Tonight is the first night of Hannukah, my goyishe friends, and I wanted to share the true story of the holiday with you all. Most people, Jews included, do not know the historical events surrounding the advent of the holiday, so here it is in all its bloody glory!

http://www.gettingit.com/article/416

Your Foreskin For The Hammer!
The real story of Hanukah
by D. R. Published December 3, 1999 in Scope

Tis the season to be Jewish. Hanukah starts tomorrow [tonight], a full three weeks ahead of Xmas, but at least there's one respect in which Jews and Christians are eminently similar: Our Sunday school teachers are sleek masters of propaganda and lies. The real Hanukah is about as kosher as a HoneyBaked ham: There's no oil, there's gallons of blood, and the heroes are borderline psychopaths... and then there's the whole "forced circumcision" issue.

The Hanukah story that we learned as kids went something like this: Once upon a time there was a mean king (or people or, uh... somebody) who didn't like Jews. He was (or, um, they were) very bad indeed. But the brave, brave Maccabees fought back and won against the amorphous, deed-less, nameless mean guys. And then they were in the Temple and there was only enough lamp oil to last them one night, but they lit it and it lasted for eight whole days -- thus, the miracle of Hanukah. So let's all sing about magic lights and play gambling games and eat fried potato pancakes. Who's got the sour cream?

But it ain't that simple. Don't get me wrong; I am a bigger Jew than you, dear reader, will ever know... but history's history, and it ain't all burning shrubbery and benedictions.

It all started when that big homo Alexander the Great saw, conquered, and came all over Palestine in 332 B.C.E. He brought with him Hellenism -- the idea that, whatever your tribal background, anyone could be a sophisticated man-about-town. Instead of being a drab, backwater "Moabite," "Babylonian," or "Jew," Joe Average could talk philosophy, wear laurels, and drink cosmopolitans; he could be Hellenized.

Maccabees v. Wannabes

Of course, if you're spending all your time hanging out with the boys at the gymnasium, you don't work so hard on your home religion. So tensions developed between the nouveau Greeks and those who thought that Hellenism was a load of colonialist, imperialist bullshit designed to make them sell out their roots and buy SUVs. "Fight the power!" the old school Jews grumbled.

Fast-forward to 175 B.C.E. Alexander's successor, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, takes the throne. Things go to hell over the office of the High Priest; it's the holiest of Jewish positions, and is supposed to be handed down through blood lineage, like a monarchy. But this guy Jason buys the seat off the king and promises to Hellenize everybody. Of course, he gets kicked out, but an even worse schmuck comes in. Then the Jews boot the second guy and, for some reason, Antiochus gets paranoid. Convinced that there's a conspiracy afoot, he slaughters a whole lot of people and desecrates the sacred Jewish Temple.

This is where the Sunday school teachers come in; Antiochus really is an asshole. He orders the Jews to do all sorts of bad shit, like eat pork, violate the Sabbath, and worship icky gods, and all sorts of carnage goes down. "According to the decree," it says in I Maccabees (an apocryphal book of the Hebrew Bible), "they put to death the women who had their children circumcised, and their families and those who circumcised them; and they hung the children from their mothers' necks" (I Mac 1:60-61).

As those acquainted with the story of Herod killing the innocents know, dead babies usually signal that shit's going down. Israel becomes a comply-or-die state; the moderate, Greek-freakin' Jews kiss major ass to stay alive. The punk-rock anti-establishment Jews, on the other hand, decide that it's now or never for their 2,000-year-old tradition, and they start to work it on the hara-kiri tip. They're against the Greeks, sure, but they're really set off by the sight of other Jews kowtowing to The Man. The PR people really hate this part: Hanukah's really a Jew-on-Jew civil war.

So this guy Mattathyah bar Hasmon kills another Jew as he's making a pig sacrifice, (I Mac 2:23) and then a small handful of ultra-Orthodox right-wing zealots -- the ones that get called reactionary fundies nowadays -- run for the hills and start... well, guerrilla warfare, basically. It's a violent revolt, old-style -- lead by Mattathyah's son, Judah, who was such a bad motherfucker that they called him "the Maccabee" -- the Hammer.

Please, Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em

Originally, before all that oil-lamp hoo-hah, the great miracle of Hanukah is this: against all odds, against big fancy Greek battle gear and a hefty army, the Hasmonean boys kicked ass and got the Temple back. Why'd they celebrate for eight days (I Mac 4:56)? Because (note the subtle irony) that's how long the Greeks celebrated military victories.

But that wasn't enough. As a nationalist movement fighting against the death of their people, it ain't surprising that they were a little defensive about their power base. And, probably, their dumbass testosterone levels were off the charts. Whatever the reason, once Israel was reclaimed and the Temple restored, Judah and his brothers set to making a Mighty Hebrew Nation, Schwarzenegger-style.

First they hit the non-Jews on their own turf: "they forcibly circumcised all the uncircumcised boys that they found within the borders of Israel" (I Mac 2:46). Yes, you read that right; they forcibly chopped the end-bit off of grown men's weenies as a way of Juda-izing them. Then they went off into the great gentile yonder to raise some Cain.

In a move reminiscent of American activity in Vietnam, Judah took a Gentile-filled town "and killed every male by the edge of his sword, then he seized all its spoils and burned it with fire" (I Mac 5:28 ). He then did the same thing to the innocent people in Maapha, Chaspho, Maked, Bosor, other towns in the region of Gilead, Hebron, Marisa, Azotus, and other quaint locales in the land of the Philistines. One typical Maccabean My Lai happened when the army ran into their old enemy, the sons of Jambri:

"They raised their eyes and looked, and saw a tumultuous procession with much baggage; and the bridegroom came out with his friends and his brothers to meet them with tambourines and musicians and many weapons. Then they rushed upon them from the ambush and began killing them. Many were wounded and fell, and the rest fled to the mountain; and they took all their goods. Thus the wedding was turned into mourning and the voice of their musicians into a funeral dirge" (I Mac 9:39-41).

The Moral of the Story

So, to check the scorecard: Antiochus was an asshole hell-bent on punishment and power. The Hellenized Jews sold out their people and traditions, first to be cool and then later to save their own sorry asses -- aiding and abetting the desecration of their culture, perhaps irrevocably. The Hasmoneans were radical fundamentalists who we hail as brave counterculture heroes -- so maybe American Jews should quit treating their ultra-Orthodox brethren like shit. Let's see some respect for the black-hats!

But what about the oil? There's no mention of the unsaturated miracle in any of the war's contemporary accounts; the first reference to the happier version of the story is 300 or 400 years later, when the Jews were living, poorly treated, under Roman rule. The rabbis writing the Talmud weren't stupid, and didn't figure that the Romans'd be too thrilled if they celebrated a holiday about violent revolt against a big foreign government. So in the Talmudic discussion of Hanukah, they made up some shit about lights in the darkness -- which conveniently meshed with the Roman pagan traditions around them. Yeah, lights. Wink wink. Sure.

So what's the lesson here? Hanukah's an ideological mess in which the good guys are jerks and the bad guys are jerks and the Jewish tradition continued, but lots of people died, so it's just the same as everybody else's mucky history. The war did save the Jewish tradition from ethnic cleansing and that's good, 'cause without that, we'd all be sacrificing pigs to the Great God Olympus, and you'd never get to watch Charlotte's Web or Babe: Pig in the City. Plus, little Jewish kids all over the world get to gorge themselves on tinfoil-wrapped chocolates and become pint-sized fire hazards for eight days of Menorah.

Happy Holidays, everyone. May your hammers be strong and your circumcisions be voluntary.

D. R. is a Nice Jewish Girl, despite her history.
_____________________________________________

Here is my personal take on Hannukah and how it is celebrated in modern America. Knowing the true menaing of the holiday and what it commemorates, I think that the giving of gifts to little children is perhaps the single most ironic way the holiday could be celebrated. The whole story is about the preservation of Jewish identity in a world dominated by gentiles. The "bad guys" in the story are those turned their back on their Jewish heritage and traditions to be more like the Greeks, and to be accepted by them. The only reason Jewsih children today get gifts for Hannukah is because the Christian children get gifts at Christmas, and the holidays take place at the same time of year. To me, this is modern Jews distorting their traditional holiday to make it more like that of the Christians who dominate the society we live in.

So we do not exchange gifts at Hannukah in my home. We light the candles on the Menorah, and we recite the prayers, and we eat a chicken, and make latkas and things like that. We give gifts on Christmas just like everybody else. For me, Christmas has never been about Christ or religion at all, it has always been about family and giving and the celebration of winter, so there is no conflict in my mind. My Jewishness is a cultural thing much more than it is a religious thing. I'm agnostic really. So while some Christians may take offense at the loss of the "Christ" part of Christmas, my attitude is very different. I consider the modern celebration of Hannukah to be not a loss of God, but a loss of Jewish identity as a people apart, and that is why I choose to celebrate the holiday in the way I do.

--PunkDavid

What a coincidence. I was thinking about asking you questions about Hannukah, and here you are, answering them. Thanks a bunch!

http://www.slate.com/id/10802/

history lesson
Christmas for Jews
How Hanukkah became a major holiday.
By David Greenberg
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 16, 1998, at 3:30 AM ET



The holiday season is upon us. Not the "Christmas season" but the "holiday season"—a euphemism for "Christmas with Hanukkah (and, perhaps, Kwanzaa) thrown in." If you place a tree in the town square, you need a menorah as well. We festoon offices with blue and silver Hanukkah decorations alongside Christmas trimmings, and on the Sesame Street Christmas special, Big Bird wishes Mr. Hooper a Happy Hanukkah. The only meaning of the phrase "Judeo-Christian," it seems, is the fusion of these two otherwise unrelated holidays into one big seasonal spree.

The problem, as any rabbi will tell you, is that Hanukkah has traditionally been a minor Jewish festival. It commemorates the successful Israelite revolt in the second century B.C. against their Syrian oppressors, and their refusal to assimilate into the prevailing Hellenistic culture. Specifically, it celebrates the miracle in which, according to lore, a day's worth of oil fueled the candelabra of the Jews' rededicated temple for eight days. Until recently, this observance paled next to the High Holy Days, Passover, even Purim. So how did it become "the Jewish Christmas"? And is this good for the Jews?

First, Christmas had to become Christmas, which originally wasn't a big deal in America. The Puritans who settled Massachusetts made it a crime to celebrate the holiday (punishment: five shillings). Only with the arrival of German immigrants after the Civil War did it emerge as the major American feast. With the revolution in retailing--marked by the rise of department stores and advertising--celebrations focused on throwing parties, buying and giving gifts, and sending greeting cards (first sold in 1874, they became a million dollar business within a few years). The Coca-Cola Co. adopted as its logo a jolly bearded man in a red and white suit, and Santa bypassed Jesus as Christmas' main icon.

Enter the Jews. Around 1900, millions of eastern European Jews came to the United States, congregating in urban enclaves such as New York's Lower East Side. Most adopted American traditions, including the newly secularized Christmas. "Santa Claus visited the East Side last night," the New York Tribune noted on Christmas Day, 1904, "and hardly missed a tenement house." Jews installed Christmas trees in their homes and thought nothing of the carols their children sang in the public schools.

The second generation of American Jews challenged this embrace of a festival that, despite its secular trappings, was fundamentally Christian. But parents couldn't very well deprive their kids of gifts or seasonal merriment, and Hanukkah benefited from convenient timing. Instead of giving the traditional "gelt," or money, Jews celebrated with presents, so as not to fall short of their Christian neighbors. Prominent religious leaders, more secure with maintaining a Jewish identity in America, now urged schools to let Jews abstain from yuletide celebrations or to provide all-purpose holiday parties instead. Lighting the menorah proved a satisfying alternative to adorning a tree with colorful lights.

Zionism, which gathered converts in the years before World War II, also boosted Hanukkah's stock. The holiday's emphasis on self-reliance and military strength in the face of persecution dovetailed with the themes of nationalists seeking to establish a Jewish state. The warrior-hero Judah Maccabee, leader of an ancient revolt, morphed into a proto-Zionist pioneer. At first, Zionist organizations used the holiday as an excuse to prod individuals to donate coins to the cause. In later years they packed Madison Square Garden for Hanukkah fund-raising galas, featuring such keynoters as Albert Einstein and New York Gov. Herbert Lehman.

After World War II, as Jews moved with other Americans to suburbia, Hanukkah shored up its place as their No. 1 holiday. In the early '50s, in a famous Middletown-style study of a Chicago suburb referred to as "Lakeville," sociologist Marshall Sklare found that lighting the Hanukkah candles ranked as the most popular "mitzvah," above hosting a Passover Seder and observing the Sabbath. Sklare attributed the holiday's popularity to its easy accommodation to Christmas rituals as well as to its ability to be redefined for modern times. The Hanukkah lesson being taught, Sklare noted, was no longer reverence to God for performing a miracle but rather the triumph over religious intolerance--a perfect message for liberal America in the age of the civil rights movement.


These Ozzie and Harriet Jews also modified their observances for the 1950s home. As one historian has written, a Jewish guidebook from the era included recipes for " 'Maccabean sandwiches' composed of either tuna fish or egg salad and shaped to resemble a bite-sized Maccabee warrior, or the 'Menorah fruit salad,' a composition of cream cheese and fruit that, when molded, resembled a menorah." By the late '50s, "Chanukah's accoutrements had grown to include paper decorations, greeting cards, napkins, wrapping paper, ribbons, chocolates, games and phonograph records." Like Gentiles, Jews extended gift-giving to adults; the Hadassah Newsletter pointed out that "Mah-jong sets make appreciated Chanukah gifts." Parents could now assure children that Hanukkah wasn't a poor man's Christmas but was, in fact, a "better" holiday because it meant presents for eight days straight.

Since then, Jews have become more integrated into American life, and Hanukkah has embedded itself in television, office parties, Hallmark stores, Barnes & Nobles, and other leading American cultural institutions. Except among the Orthodox, it has been thoroughly transformed into a major festival. Accordingly, religious leaders lament this development as another instance of the Jews' perilous assimilation--if not into a Christian society then into a secular, commercial one.

Yet the recent evolution of Hanukkah represents not a capitulation to the forces of Christmas but an assertion of Jewishness amid a multicultural society. Just as Kwanzaa, created in 1966, has returned many black Americans to their African heritage, so Hanukkah has helped tether Jews to their heritage and in some cases has brought them back to the fold. In a 1985 study, journalist Charles Silberman recounted how the writer Anne Roiphe, besieged with angry letters after she wrote an article about celebrating Christmas as a Jew, switched to observing Hanukkah and found it far more meaningful. Likewise, Silberman noted, more American Jews than ever preferred Hanukkah to Christmas. Three out of four lighted the menorah, an increase even over the 68 percent in Sklare's 1950s study. Today, the adherence to a modest Jewish ritual such as celebrating Hanukkah follows in the tradition of the ancient Israelites, who spurned the pressures to adopt Hellenism. Indeed, in acculturating to America while maintaining a Jewish identity, observers of Hanukkah may well be doing Judah Maccabee proud.

For further reading on Hanukkah's rise in the United States, consult (as I did for this article) the following books: The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture, 1880-1950, by Jenna Weissman Joselit; A Certain People: American Jews and Their Lives Today, by Charles E. Silberman; At Home in America: Second Generation New York Jews, by Deborah Dash Moore; Adapting to Abundance: Jewish Immigrants, Mass Consumption, and the Search for American Identity, by Andrew R. Heinze; and Jewish Identity on the Suburban Frontier: A Study of Group Survival in the Open Society, by Marshall Sklare and Joseph Greenbaum. The author would like to thank Professor Arthur Goren of the Columbia University history department.

(Copy editor's note: Slate defers to The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual on all matters secular and spiritual. Hence our use of "Hanukkah" rather than "Chanukah.")

David Greenberg, a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers, has two new books out: Presidential Doodles and Calvin Coolidge.

Talk about a bump.

this is interesting. i never really knew the story behind hanukkah (or how to spell it correctly ). all i knew was that it was not really a major jewish holiday and that it had somehow morphed with christmas to make the two a religious power duo in december.

Funny thing is that Christmas was never the main christian celebration either - that honour goes to Easter considering that the death and resurrection of christ are the basis behind christianity. Dec 25th is not considered to be the date of Jesus' birth, and nobody really knows why that day was chosen to celebrate it. Maybe it has something to do with the winter solstice or other traditional winter celebrations...who knows.

But I'm with you David in considering this time of year to be a celebration of family, friends and goodwill and not a specific religious holiday.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukkah#A ... ew_letters

wow, a word that i have free reign to mangle at whim!

*swoons*

interesting.

thread long sumariz plz.

see post above you.

Hanukkah is a minor Jewish festival commemorating a violent uprising in the 2nd century BC by Jews against the ruling Greeks. The Jews didn't want to lose their cultural identity and become "Hellenized", so they cleansed the Temple and cut off their enemies foreskins.

The reason Hanukkah has become a major Jewish holiday in 20th century America is because little Jewish kids wanted presents for Christmas like their neighbors, and the similarities of a "festival of lights" to the other winter festivals made for an easy transition and incorporation.