A Chanukah Challenge

By Rabbi Herbert N. Schwartz
Guest Blogger

What makes Chanukah different this year from other years?

While Chanukah differentiates us from the larger community, it is also usually in accord with the religious culture of the larger community. This year, with Chanukah starting more than two weeks before Christmas, what we usually call the “Festival of Lights” and the “Festival of Freedom” can also remind us of the “Dignity of Difference.” These words are also the title of the book by Jonathan Sacks, and are his way of making a “forceful plea for tolerance in an age of extremism.”

He goes on to emphasize the thesis that “if we are to save ourselves from mutual destruction,” we must recognize that “fundamentalism, like imperialism, is the attempt to impose a single way of life on a plural world.” 

Typically, Chanukah gives us Jews an opportunity to celebrate our uniqueness and honor the Maccabees who fought to observe their covenant with God. However, cherishing the freedom to be who we are needs not exclude the possibility that other peoples, cultures, and faiths that have also had to find their own relationship with God.

Might this not be a good time to learn about other faiths and their struggles to be who they are?

There are some people who would say that the State of Israel stands between two eras: the tribal cultures and local deities of the ancient world and the more universal cultures of the Greeks and Romans. From the perspective of the latter, particularity was viewed as a source of conflict, whereas universality was seen as the realm of truth, justice, and peace. In his book, Sacks attacks this thinking, arguing that universality is an inadequate response to tribalism, that “it leads to the belief--superficially compelling but quite false—that there is only one truth about the essentials of the human condition, and it holds for all peoples and all times. If am right, you are wrong. If what I believe is the truth, than your belief, that differs from mine, must be an error from which you must be converted, cured and saved.”

Might this not be a good time to talk about what is gained (and lost) by having multiple faiths and cultures and Nation states?

How else might we celebrate our dignity of difference this Chanukah?

• Look back in our own history and see other times when Jews refused to let go of Judaism
• Ask community members to tell one another what gives them most pride in being Jewish
• Designate a public area in the synagogue where congregants can write down what matters most about being Jewish today
• Consider how we all benefit from learning about each other’s differences even as we celebrate our particularities
  
  

Finally, let’s use the eight days of Chanukah this year as a time of revisiting what we want to make ourselves as well. What do we hope for? Aspire to? What are we willing to work for? There is so much “talk” that rarely happens during Chanukah. With two weeks separating the Festival of Freedom from the Christmas holiday, isn’t this the year for it?