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Chanuka? by Chani Aftergut Kurtz I’m feeling a bit confused these days. Shopping days, holiday season, gifts for everyone on your list – those were things I associated with their holiday. You know, the one that comes on December 25. The non-Jewish one. The one, in fact, that represented the beginning of a new religion.And yet, I’m hearing those self-same phrases on Jewish radio shows, seeing those expressions in ads in Jewish magazines, listening as Chanuka becomes identified with gift-giving. Whose holiday are we celebrating, anyway? It’s easy to blame the secular Jews. In homes devoid of spiritual meaning, being Jewish often meant being deprived – deprived of the gifts and the glitz and the glitter that all the other little kids on the block were enjoying. Parents who felt threatened by what they perceived as the competition looked around for an equally appealing carrot to dangle in front of children who were reluctant to attend Hebrew school or Sunday school, and found one tailor-made for their needs. No reason to feel left out of the widespread celebrations. Our holiday has eight nights, and guess what? You’re gonna get gifts on all eight of them! How’s that for one-upmanship? These days, though, it’s Boro Park that’s decking the halls with Chanuka presents, and Chanuka wrapping paper to wrap them in. Our yeshivos are sponsoring pre-Chanuka mini-malls where you can buy gifts for everyone on your list. It’s easy to understand the economic lure. After all, Chanuka has become very, very good business. Just listen to the jingling of the cash registers. We’re overlooking a few things, though. First of all,
we’re shortchanging our Yom Tov and our traditions. Isn’t there
enough in the beauty of the menora, the crunch of a fresh latke, the joy of
winning all your brothers’ and sisters’ pennies in a good old-fashioned game of dreidel?
Do we really have to replace the time-honored tradition of Chanuka gelt with this
year’s latest craze to make our children happy? Maybe we can use the time we save in
not shopping and not wrapping presents to make jelly doughnuts from scratch. We’re also overlooking a certain irony here. Chanuka was established to celebrate our victory over the forces of the Syrian Greeks. They tried to annihilate our culture and replace it with Hellinism, to replace the beis midrash with the gymnasium, worship of G-d with worship of the human body and physical beauty. The Greeks had quite a bit going for them. They had numbers. They had military strength. They had allure, a culture that many Jews found inviting. Yet despite the overwhelming odds, a small band of Maccabees triumphed. And when they finished driving out the Greeks, they purified the Temple, they purified themselves, and then they lit the menora again. And they established a holiday to remind us of their struggle. Is it appropriate to remember that struggle by succumbing to a different culture? |
