One of the tragedies of the culture that has been created around COVID is the shaming and misrepresentation of people who have spoken out about liberty and bodily autonomy as if they were selfish, ill-informed individuals who do not sufficiently care about vulnerable people.
To combat the simplistic dismissal of “liberty” as the opposite of “science” and “compassion” and to understand that liberty is not a synonym for selfishness but a cultural treasure that should be cherished and protected—studying history and traditional textual sources is important.
This week, Chanukah celebrates an ancient victory: the Maccabees resisted the demand of the Greek King Antiochus to assimilate into the Hellenistic culture of the Greek empire. Against all odds, they won their battle and were able to restore Jewish life to ancient Israel. According to legend, when the Maccabees liberated the temple in Jerusalem, they found only a bit of oil with which to light the menorah. Miraculously, that insufficient amount of oil lasted for eight days and eight nights until more olive oil could be brought from the Galilee. For that reason, Jewish people light the menorah for eight days during Chanukah: one candle plus a helper candle (shamash) on the first day, two on the second day—all the way up to eight on the eighth day.
For many generations, Jewish people have turned to the story of the Maccabees and to the lighting of the Chanukah candles as a symbol of the hope of being free of oppression.
In the following video, a story is told that took place in Kiel, Germany in December 1932, the last winter before the Nazis seized power in March 1933. The Posner family lived across the street from Nazi headquarters, and so when they lit their menorah on the ledge of their window, its lights burnt bright directly across from the swastika flag. Mrs. Posner snapped a picture and wrote on the back what may be translated as, “Judah will die, thus says the flag; Judah will live forever, thus say the lights.”
About two years before he was murdered in Auschwitz, the Belgian Jewish boy Moshe Flinker wrote these diary entries during Chanukah:
“December 4, 1942
Now I end today’s notes. I hear a heavy sigh coming from my mother. I had thought that in honor of Hanukkah, salvation, or at least a part of it, might have come; instead, we get new troubles.
December 7, 1942
During the last few days nothing important has occurred, either to me or around me. We lit the fifth candle tonight, and Hanukkah, the Feast of Lights, is drawing to a close. I cannot hope any longer for miracles on this Hanukkah. Every day more and more Jews are being deported—now from one place, now from another. They say that the Germans have special personnel who go around town trying to find out where Jews are living, and they show the Germans these locations, and the Germans come and take our brothers away.
December 12, 1942
Thursday was the last night of Hanukkah. My father, young brother, and I lit the candles which we had obtained, though not without difficulty. While I was singing the last stanza of the Hanukkah hymn “Maoz Tzur,” I was deeply struck by the topicality of the words:
Reveal Thy sacred mighty arm
And draw redemption near,
Take Thy revenge upon that
Wicked people that has shed the blood
Of those who worship Thee.
Our deliverance has been long overdue,
Evil days are endless.
Banish the foe, destroy the shadow of his image.
Provide us with a guiding light.
All our troubles, from the first to this most terrible one, are multiple and endless, and from all of them rises one gigantic scream. From wherever it emanates, the cry that rises is identical to the cries in other places or at other times. When I sang “Maoz Tzur” for the last time on Hanukkah, I sang with emphasis—especially the last verse. But later when I sat on my own I asked myself: “What was the point of that emphasis? What good are all the prayers I offer up with so much sincerity? I am sure that more righteous sages than I have prayed in their hour of anguish for deliverance and salvation. What merit have I that I should pray for our much-needed redemption?”
Source: The Hanukkah Anthology (The JPS Holiday Anthologies) . The Jewish Publication Society. Kindle Edition.
And here is a rendition of the traditional Chanukah song Maoz Tzur, rock of ages, which Flinker was singing:
During the years of the Holocaust, the Jewish people were put into a situation of unambiguous victimhood from which they desperately needed liberation. Today’s situation, being infinitely milder, is also more morally ambiguous, leading to endless interpretative debates: where some people see darkness, others see light; and where some people see light, others see darkness. Thus, for example, the truckers of the Freedom Convoy are regarded by some as bold but peaceful individuals who, by exercising their civil right to protect, have brought human warmth to downtown Ottawa—while by others they are reviled as occupiers. And health officials who are perceived by some as individuals of exceptional empathy, intellectual abilities and moral integrity are suspected by some others as being motivated by careerism and self-interested desire for celebrity and control.
Where is the truth?
Within this polarizing context, I find some solace in turning to the ancient textual source of Chanukah, the first and second books of Maccabees, and trying to find meaning within its fierce lines.
The Maccabees arose within an oppressive imperial context, in which only one interpretation of “doing what is right” was permitted, and many Jews became Hellenized:
“Moreover king Antiochus wrote to his whole kingdom, that all should be one people, And every one should leave his laws: so all the heathen agreed according to the commandment of the king. Yea, many also of the Israelites consented to his religion, and sacrificed unto idols, and profaned the sabbath. For the king had sent letters by messengers unto Jerusalem and the cities of Judea that they should follow the strange laws of the land, And forbid burnt offerings, and sacrifice, and drink offerings, in the temple; and that they should profane the sabbaths and festival days: And pollute the sanctuary and holy people: Set up altars, and groves, and chapels of idols, and sacrifice swine's flesh, and unclean beasts: That they should also leave their children uncircumcised, and make their souls abominable with all manner of uncleanness and profanation.”
The battle that the Maccabees, many of whom were farmers turned warriors, fought was about the right to worship one, abstract God and to follow the laws of the Jewish religion. It was a battle that manifested itself in terms of bodily autonomy, in this case the right to not eat meats that were forbidden by the religion:
“Howbeit many in Israel were fully resolved and confirmed in themselves not to eat any unclean thing. Wherefore the rather to die, that they might not be defiled with meats, and that they might not profane the holy covenant: so then they died. And there was very great wrath upon Israel.”
I Maccabees, chapter 1
Image: Wojciech Korneli Stattler’s “The Maccabees” (Wikimedia Commons)
Maccabees tells stories of people choosing death over putting into their bodies what to them was an impure substance. One example is the scribe Eleazar:
“Eleazar, one of the principal scribes, an aged man, and of a well favoured countenance, was constrained to open his mouth, and to eat swine's flesh. But he, choosing rather to die gloriously, than to live stained with such an abomination, spit it forth, and came of his own accord to the torment: As it behooved them to come, that are resolute to stand out against such things, as are not lawful for love of life to be tasted.”
Eleazar is offered the possibility to cheat: bring his own meat and eat it, pretending it was the forbidden meat, and thus escaping death:
“But they that had the charge of that wicked feast, for the old acquaintance they had with the man, taking him aside, besought him to bring flesh of his own provision, such as was lawful for him to use, and make as if he did eat of the flesh taken from the sacrifice commanded by the king. That in so doing he might be delivered from death, and for the old friendship with them find favour.”
But Eleazar considers it as a duty of old age toward the next generations to remain true to his principles:
“But he began to consider discreetly, and as became his age, and the excellency of his ancient years, and the honour of his gray head, whereon was come, and his most honest education from a child, or rather the holy law made and given by God: therefore he answered accordingly, and willed them straightways to send him to the grave. For it becometh not our age, said he, in any wise to dissemble, whereby many young persons might think that Eleazar, being fourscore years old and ten, were now gone to a strange religion; And so they through mine hypocrisy, and desire to live a little time and a moment longer, should be deceived by me, and I get a stain to mine old age, and make it abominable.”
Eleazar’s decision to not obey the meat mandate is motivated by a belief by higher divine justice that ultimately rules the universe:
“For though for the present time I should be delivered from the punishment of men: yet should I not escape the hand of the Almighty, neither alive, nor dead. Wherefore now, manfully changing this life, I will shew myself such an one as mine age requireth, And leave a notable example to such as be young to die willingly and courageously for the honourable and holy laws. And when he had said these words, immediately he went to the torment.”
II Maccabees, Chapter 6
The next chapter of II Maccabees, Chapter 7, tells an even more extreme story:
“It came to pass also, that seven brethren with their mother were taken, and compelled by the king against the law to taste swine's flesh, and were tormented with scourges and whips.”
But the mother, instead of telling her sons to eat the forbidden flesh, expects them to sacrifice their lives in the name of obedience to a higher cause that she views as inviolable:
“I cannot tell how ye came into my womb: for I neither gave you breath nor life, neither was it I that formed the members of every one of you; But doubtless the Creator of the world, who formed the generation of man, and found out the beginning of all things, will also of his own mercy give you breath and life again, as ye now regard not your own selves for his laws' sake.”
The zealous and extreme Maccabees were not defenders of bodily autonomy in the egalitarian sense in which we think of it today. Rather, they were the defenders of a particular way of life that to them was so rich and true that it was the only right way. The Maccabees in fact at times violated the bodily autonomy of Hellenized Jews to restore what they viewed as the world as it should be:
“Then Mattathias and his friends went round about, and pulled down the altars: And what children soever they found within the coast of Israel uncircumcised, those they circumcised valiantly.”
I Maccabees, Chapter 2
Source: The Books of I & II Maccabees: Where The Story of Hanukkah Is Found. Kindle Edition.
Despite the extreme nature of their behavior during an ancient conflict, the Maccabees did bestow upon us a lasting gift when it comes to the defense of liberty. The act of lighting the Chanukah menorah involves an implied glorification, however moderated and adapted, of the Maccabees. But what is it that we are implicitly glorifying? From an aestheticized distance, we can admire the Maccabees for their courage and bold protection of their way of life. In comparison to the arm-bearing Maccabees, the bold but peaceful truckers are soft teddy bears. And yet, many of us who light Chanukah candles in honour of the Maccabees have either actively engaged in or have passively accepted a demonization of the truckers. The truckers appear menacing precisely because they have asserted themselves (peacefully) on our streets instead of (violently) within the pages of an ancient book.
In “The Meaning of Hanukkah” the late Theodor Herzl Gaster wrote about the lasting significance of the struggle of the Maccabees:
“Though inspired . . . by the particular situation of their own people, their struggle was instinct with universal implications. For what was really being defended was the principle that in a diversified society the function of the state is to embrace, not subordinate, the various constituent cultures, and that the complexion and character of the state must be determined by a cultural process of fusion on the one hand and selection on the other, and not by the arbitrary imposition of a single pattern on all elements. Seen from this point of view, therefore, Hanukkah possesses broad human significance and is far more than a mere Jewish national celebration. As a festival of liberty, it celebrates more than the independence of one people—it glorifies the right to freedom of all peoples.”
The Maccabees, for Gaster, also reminds us that it is not enough to dislike oppression. The way of life that one would like to protect also needs to be asserted and practiced:
“Second, Hanukkah affirms the universal truth that the only effective answer to oppression is the intensified positive assertion of the principles and values which that oppression threatens. What inspired the movement of the Maccabees was not simply an abstract and academic dislike of tyranny but a desire to safeguard and evince an identity and way of life which was in danger of extinction. It therefore consisted not only in a fight against Antiochus but also in a fight for Judaism, the military uprising going hand in hand with an almost fanatical crusade for the internal regeneration of the Jewish people.”
Source: The Hanukkah Anthology (The JPS Holiday Anthologies) . The Jewish Publication Society. Kindle Edition.
To me, today, in our times, coercing people to put things into their bodies or on their face is not consistent with the lasting message of Chanukah. We need to respect people for their peaceful choices. The Maccabees may have forcefully circumcised and coerced their fellow Hellenized Jews into what they viewed as the right path, but the enduring meaning of their struggle is not about coercion but about the peaceful protection of liberty. At the very least, those who insist on peacefully safeguarding civil liberties should not be shamed or demonized but engaged with as a well-respected minority (even if, when silent supporters are taken into account, they may be more than a minority). Tyranny may feel that it is in full control, but, in the midst of winter, the human love of and need for liberty might make an appearance as a force of nature.