ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR:

What is Chanukah? (Paul Greenberg, Dec 25, 2005, Townhall)

The blessing over the candles recited each night of the holiday goes: "Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who wrought miracles for our fathers in days of old."

Miracles, not victories. As in the Exodus from Egypt, it is He who delivered us. Freedom is a gift from God, not men.

Chanukah isn't mentioned in the Old Testament. The swashbuckling stories of battles and victories have been relegated to the Apocrypha. A mere military victory rates only a secondary place in the canon. The victory is to be celebrated not for its own sake but for what it reveals.

One more violent confrontation has been lifted out of history, and enters the realm of the sacred. A messy little guerrilla war in the dim past of a forgotten empire has become something else, something that partakes of the eternal.

The central metaphor of all religious belief - revealing light - now blots out all the imperial intrigues and internecine warfare. And that may be the greatest miracle of Chanukah: the transformation of that oldest and darkest of human activities, war, into a feast of illumination.

From a purely parochial American perspective, the best thing about Jewish holidays is that Jews were repressed for so long that the celebrations all heavily emphasize the idea of freedom.

(Originally posted: 12/25/06)

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 24, 2006 12:56 AM