The holiday celebrates the triumph of tribal Jewish backwardness.
By Christopher Hitchens

High on the list of idiotic commonplace expressions is the old maxim
that "it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." How
do such fatuous pieces of folk wisdom ever get started on their
careers of glib quotation? Of course it would be preferable to light a
candle than to complain about the darkness. You would only be bitching
about the darkness if you didn't have -a candle to begin with. Talk
about a false antithesis. But at this time of year, any holy
foolishness is permitted. And so we have a semiofficial celebration of
Hanukkah, complete with menorah, to celebrate not the ignition of a
light but the imposition of theocratic darkness.

Jewish orthodoxy possesses the interesting feature of naming and
combating the idea of the apikoros or "Epicurean"--the intellectual
renegade who prefers Athens to Jerusalem and the schools of philosophy
to the grim old routines of the Torah. About a century and a half
before the alleged birth of the supposed Jesus of Nazareth (another
event that receives semiofficial recognition at this time of the
year), the Greek or Epicurean style had begun to gain immense ground
among the Jews of Syria and Palestine. The Seleucid Empire, an
inheritance of Alexander the Great--Alexander still being a popular
name among Jews--had weaned many people away from the sacrifices, the
circumcisions, the belief in a special relationship with God, and the
other reactionary manifestations of an ancient and cruel faith. I
quote Rabbi Michael Lerner, an allegedly liberal spokesman for Judaism
who nonetheless knows what he hates:

Along with Greek science and military prowess came a whole culture
that celebrated beauty both in art and in the human body, presented
the world with the triumph of rational thought in the works of Plato
and Aristotle, and rejoiced in the complexities of life presented in
the theater of Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes.

But away with all that, says Lerner. Let us instead celebrate the
Maccabean peasants who wanted to destroy Hellenism and restore what he
actually calls "oldtime religion." His excuse for preferring
fundamentalist thuggery to secularism and philosophy is that Hellenism
was "imperialistic," but the Hasmonean regime that resulted from the
Maccabean revolt soon became exorbitantly corrupt, vicious, and
divided, and encouraged the Roman annexation of Judea. Had it not been
for this no-less imperial event, we would never have had to hear of
Jesus of Nazareth or his sect--which was a plagiarism from
fundamentalist Judaism--and the Jewish people would never have been
accused of being deicidal "Christ killers." Thus, to celebrate
Hanukkah is to celebrate not just the triumph of tribal Jewish
backwardness but also the accidental birth of Judaism's ***** child
in the shape of Christianity. You might think that masochism could do
no more. Except that it always can. Without the precedents of Orthodox
Judaism and Roman Christianity, on which it is based and from which it
is borrowed, there would be no Islam, either. Every Jew who honors the
Hanukkah holiday because it gives his child an excuse to mingle the
dreidel with the Christmas tree and the sleigh (neither of these
absurd symbols having the least thing to do with Palestine two
millenniums past) is celebrating the making of a series of rods for
his own back. And this is not just a disaster for the Jews. When the
fanatics of Palestine won that victory, and when Judaism repudiated
Athens for Jerusalem, the development of the whole of humanity was
terribly retarded.

And, of course and as ever, one stands aghast at the pathetic scale of
the supposed "miracle." As a consequence of the successful Maccabean
revolt against Hellenism, so it is said, a puddle of olive oil that
should have lasted only for one day managed to burn for eight days.
Wow! Certain proof, not just of an Almighty, but of an Almighty with a
special fondness for fundamentalists. Epicurus and Democritus had
brilliantly discovered that the world was made up of atoms, but who
cares about a mere fact like that when there is miraculous oil to be
goggled at by credulous peasants?

We are about to have the annual culture war about the display of
cribs, mangers, conifers, and other symbols on public land. Most of
this argument is phony and tawdry and secondhand and has nothing
whatever to do with "faith" as its protagonists understand it. The
burning of a Yule log or the display of a Scandinavian tree is nothing
more than paganism and the observance of a winter solstice; it makes
no more acknowledgment of the Christian religion than I do. The fierce
partisanship of the holly bush and mistletoe believers convicts them
of nothing more than ignorance and simple-mindedness. They would have
been just as pious under the reign of the Druids or the Vikings, and
just as much attached to their bucolic icons. Everybody knows,
furthermore, that there was no moving star in the east, that Quirinius
was not the governor of Syria in the time of King Herod, that no
worldwide tax census was conducted in that period of the rule of
Augustus, and that no "stable" is mentioned even in any of the
mutually contradictory books of the New Testament. So, to put a star
on top of a pine tree or to arrange various farm animals around a crib
is to be as accurate and inventive as that Japanese department store
that, as urban legend has it, did its best to emulate the Christmas
spirit by displaying a red-and-white bearded Santa snugly nailed to a
crucifix.

This is childish stuff and if only for that reason should obviously
not receive any public endorsement or financing. The display of the
menorah at this season, however, has a precise meaning and is an
explicit celebration of the original victory of bloody-minded faith
over enlightenment and reason. As such it is a direct negation of the
First Amendment and it is time for the secularists and the civil
libertarians to find the courage to say so.

The holiday celebrates the triumph of tribal Jewish backwardness.
By Christopher Hitchens

High on the list of idiotic commonplace expressions is the old maxim
that "it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." How
do such fatuous pieces of folk wisdom ever get started on their
careers of glib quotation? Of course it would be preferable to light a
candle than to complain about the darkness. You would only be bitching
about the darkness if you didn't have -a candle to begin with. Talk
about a false antithesis.

But at this time of year, any holy
foolishness is permitted.

And so we have a semiofficial celebration of
Hanukkah, complete with menorah, to celebrate not the ignition of a
light but the imposition of theocratic darkness.

Jewish orthodoxy possesses the interesting feature of naming and
combating the idea of the apikoros or "Epicurean"

--the intellectual
renegade who prefers Athens to Jerusalem and the schools of philosophy
to the grim old routines of the Torah.

About a century and a half
before the alleged birth of the supposed Jesus of Nazareth (another
event that receives semiofficial recognition at this time of the
year), the Greek or Epicurean style had begun to gain immense ground
among the Jews of Syria and Palestine. The Seleucid Empire, an
inheritance of Alexander the Great--Alexander still being a popular
name among Jews

--had weaned many people away from the sacrifices, the
circumcisions, the belief in a special relationship with God, and the
other reactionary manifestations of an ancient and cruel faith.

I
quote Rabbi Michael Lerner, an allegedly liberal spokesman for Judaism

who nonetheless knows what he hates:

Along with Greek science and military prowess came a whole culture
that celebrated beauty both in art and in the human body, presented
the world with the triumph of rational thought in the works of Plato
and Aristotle, and rejoiced in the complexities of life presented in
the theater of Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes.

But away with all that, says Lerner. Let us instead celebrate the
Maccabean peasants

who wanted to destroy Hellenism and restore what he
actually calls "oldtime religion." His excuse for preferring
fundamentalist thuggery to secularism and philosophy is that Hellenism
was "imperialistic," but the Hasmonean regime that resulted from the
Maccabean revolt soon became exorbitantly corrupt, vicious, and
divided, and encouraged the Roman annexation of Judea. Had it not been
for this no-less imperial event, we would never have had to hear of
Jesus of Nazareth or his sect--which was a plagiarism from
fundamentalist Judaism

--and the Jewish people would never have been
accused of being deicidal "Christ killers." Thus, to celebrate
Hanukkah is to celebrate not just the triumph of tribal Jewish
backwardness but also the accidental birth of Judaism's ***** child
in the shape of Christianity.

You might think that masochism could do
no more. Except that it always can. Without the precedents of Orthodox
Judaism and Roman Christianity, on which it is based and from which it
is borrowed, there would be no Islam, either. Every Jew who honors the
Hanukkah holiday because it gives his child an excuse to mingle the
dreidel with the Christmas tree and the sleigh (neither of these
absurd symbols having the least thing to do with Palestine two
millenniums past) is celebrating the making of a series of rods for
his own back. And this is not just a disaster for the Jews. When the
fanatics of Palestine won that victory, and when Judaism repudiated
Athens for Jerusalem, the development of the whole of humanity was
terribly retarded.

And, of course and as ever, one stands aghast at the pathetic scale of
the supposed "miracle." As a consequence of the successful Maccabean
revolt against Hellenism, so it is said, a puddle of olive oil that
should have lasted only for one day managed to burn for eight days.
Wow! Certain proof, not just of an Almighty, but of an Almighty with a
special fondness for fundamentalists. Epicurus and Democritus had
brilliantly discovered that the world was made up of atoms, but who
cares about a mere fact like that when there is miraculous oil to be
goggled at by credulous peasants?

We are about to have the annual culture war about the display of
cribs, mangers, conifers, and other symbols on public land. Most of
this argument is phony and tawdry and secondhand and has nothing
whatever to do with "faith" as its protagonists understand it. The
burning of a Yule log or the display of a Scandinavian tree is nothing
more than paganism and the observance of a winter solstice; it makes
no more acknowledgment of the Christian religion than I do. The fierce
partisanship of the holly bush and mistletoe believers convicts them
of nothing more than ignorance and simple-mindedness. They would have
been just as pious under the reign of the Druids or the Vikings, and
just as much attached to their bucolic icons. Everybody knows,
furthermore, that there was no moving star in the east, that Quirinius
was not the governor of Syria in the time of King Herod, that no
worldwide tax census was conducted in that period of the rule of
Augustus, and that no "stable" is mentioned even in any of the
mutually contradictory books of the New Testament. So, to put a star
on top of a pine tree or to arrange various farm animals around a crib
is to be as accurate and inventive as that Japanese department store
that, as urban legend has it, did its best to emulate the Christmas
spirit by displaying a red-and-white bearded Santa snugly nailed to a
crucifix.

This is childish stuff and if only for that reason should obviously
not receive any public endorsement or financing. The display of the
menorah at this season, however, has a precise meaning and is an
explicit celebration of the original victory of bloody-minded faith
over enlightenment and reason. As such it is a direct negation of the
First Amendment and it is time for the secularists and the civil
libertarians to find the courage to say so.