For centuries, Hanukkah and Christmas have been linked in the popular imagination through incidental timing. This year, Hanukkah’s next-to-last day falls right on Christmas. But those holidays have far more important things in common than timing or gift-giving.
In their unique way, each holiday celebrates human dignity and freedom, thus reflecting the fundamental values of their respective sister religions, Judaism and Christianity.
Hanukkah commemorates a revolt led by Jews in the second century B.C. against Antiochus IV, who ruled Israel for the Seleucid Empire, one of four that emerged after Alexander the Great’s generals divided his vast holdings following his death. Antiochus sought to eradicate the Jews’ identity, in accordance with the Greek worldview’s secular focus.
“The Greeks looked down at the Jews for having, in their eyes, a very primitive faith,” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach said. “The Greeks had Homer’s Iliad, the Odyssey. They had Greek tragedies, poetry, philosophy. They look at this idea of prayer and faith and belief in God as something very primitive. So they banned it.”
Yet that faith, expressed in the 10 Commandments and the Torah, represented a turning point for human civilization. It reflected the idea that God values human freedom, especially since God is the ultimate free being in the universe, and God created humanity in his free image.
“The 10 Commandments are not a list of rules,” Dennis Prager wrote. “The commandments prove that God wants mankind to be free: ‘I am the Lord your God who took you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.’ Following the commandments actually frees us from the terrible consequences of sin, making our lives better.” (Emphases in original).
Nevertheless, Antiochus banned any vestiges of Jewish religion and culture, including the Torah. He even desecrated Jerusalem’s Temple by erecting statues to Greek gods and goddesses and by sacrificing pigs to them. Antiochus went so far as to proclaim himself “epiphanes,” Greek for “divine manifestation.”
But in 168 B.C., a rural priest named Mattathias started the revolt. After refusing to sacrifice to a Greek deity, Mattathias killed a Jew who acted in his place and a Greek guard. He then fled to the nearby hills with his five sons. Two years later, when Mattathias died, his son Judas formed a guerrilla army to fight Hellenized Jews and Seleucid troops. That army earned the nickname “Maccabees,” Hebrew for “hammers.”
In 164, the Maccabees took Jerusalem, overthrew Antiochus and reconsecrated the Temple. Reconsecration involved relighting the menorah, which had to be illuminated continuously. The Maccabees had only enough oil to keep it lit for one day. But in an apparent miracle, the oil lasted for eight days. When Jewish families light menorahs, they celebrate the Maccabees’ victory and its ultimate sign.
“It is a celebration of triumph by the few against the many, by the weak against the strong, by the committed and principled against the pagan and the unprincipled,” said Breitbart News’ Joel Pollak, an Orthodox Jew.
Boteach believes Hanukkah’s essence animates a basic desire in the human soul.
“(The Maccabees) always served as a source of inspiration to freedom fighters and people who seek liberty throughout the world,” he said, “which is why the menorah has become a universal symbol of religious liberty.”
Nearly 200 years later, an anonymous baby born in a stable and sleeping in a feeding trough would issue a powerful challenge on behalf of human freedom and dignity.
In Christian theology, Jesus of Nazareth represents the ultimate connection between the human and the divine, since Christians consider Jesus to be part of the Trinity as God’s only begotten son.
In his earthly condition, just like the vast majority of this planet’s inhabitants throughout time, Jesus knew neither wealth nor societal privilege. Like the rest of humanity, he experienced a vast array of personal pain: the death of loved ones, the frustration of being misunderstood by those closest to him and constant, unwanted conflict with his society’s leaders.
In his ultimate agony, Jesus endured a trial by a kangaroo court, received a death sentence despite committing no crime and suffered the most excruciating form of execution the authorities could devise. Yet that death defined his life.
In Christian theology, Jesus’ death provided the ultimate atonement for human sin. As a result, a holy, righteous God can establish a relationship with anybody — regardless of race, class, culture or gender — who rejects sin and embraces that atonement as personal redemption. That simple theological summary contains profound implications.
By allowing his only begotten son to take human form, God pointedly identifies with the human travail that unanticipated and unwanted circumstances impose. In so doing, God silently states that human dignity ultimately has nothing to do with circumstances. By allowing his only begotten son to experience a tortuous death, God declares that those created in his free image are worth liberating from the self-imposed slavery of sin.
Yet 2,000 years later, those who worship utopian politics disregard the principles that Christmas and Hanukkah embody.
Just as the Nazis tried to exploit religion, just as the Communists tried to destroy it, the “woke” do both. When not mocking Christian or Jewish, as the secular Hellenists did more than 2,000 years ago, the “woke” subvert Christianity by redefining it. Ibram X. Kendi, the self-proclaimed anti-racist, epitomizes the tactic.
“Jesus was a revolutionary and the job of the Christian is to revolutionize society,” Kendi said. “The job of the Christian is to liberate society from the powers on earth that are oppressing humanity. That’s liberation theology in a nutshell. Savior theology is a different type of theology. The job of the Christian is to go out and save these individuals who are behaviorally deficient.
“Anti-racists fundamentally reject savior theology. That goes right in line with racist ideas and racist theology, in which (racists) say, ‘You know what? Black people, other racial groups, the reason why they’re struggling on earth is because of what they’re behaviorally doing wrong, and it is my job as the pastor to sort of save these wayward black people or wayward poor people or wayward queer people.’ That type of theology breeds bigotry.”
Kendi’s caricature rejects the biblical view of a human race created in a divine image yet universally afflicted by sin. Instead, Kendi distinguishes between “oppressors” and “victims,” with “oppressors” being irredeemable and “victims” being unaccountable. In doing so, Kendi arbitrarily defines each group’s members by race, gender and class. Common humanity becomes irrelevant.
In the process, Kendi and his “woke” allies seek to re-create humanity in their own image. Just as the Nazis had the Aryan Superman, just as the Communists had the New Socialist Man, the “woke” have the Social Justice Warrior: an ideological fanatic dedicated to eradicating “white privilege” while imposing “diversity,” “inclusion” and “equity” throughout society.
But Christianity’s and Judaism’s highest ideals, expressed in Christmas and Hanukkah, challenge the self-perceived, semi-divine right to domination that all utopian totalitarians demand — whether Nazi, Communist or “woke.”
I believe you mean “regardless of race, class, culture or SEX.”
Excellent article thank you.
Rewriting this:
“The Greeks looked down at the Jews for having, in their eyes, a very primitive faith,” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach said. “The Greeks had Homer’s Iliad, the Odyssey. They had Greek tragedies, poetry, philosophy. They look at this idea of prayer and faith and belief in God as something very primitive. So they banned it.”
“The woke looked down at the conservatives for having, in their eyes, a very primitive faith,” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach said. “The woke had Marx. They had woke oppression, socialism, philosophy. They look at this idea of prayer and faith and belief in God as something very primitive. So they ridicule it. Apart from islam because it opposes Jews and Christians too.
The most interesting aspect of this article which is implicit, but glaringly so, and Mr. Hippolito may not even be aware of it, is how SECULAR its argument is. The argument for religious tolerance, freedom of religion, and freedom of conscience, cannot be derived from Judaism or Christianity as such, not when those religions are true to themselves. Not when they are practiced in consistent and pure form.
Mr. Hippolito is criticizing, almost disparaging, SECULARISM (i.e., reason, logic, and rationality), while using it and depending on it to defend the RATIONAL values of tolerance and freedom.
It was only after the Renaissance (the rebirth of Aristotelian and therefore Greco-Pagan reason), the Age of Aristotelian Reason. and the Age of Enlightenment (the light of Greco-Pagan, Aristotelian, reason) that the RATIONAL values of tolerance of thought and freedom of religion became possible.
These rational values were not possible during the Christian Dark Ages when Christianity was practiced in its pure form. Unmodified, unrestrained, undiluted, by Greco-Pagan, Aristotelian, secularism.
“The Greeks looked down at the Jews for having, in their eyes, a very primitive faith,” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach said. “The Greeks had Homer’s Iliad, the Odyssey. They had Greek tragedies, poetry, philosophy. They look at this idea of prayer and faith and belief in God as something very primitive. So they banned it.”
The objectivists ridicule it.
No, Objectivism does not ridicule religion as such. Religion was man’s first attempt at understanding the universe, understanding his nature, and his relation to the universe. Religion was an inevitable beginning. And if confidence in reason once again completely collapses in the West, the West will go back to a pure form of religion, resulting in a New Dark Age of religion.
There are arguably religious claims that a rationally honest person can not but find highly questionable, like 72 virgins in Paradise, Noah’s Ark, the Parting of the Red Sea, a Talking Snake, Camel Urine Cures Cancer, etc.
Of course there are questionable things in something that was written thousands of years ago but I, like you, missed the messages in the stories.
Attacking Christianity and Judaism is missing the point completely.
You are correct. Objectivism does not ridicule religion as such. But you do endlessly. You have zero class as a human.
Objectivism….so idiotic only an intellectual would fall for it.
This time of year must be tough on you, with most of the country celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas. Despite all government attempts to kill the holidays with atheist gibberish, not allowing decorations on the streets, vandalizing of churches and synagogues, attempts to control the language in schools and in the workplace by changing the term Christmas vacation to winter holiday, and attempting to limit private celebrations using COVID as the excuse, the folks just don’t listen, do they? The silly native americans who whine about Thanksgiving have basically been ignored. And, of course, there is you babbling on about the Christian Dark Ages.
People will buy the kids presents, supply chain or no supply chain issues. The turkeys and hams will be cooked. The trees and decorations will go up. Football will be on the TV. The Churches will be packed.
In the meantime you get to sit around your miserable apartment looking at your Festivus pole and whine about how everyone is not as “enlightened” and as rationally selfish as you. Nice life you have carved out for yourself. You get a lump of coal as always.
You imply that only secularism exclusively is the source of reason, logic and rationality and that that tolerance of thought and freedom of religion are sourced there as well. The story of Chanukah, and the blood that was shed to confront the intolerance of Greek-Pagan culture in the Seleucid attempt to eliminate belief in the one God, reveals the error of your attempt at self-confirming secularism. The Greek Empire fell apart not long after its defeat by the Maccabees and is a minor player in the world today. Judaism thrives and no one with any sense can accuse the Jews as being anything but rational, logical and reason based considering the multiple scientific and tech contributions we have given to the world. We are just .003 of the world’s population – yet everyone has heard about us whereas the splendor of Greece ( half the population were slaves) and Rome are long gone.
“In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.” – Pamela Geller
The Maccabees were the Taliban of their day. They were not fighting for freedom and liberty, they were not fighting for human dignity, they were fighting to re-establish religious tyranny, just like the Taliban today.
“To understand this complex conflict, bear in mind that the king, Antiochus Epiphanes, although undoubtedly a tyrant, was significantly less tyrannical than were his zealous foes. One is reminded of the 20th-century struggle between the Shah of Iran—a foreign-backed brutal secular dictator—and the indigenous, fanatical supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini, a dictator vastly more brutal and totalitarian. Perhaps more to the point, the Maccabees were the Taliban of their day—slaughtering their more secular coreligionists as apostates and tolerating nothing but a strict adherence to fundamentalist religion.” – Andrew Bernstein, “The Birth of Monotheistic Religion – Aristotle Versus Religion”
Our founding father knew what it would take for a free nation,
Benjamin Franklin said “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have need of more masters.
John Adams “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Our culture is reliving the “Days of Sodom and Gomorrah.” with this Woke culture. God is not going to put up with a culture that is a total rejection of reality, sanity, and morality., that destroys the lives of children, and keeps enlarging the government, and the edicts on its people, Same as the Days of Noah when the Great flood came and wiped out the inhabitants of earth.
If your God is real, prove it with reason. The Communist will be converted. The Objectivist will be converted. The Muslim will be converted. The Buddhist will be converted. Who wouldn’t be? Who, in his right mind, denies the existence of the Sun or the Moon?
And who says that only a Christian or a Jew can be rationally moral? If by moral you mean rationally moral. There are plenty of religious irrationalists. Martin Luther comes to mind. John List comes to mind. The Lutherans were staunch supporters of Hitler.
“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.” – Thomas Jefferson
The Jew Hater in you finally came out re: the Maccabees. And hearty F.U. is your Christmas present, you miserable anti-semite
Give credit where credit is due. You’re misattributing what came from Greco-Roman culture to Judaism and Jewish culture. You’re guilty of cultural misattribution. Without the influence of the West’s Greco-Roman heritage the Jews and their Judaism which are Eastern in origin and philosophical orientation, in its pure, fundamentalist, form would have kept the Jewish world, and the Jewish mind, in a religious Dark Age. The Jews, like the Christians, finally became Hellenized by the Renaissance, the Age of Reason, and the Age of Enlightenment. The only Jews today that practice Judaism in its pure, un-Hellenized form, are the ultra-orthodox, Hasidim. The only Christians that practice Christianity in a pure, un-Hellenized, form are the Amish.
The Ancient Greek spirit of reason, logic, rationality, and science is influencing all of us still. It thrives in any Jew or Christian who isn’t cloistered in his monastery, basement, farm, or cave, waiting for the Messiah.
Needless to say that Islam has yet, if ever, to be Hellenized and infused with the Ancient Greek spirit.
“The only Jews today that practice Judaism in its pure, un-Hellenized form, are the ultra-orthodox, Hasidim. The only Christians that practice Christianity in a pure, un-Hellenized, form are the Amish.”
So, you have a problem with the Hasidim and the Amish. In many respects they are like you:
” I don’t recognize any such absurdity as service to my country. I recognize a moral responsibility to my freedom and liberty and the freedom and liberty of those I love.”
It is amazing how you won’t leave anyone alone . And in that respect you are like the Muslims who consider it a sacred duty to make war and the infidel.
You will pass from this earth the miserable person you have always been, having accomplished nothing. Bring light clothing where you are going.
I have challenged you before to give a definition of Christianity from its actual source, which is the bible. Being committed to atheism, you are not able or willing. to do the necessary study to separate the wheat from the chaff in the history of the church. The word of God judges the church as well as the world. Your idea of a pure form of. Christianity is false, coming as it does from one who hates. Christ
You believe that following Ayn Rand, is following a pure form of atheism.. However, there have been many atheists before her, and it is not uncommon that they have disagreed with one another over major points. For example take the differences between Randism and Marxism. Since the source of atheism is the human mind and not a revelation from God, they can can be far apart and claim rationality is their source. Human reason is interesting in the way it justifies itself against the living God. Interestingly, the next step is to form a morality that justifies one’s own actions usually against the ten commandments..
Can you please just shut up already. No one cares. I wonder how many years you have been trying to wipe Christmas out? I used to be ridicule with you. That didn’t work. Now you are going the intellectual route. That won’t work ether.
The idea of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as three splendid sons of the same loving father appears in Boccaccio’s The Decameron, circa 1353. It’s the third story on the first day
“It reflected the idea that God values human freedom, especially since God is the ultimate free being in the universe, and God created humanity in his free image.”
Freedom within the context of Judaism and Christianity is not the secular, rational, and individualist freedom that America and Free Market Capitalism are founded on and depend upon. In other words Yahweh granted freedom to man but that freedom is only the freedom to worship him, to become his servant, or be sent to Hell in the after-life. That’s not rational freedom, the freedom to pursue your personal happiness on earth with complete self-ownership over your life. It is only the freedom to choose to be a serf to a supernatural owner of you and your life.
If you refuse to bow down and serve, and hand over your life and mind to God, you will be sent to Hell for eternity. It’s an offer from your Supernatural Godfather, it’s an offer you can’t refuse. That’s not freedom.
These are the same arguments used by the woke Marxist communist socialist movements sadly all you are doing is helping their causes.
It seems to me that the only arguments that are different come from Judaism and Christianity
You have no idea what freedom is. You are chained to a bizarre construct invented by a cheating, long dead woman who was miserable when she finally shuffled off as it will be for you.
“No mind is better than the precision of its concepts.” – Ayn Rand
“The 10 Commandments are not a list of rules,” Dennis Prager wrote. “The commandments prove that God wants mankind to be free…”
Concepts are meant to have precise definitions. A “commandment” is a command to be obeyed for the sake of obedience, what you may personally think about that command is irrelvalent. A command is not a rational moral PRINCIPLE to be applied voluntarily, acoording to your own thinking, and applied CONTEXTUALLY.
Freedom is the freedom to think and to take action according to the conclusions of your own thinking. A commandment, by definition, destroys your individual freedom to think and act according to your own rational thinking. If God really wanted you to have freedom to think and act according to your own thinking then he would have presented you with “Ten Moral Principles”, not “Ten Commandments”.
“Honor your father and mother” is a commandment, but what if your father and mother are commanding you to steal? Which commandment do you follow?
Could you be any more desperate, idiotic and amateurish. Every year it’s the same. Oh was wrong. Everyday it’s the same. Just pathetic.
1 Samuel 8:7 And the LORD said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you. For it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected Me as their king.”
Genesis 22:8 Abraham answered, “God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two walked on together.
John 1:29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
Revelation 17:14 “They will make war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will triumph over them, because He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and He will be accompanied by His called and chosen and faithful ones.”
I am 70 years old and am embarrassed to admit that I NOW KNOW what Hanukkah really is! I read an average of three HOURS per day and have NEVER ONCE seen an article that explained it! In a way I guess Hanukkah is like the Jewish Fourth of July! Very interesting!
Exactly my thoughts, BLS. Glad I’m not alone
Two of the most powerful concepts shared by Judaism and Christianity are the individual’s freedom delegated to them by Yahweh…………and not the state or by approval by any of man’s designed institutions. That’s why they want to kill us and will always want to kill us. True faith in the Creator cannot be controlled by man and is an affront to man’s machinations.
Open a devotional with a simple prayer, light the first candle on you advent wreath. Read the following verse aloud.
“When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever followers me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” JOHN 8:12.
Jesus nullified death’s hold on His creation when he willingly laid down His own life.
“In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never overcome it.” JOHN 1:4-5.
REVELATION 5:5 Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed,”
HEIR TO THE THRONE OF DAVID
ISAIAH 9:6-7 For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace. What nation wouldn’t want a leader described as all these loving things instead of being oppressed?
The Hidden Meanings Behind Hanukkah and Christmas. I don’t know much about Hanukkah, but the hidden meaning of Christmas is SUN WORSHIP.
Just remember in A Charlie Brown Christmas Linus giving the speech on the stage and using straight from the Bible the True Meaning of Christmas which means Christs Mass
Despite what we have seen when they had lite candles in their Christmas Trees they played it safe since they used a damp sponge on a stick to snuff out the candles that burned too low