hate crimes range from such brutal murders as Matthew Shepherd or James Byrd to racist arson, vandalism, or graffiti. But all hate crimes carry the same message: People like you are not welcome here. It’s a message antithetical to both faith and democracy. Like the Maccabees of old, we have a long struggle ahead of us.

Hate requires strong action. It is not something that if you ignore it goes away. Instead it grows. There are national organizations tracking hate crimes and organizing people to prevent them, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. There is also ample opportunity for local action such as vigils, interfaith events, interracial mixers, or help to victims of hate crimes.

To illustrate this idea of people of good will coming together, I will conclude with the words of Jim Carrier, who writes of a town perhaps not so unlike our own:

Christmas was just around the corner in 1993 when Billings, Montana, entered a white supremacist hell. Jewish graves were vandalized. Native American homes were sprayed with epithets like “Die Indian.” Skinheads harassed a black church congregation. But these events received scant notice—until 5-year-old Isaac Schnitzer’s holiday peace was shattered.

On Dec. 2, a chunk of cinder block broke his upstairs window. The window displayed a menorah…. Responding police urged his mother, Tammie Schnitzer, to take down all their Jewish symbols. She refused and said so boldly in a news story. She even urged front-page play.

As if suddenly aware of hate in its midst, Billings responded. Vigils were held. Petitions were signed. A painter’s union led 100 people in repainting houses….

The manger of a local sporting goods store, Rick Smith, was so moved by events that he changed the sales pitch on his street marquee. Instead of an ad for school letter jackets, he mounted, in foot-high letters: “Not in Our Town. No Hate. No Violence. Peace on earth.” The marquee got national exposure and “Not in Our Town” became a famous slogan….

Within days, the town erupted in menorahs—purchased at K-mart, Xeroxed in church offices and printed in the Billings Gazette—displayed in thousands of windows. Supremacists went crazy, throwing rocks, shooting out windows, killing a cat with an arrow. “Billings understood that it had a war on its hands,” The New York Times later noted. Still, Mrs. Schnitzer took her son for a ride through town to look at all the menorahs.

“Are they Jewish, too?” a wide-eyed Isaac asked.

“No,” she said, “they’re friends.”

And so may we be. May this be our Dedication, this Hanukkah and throughout the year.

Amen. 

Sources:  

Shimon Apisdorf, Chanukah: Eight Nights of Light Eight Gifts for the Soul (Baltimore: Leviathan Press, 1997). 

Southern Poverty Law Center, 10 Ways to Fight Hate: A Community Response Guide.