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Chanukah Continued from Page 19
“It is good to remember that (Chanukah) is not a major holiday,
but it has caught on because everybody has a winter festival that’s
related to light, so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with cele-
brating ours,” said Rabbi Leah Berkowitz of Congregation Kol Ami
in Elkins Park.

“If we’re celebrating (Chanukah) and not acknowledging other
Jewish holidays, then that’s a problem. But if you’re doing Sukkot
and Passover and Shavuot and the High Holidays and Shabbat — if
you’re doing all of those things and you want to make a big deal
out of Chanukah, then that’s fine.”
Ah, but what of that semi-queasy irony — a New York Times
op-ed from this time last year went so far as to call it “hypoc-
risy” — in how most secular American Jews have come to cele-
brate Chanukah, a holiday born out of resisting assimilation?
Hypocrisy’s probably a bit extreme; many families are trying simply
to safely shepherd their children through the minefield of holiday
season Christmas envy without suffering righteous admonishment.

Still. “There is a certain irony to how Chanukah is celebrated because
if we look at the historical, biblical origins of Chanukah, it’s very
much about not assimilating,” Berkowitz confirmed. “It’s this small
group of Jews that fought because they didn’t want to assimilate,
because they wanted to keep observing Judaism in a strict way.

So ... that (Chanukah) is the holiday that’s become the Jewish
Christmas is the biggest irony.”
Religious school students light up the darkness at
Congregation Kol Ami in Elkins Park.  Photo by Rabbi Leah Berkowitz
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NOVEMBER 28, 2019
1969-2019 The Maccabees fought and killed to avoid being absorbed into
the Hellenized world all around them. They adhered to a strict
interpretation of what it meant to be Jewish and literally would’ve
rather died than become the Hellenized Jews they reviled, who ate
pork and didn’t circumcise their male children and participated in
pagan rituals.

Many see it as just another battle in the age-old war between
fundamentalism and cosmopolitanism — conservatives and tradi-
tionalists versus the reform-minded. Throw in a megalomaniacal
king in Antiochus IV who, by most historical accounts, was far
more hostile to observant Jews than his dynastic predecessors, and
you’ve got ready-made bellicosity. Just add oil ... or take it away.

But perhaps the question shouldn’t be whether the Maccabees
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