Last night we lit the Hanukkah menorah. After all, Hanukah is called the Festival of Lights. Compared to Christmas, Hanukkah is second fiddle. American Reform Jewish families couldn’t compete with Christmas—but they tried. Thus, parents gave their kids Hanukkah gifts in lieu of Christmas presents. Yet just as many forget the true meaning of Christmas as a Christian holiday—and not a secular one worshipping capitalistic over-consumption of material goods—many also forget the true meaning of Hanukkah.
My non-Christian friends remind me that the real message of Christmas is peace on earth and good will to men. That is something everyone, regardless of religion, can embrace.
But Hanukkah also celebrates a message that all Americans, regardless of religion, can also embrace: religious freedom is worth fighting for.
It occurs to me that this is the first Hanukkah since the Insurrection of the Capitol on January 6th, just less than a year ago. Yet the events that led to the celebration of Hanukkah go back a little further—168 BCE, about two thousand and two hundred years ago.
And just as there are Republican revisionists who deliberately distort and deny what really happened on January 6th, some historians believe the story of Hanukkah was also distorted for political purposes.
Yet although these two events are quite different, there are some similar parallels worth noting. I am not comparing Hanukah to Christmas; I am comparing the Insurrection against the Capitol with the desecration of the Temple in Israel two millennium ago.
According to the standard history as recorded in ancient Jewish texts (but occurred after the Bible was completed), the Greek King Antiochus, like one Donald J. Trump, was an anti-religious-freedom tyrant. Quoting from History.com:
Antiochus IV Epiphanes, proved less benevolent [than his father]: Ancient sources recount that he outlawed the Jewish religion and ordered the Jews to worship Greek gods. In 168 B.C., his soldiers descended upon Jerusalem, massacring thousands of people and desecrating the city’s holy Second Temple by erecting an altar to Zeus and sacrificing pigs within its sacred walls.
The US Capitol is not a sacred temple—or is it? For centuries Church and State were one. This is why Antiochus had his soldiers attack the Temple. Since he had conquered the Jewish people, he had no religious tolerance for the Jews who refused to worship Gods and expected them to totally adopt Greek culture and religion. But a band of Jewish zealots, the Maccabees, had the attitude, “Like Hell we will!”
They fought back against insurmountable odds, preferring to die rather than sacrifice their freedom to worship the one true God. Yet even against incredible odds, they prevailed.
The Temple was the primary edifice that symbolized the faith of the people. Today, in our far more secular world, the Capitol is the primary edifice that symbolizes our faith in Democracy—government of, by, and for the people.
And just as the treasonist Trumptorian deplorable vandals and insurrectionists were depositing feces and urine throughout the halls of Congress; the soldiers of Antiochus allowed pigs to freely roam the Temple they vandalized and desecrated.
“There was an intentional effort to degrade the Capitol building”...“There was urine. There was clear desecration.”
After the victory by the Maccabees against the tyrant Greek King, the Jewish people set about repairing, cleansing, and rededicating the Temple. According to legend, there was only enough oil to light the Ner Tamid—the eternal light and symbol of the eternity of God—for one day. Problem was, it would take over a week to get new oil. Yet supposedly the one day’s supply of oil miraculously lasted eight days—long enough to keep the Ner Tamid burning without ever going out.
Regardless of whether one believes this miracle, which explains why the holiday of Hanukkah lasts eight days, it emphasizes the importance of preserving faith in an eternal God, even when vandals and insurrectionists have destroyed the Temple. Likewise, we Americans who witnessed the desecration of the Capitol must preserve our faith in Democracy.
Although I have already showed some parallels between the Insurrection of the Capitol and the Desecration of the Temple in ancient Israel, there is another one I wasn’t even aware of until I dug deeper into the history. One might criticize my perspective by pointing out that the conflict was between the Jews and their Greek-Syrian oppressors; whereas our conflict last January was between one group of Americans against another group of Americans.
Yet some historians make the case that the battle 2200 years ago was as much as a civil insurrection as a foreign attack. Apparently many Jewish people didn’t mind adopting Hellenistic [Greek] culture and turned their back on their old faith. One might say the conflict was between different factions of Jews who violently disagreed over the role of religion. According to History.com.
Jerusalem under Antiochus IV had erupted into civil war between two camps of Jews: those who had assimilated into the dominant culture that surrounded them, adopting Greek and Syrian customs; and those who were determined to impose Jewish laws and traditions, even if by force. The traditionalists won out in the end, with the Hasmonean dynasty—led by Judah Maccabee’s brother and his descendants—wresting control of the Land of Israel from the Seleucids and maintaining an independent Jewish kingdom for more than a century.
Who knows what history will be written about the January 6th Insurrection two hundred years from now? I pray history written then will record that in the years 2020 and 2021 Democracy in America was hanging by a thread, but thanks to the bravery of a select few, Democracy was preserved and the dark forces of tyrannical Trumporian rule faded away. Something to think about when lighting a Hanukkah menorah—or lighting a Christmas tree. After all, both Christmas and Hanukkah are festivals of light—and light is a shining symbol of truth overcoming the darkness of ignorance and hate.
