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[Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
A week before Chanukah, Israeli soldiers set up a 15-foot tall menorah in Gaza. As the holiday arrives, menorahs large and small will be lit in enemy territory. Lights will flicker along tanks and from across rubble-strewn battlefields. Out of the darkness of the Jihad, there will be light.
The Jewish holiday commemorating the resistance of the Maccabees, a conservative religious family from the hinterlands of Israel, has always had a special resonance in Israel. In the northern parts of Israel that have often come under Hamas rocket attacks, the shells and debris of the rockets have been repurposed into menorahs symbolizing darkness becoming light.
As public menorah lightings in America and Europe are canceled to avoid triggering the rage of Islamists and leftist allies, preparations are underway for a bigger Chanukah than ever in Israel.
300,000 Israelis have been displaced from their homes because of the war that began with the Hamas invasion of Israel on Oct 7. The war brought an end to tourism and hotel rooms around the country are full of refugees from the war who are living out of the contents of their suitcases. Children who have spent two months in wartime and horror need something to celebrate.
In city squares, voices will ring with the classic Chanukah children’s song, “Banu hosech legaresh” or “We came to drive back the darkness” in defiance of the long solstice night.
In Modiin, the hometown of the Maccabees where the revolt against the Syrian-Greek Empire’s war on Judaism originated, people have been forced to head for shelters after rocket warnings sounded, but it’s not stopping them from preparing menorahs in every home and square. Or from continuing to donate supplies, everything from toothbrushes to cans of tuna, for the hundreds of thousands of refugees and the soldiers mobilized to fight the Islamic terrorists.
According to the European Union, the Maccabean city is actually an “illegal settlement” on land that belongs to the Muslim invaders, and not to the Jews who had fought an empire to free it over 2,000 years ago. Chanukah reaffirms the history of Modiin and the rest of Israel.
History hits differently in Israel.
This is where King Antiochus IV Epiphanes dispatched his armies from Emmaus or Hama, a West Bank city favored by the invaders because of its hot baths, where the Romans would later settle and rename the country “Palestine” and the city “Nicopolis” or “City of Victory”. The thousands of invaders, according to the Book of Maccabees, brought along slave traders and chains expecting to capture and sell the Jewish population around Jerusalem into slavery.
The historical echoes of Hamas taking hostages are not hard to find, and they’re not just symbolic. The Maccabean uprising proved incomplete. Its leaders were betrayed and killed. The man behind the scenes, Antipater, was rewarded by Rome with a kingship for his son Herod.
Herod, the son of Antipater, an Edomite, and his mother, a Nabbatean Arab, became the first Arab ruler of Israel. The last Jewish king of Israel, a grandson of Simon the Maccabee, was dispatched by Herod to be crucified in Rome. The Herodians and Rome turned to Arab mercenaries to maintain their rule. After Herod died, the foreign Arab mercenaries were unleashed to eradicate entire Jewish villages. And during the Jewish Revolt against Rome, the Arab fighters took a special delight in disemboweling Jewish refugees fleeing from the fighting.
Chanukah is a reminder that history isn’t a progressive arrow leading ever upward, but a circle which comes around again and again. Israeli soldiers are fighting battles on the same plains and hills, sometimes along roads, where the ancient kings struggled with the Philistines, the ancient European colonists whose name was given to this place by Rome, and which was adopted much later by the Arab Islamic settlers. Here, past, present and future blend together.
Zionism was the assertion that history was not a one-way street. It’s an idea central to Judaism. That is why Jews celebrate Chanukah, to commemorate a revolt that briefly brought freedom before being ground under by Roman and Herodian tyranny, and the miracle of a flask of oil that lasted for eight days as a reminder that G-d and His will are unbounded by the confines of time.
Beyond all the children’s parties and gatherings, in Jerusalem, Zedekiah’s Cave, which King Solomon used as the quarries for the building of the First Temple and later used by Jews fleeing the Babylonian invasion, will have extended hours. Among its advantages, it’s underground. And it also showcases the thousands of years of Jewish history that Islamists and leftists deny.
Two thousand years later, they are once again preparing for war in Modiin. But Israel is not just living for war. The city, like all Israeli cities, is busy with blood drives and relief efforts. Some have opened their homes to the refugees from cities under fire. Families that have never met each other before are sleeping under one roof. People are cutting back on their shopping to be able to buy food and clothes for those in need. Others go to hospitals to cheer up the wounded.
While we so often dwell on the darkness, this is a season in which light drives out the darkness.
Politics is all too often a study of evil. And it is vitally important to know evil in order to fight it. But we must not forget that while soldiers fight on in Gaza, the lights of life are being lit across Israel and the world.
Over 2,000 years ago, the Maccabees entered a ruined temple and found nothing clean or pure in it. The Syrian-Greek invaders and their Jewish collaborators had made a point of defiling it. Much as Hamas had made a point of blowing up the synagogues of Gaza and defiling the corpses of the dead. Instead of despairing, they lit the one flask of oil they found and watched it burn, miraculously, for eight days in a menorah of wood that they had cobbled together.
In that light among the darkness, they felt the presence and the love of G-d.
In opposition to the cult of death that governs in Gaza and across the Muslim world, the essence of Jewish resilience is to be found in that hope and faith. After the October 7 massacres, there has been an unprecedented outpouring of charity and a renewed interest in religion by many secular Israelis who had previously dismissed it as backward nonsense.
The Chanukah lights will come after tens of thousands more have taken to lighting Sabbath candles every Friday night. They come after a nation that had been torn between the religious and the secular, over judicial reform and politics, remembered it had a common enemy.
No one knows what the future will bring. We light a candle not because we know, but because we hope. Israel is the place where Jews were massacred and nearly exterminated by Babylon and Rome, but it’s also the place where lights were lit for thousands of years, sometimes in homes and sometimes in hidden caves, always remembering that miracles can always happen.
Some miracles are obvious, while others are hidden. Survival is itself a miracle.
Whether you see the fact that over two thousand years later Jews in Israel are still fighting for their survival as a tragedy or a miracle is a matter of perspective. Only the dead know peace. Life is struggle. The gift of life is not freedom from evil, but the opportunity to fight against it.
Chanukah carries forward the light of a two-thousand year old fight against evil. It is a reminder that even out of the worst possible darkness and despair, light will still come.
Any attack and destruction of a Menorah MUST be labeled a Hate Crime and a reason why so many lightings are cancelled since these anti-Israel HAMAS apologists, and the DOJ, would have to arrest their own as Domestic Terrorists. When, not if, HAMAS, and the thousands of Sleeper Cells, awaken, the ENEMY WITHIN WILL JOIN THEM AGAINST AMERICA! Let them take off their masks off now so can keep track of them.
University DEI Czars MUST protect Jews but haven’t defended one when if a person looked at a Muslim or Black the wrong way, they would expel all involved.
That goes for Harvard, Penn and MIT, too, not to mention most every other college and university.
I once saw the “students for Justice in Palestine” offering free hot dogs at the University of San Jose. None of the students, who’re mostly Asian, or passersby stopped to eat any or listen to their bullshit, ha ha.
Justice in Psuedostine would entail expelling all Paleosimian invaderss from Israel, of course.
God said ‘Jacob have I have loved, but Esau have I hated.’ This means God who knows the future, and knew that Esau’s descendents would become that awful nation of Edom. Doeg (Who betrayed David) and Herod were both Edomites.
Good point. The Prophet Obadiah was from Edom, but he turned against Edom and prophesized against them.
It’s “prophesied” (rhymes with tide) not “prophesized”. which is not a word. As Casey Stengel would say, you could look it up.
Good lesson in history and theory, thanks!
Huhanakah is real Kwanza isn’t
The Islamic holiday of laylat al-qadr is fake, too. As if the Angel Gabriel ever visited Mo-ham-mad, who was the most despicable man known to history. I wouldn’t be surprised if Satan visited him, though, as Islamic unholy scripture claims.
The dreidel, ‘sevivon’ in hebrew, the official pocket toy of Chanukah, is a spinning, four-sided top. It doesn’t matter how plain or fancy, whether it’s worth a bottle cap or rivals a Faberge egg, the best dreidel’s gotta have great spin.
Each side has a hebrew letter on it. Each letter stands for a word. Four letters, four words. All dreidels in the world have the same letters on three of the four sides; and those three words mean
“a great miracle happened”. But the fourth letter is different on a dreidel’s fourth side because what that letter is depends on where the dreidel spins. If a dreidel is spun in Israel, the fourth letter/word is “here”:
A great miracle happened here, [right here, in Israel, 2,187 years ago.]
But on a dreidel not spinning in Israel, the fourth word is “there” meaning:
“A great miracle happened [not here, but] there, [in the land of the nation of Israel.]
Whereas the human hand sets the top aspinning, it is God who sets the earth, a divine spinning top, in motion.
In the ‘spin to win’ game of dreidel, its letters also stand for different monetary values. There are two aspects to the game: Watching the blur itself of the spinning top fascinates; and we are children again, playing with our children.
Additionally, as the spinning slows to a wobble, excitement intensifies, for this is a gambling game and
‘money‘, coin-shaped chocolate wrapped in gold (milk) or silver (dark) foil, is involved. The dreidel drops.
What side faces up?
Who wins? We all do. We’re playing together. We’re having fun. There’s extra chocolate coins after the game, before the game, during the game.
It’s an evil game that Israel’s enemies are playing – a game of ‘spinning’ lies and hatred against Israel.
Perhaps it’s possible to spin those lies and hatred out of existence; but I don’t know what the physics would be to accomplish that.
That letter is great, Is sevivon Hebrew and dreidael Yiddish? I love the song sevivon.
Yes, dreidel is yiddish and sevivon is Hebrew. They both mean the same thing which is to spin.
very insightful, thank you
My kindergarten class made dreidels (the word we were taught along with the tradition) out of clay during Chanukah which we painted a different color on each side. I don’t remember if we painted letters on them or gambled but we did get chocolate coins and I had fun making mine and spinning it. It probably didn’t spin very well because I was only five but I kept it for years.
I wonder if my teacher was Jewish? Probably. My mother remembers her name but I don’t. We both liked her a lot. I’ll have to ask her the next time I talk to my mother on the phone. That was back in 1969, so no wonder I’ve forgotten.
1969 was the year of my enrollment in school and the first moon landing. The landing was the day before my fifth birthday and yes, my parents allowed my brother and me to stay up past 8;17 Pacific time to watch it, even though our “bedtime” was 8;00. It was a good year.
Happy Chanukah to all
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.
_____Isaiah 9:2
Thank you for this!!!!! So beautiful!
Thank you.
BRAVO! Real nice piece, Daniel.
Thank you!
thank you
I plan to put a Chanukah Menorah in my window to piss off the Jew hating Hamas loving scumbags, and also to show support for all the beleaguered Jews out there. Sticking it to the scumbags seems to be the best way to show support. Hopefully that won’t be offensive to Jews but oh, well, I’m going to do it anyway.
I am worried though, because even though I live on the fifth floor of my building, I could still get some rocks through my windows. You know how those Jew hating Dirtbagocrats and other leftists are. I don’t worry about the islamopithecines because they throw like girls.
There’s some type of Islamic jihad center a short block East and a few houses North from my place. I haven’t fire bombed or vandalized it because I’m not a criminal like lefties and Moslems are, and I wouldn’t get away with crimes like those as they routinely do but boy, does it chap my ass that the evil den squats there, right next to the heart of downtown.
I think they’ll hate a Christmas tree or a cross just as much.
The Maccabees did kill a lot of their fellow Jews but Jews who observed the Torah at the time were being persecuted by the Jews in power over Judea. I don’t approve of them killing their fellows except when necessary but you can’t equate them to the Taliban. They didn’t throw acid in girls’ faces or prevent their education, and Judaism is in no way comparable to the bestial and genocidal cult of islam. I doubt they shagged any sheep, either.
I’m not a big fan of “the Hammer” but he died like a man and the Maccabees gained autonomy for Judea, although it didn’t last long. Nothing seems to last long in that part of the world except the presence of Jews. It seems to me that Channukah celebrates their perseverance along with hope.
Way to Grinch a beautiful Holiday, THX.
P.S.,
I’m two days late but oh, well. I did watch a video about the ritual of how to light the Chanukah Menora at night. It seems a bit anal to me but oh well. No big deal for me but it is for Jews who honor the Torah so I’ll honor it too and risk the stigma of religious appropriation, if there is such a thing.
You can just get an electric one.
Ha! I don’t mind the ritual but the only convenient places I found any Chanukah menorahs were my local Walmart and Target. I held my nose and went to Walmart but I wouldn’t go to Target unless I had a gun to my head.
Besides, candles smell nice.
especially beeswax
Jew hater. I knew it all along.
Greetings Daniel,
Can you recommend any charities based in Israel? Specifically, any with outreach to IDF war-widows or orphans? Food, clothing, shelter; the basic necessities.
And please. Not anything connected to the UN, International Red Cross, or Doctors without Borders (AKA Cheerleaders for Hamas dressed as humanitarians).
There is the IDF Widows and Orphans organization.
https://www.idfwo.org/en/homepage/
And there’s also an IDF care organization for soldiers.
https://www.fidf.org/
I haven’t donated to them myself, but they’re the official organizations.
I have donated to One Family Fund which is a fund that helps terror victims in general
http://www.onefamilyfund.org/
and you’re right, I would never recommend the UN, IRC or Doctors Without Borders.
Is there any way to donate food without paying for postage? I have hundreds of cans of tuna (which I heard are in demand for Israelis sheltering away from their homes on the Gaza border) and almost as many cans of fruit but I’m poor, so if I can send them C.O.D. that would be ideal.
And yes, I’m one of those paranoid types who is stocked up on water and long term food. I don’t trust our government or society at all.
Thanks. There might be local food drives. Depends on location. There was some of that in the first weeks of the war. I haven’t heard of anything more recently.
Ah, I’ll figure something out. I already found a charity that takes contributions. There’s always a way to do something if you put some effort into it.
And I sure don’t need all that tuna.
A rousing Chanukah tune from Bobov with words of encouragement from Psalms (intro from 90, main part from 91):