At this time of year, as our wayward brethren are also
preparing to celebrate Chanukah—not by performing the
mitzvas associated with it, but through various ceremonies
and events—it is interesting to examine a piercing
article written by a secular newspaper editor in Israel on
Chanukah 40 years ago.
The article, which remains quite relevant today, was called
to our attention by HaRav Naftoli Hakohen Kaminetzky, who
said he remembers that the article had a major impact at the
time and was excerpted at length in the chareidi press and by
chareidi figures.
At the beginning of 5746 (1965-66) several public debates
over religious matters and national policy were being waged
and led to ongoing incitement against shomrei Torah.
In Chanukah of that year, Ma'ariv editor Shmuel
Shnitzer wrote an article under the headline "Al Hanissim
Ve'al Hasinoh" ("Of Miracles and Hatred"). Shnitzer was a
secular person, but he was able to see the logic and justice
of religious positions more often than many of his
colleagues. He wrote:
In the windows, the little flames of the Chanukah candles
flicker, reminders of deeds of long ago. Wondrous deeds that
long ago, when we were younger and purer, generated great
admiration in our hearts. But now that we have grown older
and wiser, they are beginning to stir a certain
disquietude.
In bygone days, the Chanukah miracles was very simple and
very elucidated. It was clear which side we were on in the
dramatic struggle of the few against the many. Human beings
have a fabulous trait: even if the matter does not affect us
directly, man always sides with the weak in his war against
the mighty . . . All the more so in this war of
tzaddikim against reshoim and the pure against
the impure. As long as it was clear to us beyond any doubt
who the pure were — and who the impure were.
But now, in this sober and advanced generation, the
distinctions are no longer so clear. Now, in the days of the
Shabbat Law and the Port Ashdod dispute and religious
coercion and the stubborn rabbinate, we must reexamine the
Hasmonean Revolt. We must go back and assess their
aspirations and ideas, and ascertain whether they were really
so right. We might just discover, in light of the new wisdom
we have gained in recent years, that their victory was not a
victory for freedom at all but a victory for
reactionaryism.
It could be that we must come to the conclusion that the
ideas that inspired them to rise up and fight the Greeks were
not as exalted as they appear at first glance. They may have
been the type of thing that modern, 20th century man is
ashamed to identify with.
Let's try to translate the story of the Hasmonean War into
present-day language, and we'll see how it appears in the
judicious eyes of the modern Israeli. First of all we must
ask ourselves who—in that war—stands for progress
and who for weakness and blind clinging to past ways.
For it is not a foregone conclusion that the zealous,
provincial family from the small village on the outskirts of
the tiny district of Judea represented progress. Had
Mattisyahu or any of his sons ever read Plato? Did they know
Aristotelian philosophy? Did Modi'in have a theater and could
one see the works of Aristophanes, Sophocles and Euripides
there?
Presumably not. And in all likelihood these Hasmoneans were
rebelling against culture, the universal culture that was
taking over the whole world and developing the aesthetic
senses of all of the nations.
And what did these provincials have to match the glory of
Greek civilization? The spiritual seclusion of a small clan
opposed to every innovation and every change? The rigid,
fossilized halachos fixed over 1,000 years earlier? Their
Shabbos Law? Religious coercion? Obstinate resistance to
raising pigs? These were the people out to vanquish
Hellenism?
*
Shnitzer goes on to write sarcastically about how, in the
eyes of the contemporary Israeli, the Hasmoneans look like a
band that decided to "withdraw from the greater kingdom that
could have opened the expanses of the world of culture before
them and to set up an incubator for dated ideas and a home
for fanaticism . . .
There is very little doubt Antiochus and Epiphanus were right
and not Mattisyahu the Kohen. Particularly in light of the
Hasmoneans' subsequent conduct when success began to shine on
them. After murdering a government clerk carrying out his
duties, Mattisyahu fled to the mountains where he and his
sons prepared to wage war against advancement (without a
referendum, of course, and without taking into consideration
the institutions of the Yishuv, which opposed the war). And
when they won they went up to Jerusalem without holding
elections, ousted the Hellenists from all of their posts and
imposed a regime of religious coercion on the city that,
according to all indications, was much worse than today's.
Over time the zealots also took control of Port Ashdod, and
if any conclusions can be drawn based on their opinions on
other matters, presumably they forbade all work on Shabbat.
And doubtless in the Hasmonean hotels the tourists of the
time did not find any arrangements to hold the traditional
Bacchus celebrations.
*
Shnitzer stresses that the freedom the Hasmoneans achieved
was not used to establish a progressive state open to the
spirit of the times:
Rather than blending in with the Greek world and opening the
gates to the influences of civilization, they transformed it
into a spiritual ghetto where all Greek teachings were
prohibited. Were they in the State of Israel of today, a
resistance league would have to be set up against them and
the progressive public would have to sign petitions and wage
an informational campaign against their narrow-mindedness and
against their fanaticism and against their uncultured
worldview. But they had the luck of dying on time, many years
ago. Therefore today we can turn them into heroes . . .
*
At this point, the Ma'ariv editor claims, the time has
come to deal with the spiritual contradiction head-on:
An interesting paradox, no? But the sad thing is we live this
paradox. For we do not extinguish all of the menorahs as a
sign of protest against the religious coercion of the
Hasmonean Kingdom. Rather we light the candles and awaken our
hearts and recite blessings over the miracles—and
meanwhile we are waging a brainless war against the Jewish
religion.
Maybe we sensed it and maybe we didn't. But we were
distracted and now we have become one of the only countries
in the world where an organized campaign against the Jewish
religion is being waged, one of the only countries where the
assets of Jewish culture are openly vilified, one of the only
countries where hatred of religious Jews for being religious
is nurtured.
Of course we say all this is done in Russia, not here among
us. And we even grant ourselves the right to demand religious
freedom for Jews—in every other part of the world. In
international arenas we rise up and cry out that Jews are not
being allowed to pray, to keep Shabbos and kashrus,
and to give their sons a bris and to bury their dead
according to Jewish law—in every other country. We do
not feel that here, in the Jewish nation, dangerous tension
is forming between the liberated Jew and the religious Jew,
ugly inclinations towards hatred are starting to blaze, scorn
for the observant Jew is growing, resembling what once
existed only in the most antisemitic lands.
We do not sense how hard it has become for the religious Jew
to breathe freely here, how he is held under suspicion by the
liberated public, how a tainted libel is becoming rooted here
reminiscent of the libels the antisemites disseminated
against the Jews: that the religious are trying to take over
the country, that they are buying up land and houses and
neighborhoods to expand their areas of control, that they are
engaged in a war of conquest and are progressing step-by-
step to impose their views on the secular public.
We do not see that the opposite is true. What is taking place
here is that more and more liberated Jews who once related to
the religious Jew with tolerance and understanding (which is
the proper attitude in a cultured society) are beginning to
display intolerance and hatred, and that religious Judaism in
the State of Israel is in a state of withdrawal and
defensiveness and that soon the observant man will be unable
to feel at home in this country.
Antisemitism has often served as a leverage point for dubious
political movements that latched onto it to achieve their
unworthy objectives. Nazism rose to power in Germany by using
the hatred of Jews to unite the right and left under a single
front against the "Jewish plutocracy" and "Jewish
Bolshevism."
I fear that the hatred for the Jewish religion is beginning
to play a similar role in Israeli politics, employing the
same methods of vilification and libel and casting suspicion.
Using this tried-and-true technique, various political
figures are now trying to gain easy popularity and to use it
for various purposes that have nothing to do with questions
of religion.
In an artificial manner, through propaganda that draws its
inspiration directly from the poisoned wells European fascism
drew on in the 30s and using the same images of Jews with
beards and payos and traditional dress, the public is
given the impression that if a port does not operate on
Shabbatot it will harm civil liberties, because a truly free
country has to run seven days a week. And if there is a day
of rest, the country will be subjugated to the religious
minority.
And a falsehood is being maliciously disseminated according
to which here we have already solved the problems of work and
manufacturing, and the only other thing we lack in order to
attain the production levels of other countries is to work
the Friday night shift.
And in our thinking we begin by turning this technical
question into a matter of principle, accentuating the
differences and fanning the flames of dissent, transforming
an insignificant, lesser matter—such as having to drive
a couple hundred meters further in order to respect others'
beliefs—into the greatest problem the state has to
contend with and a matter of yeihoreg ve'al
ya'avor—as long as Jew hates Jew and the Jewish
state girds its loins to suppress the Jewish religion.
The dangerous venom of religious hatred is getting absorbed
into our hearts and minds. Gradually we are coming to believe
that all the other world religions are relevant, yet the
Jewish religion alone belongs to the Middle Ages, that
provisions have to be made for all religions but that these
provisions must be denied to the Jewish religion, that a pine
tree in an Israeli hotel is a necessity but Shabbat rest at
an Israeli port is base and contemptible. And the venom
penetrates the highest ranks as well . . .
This stance—that this is not a place for a war of
faith, that the State of Israel must guarantee the religious
Jew full provisions for religious life, at least like those
established in the non-Jewish nations—is falling from
grace in the atmosphere of provocation infused in us by
figures scheming against the unity of the people. Simple
common sense that tells us that internal peace comes before
external peace, and that the disputes among the Jewish people
are easier to settle and more pressing than the disputes with
non- Jews — is no longer in fashion. Every pacifist on
the outside becomes a militant on the inside. Whoever is
willing to forfeit areas of state territory in exchange for a
dubious peace with the enemy from without is unwilling to
forfeit driving in a religious neighborhood one day a week in
exchange for peace with his Jewish brother within. For Abdul
Nasser and Hussein, as everybody knows, seek Israel's best
interest, while Moshe Shapira (of the NRP) alone is scheming
against it.
When this attitude goes from being the stance of a small
faction to the official worldview of the top government
officials; when it begins to gain wide support in society,
when coalition negotiations hit a dead end because compromise
can be reached on every question except that on the questions
of religion it becomes impossible to reach an understanding
— then the time comes to sound the alarm bell. For from
here it sounds like the dissenters who seek to dissolve the
unity of the people and to set up barriers between Jews have
succeeded in their goal much more than we imagined and much
more than we can afford to allow.
He who appreciates dissension, who constantly strives to
diminish Jewish power and to dismantle the Jewish frameworks,
he who tried in the past to undo the ties that connect the
Jews of Israel to the Jews of the Diaspora and now is
striving to upset the bit of unity we have here within
Israeli Jewry — he can list the current situation as an
achievement, a victory.
He who is convinced we are a single people, secular and
religious alike, and that we share the same fate, must
understand that he assumes a very heavy historical
responsibility when he decides that in the State of Israel
the Jewish religion must be a part of the opposition. For
then, the same values for which the Hasmoneans went to war
— in our eyes can only stir derision and hatred.
