Each year I post on Hanukkah (Chanukah), what it is and why it is celebrated, because it is about keeping the light of liberty burning. In 2015 Hanukkah is celebrated beginning at sunset December 6 through 14, the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev to the second day of Tevet. This year I’m dedicating the story to Katie Norcross, known throughout the blog world as “findalis” of Monkey in the Middle Blog. We lost Katie to cancer in May 2015 after a courageous battle. And each year, I let Rabbi Wyne do the ‘splaining. The video is short and excellent.
In 2010 I posted the following snippet from Daniel Greenfield at Sultan Knish. His reminder is that Jews “are called upon to keep their watch. To take up their banner and carry their sword.” Today the same message is urgent for Gentiles. Here is Daniel on celebrating “holidays” 2010″
“Holidays aren’t mere parties, they’re messages. Knots of time that we tie around the fingers of our lives so that we remember what our ancestors meant us to never forget. That they lived and died for a
Daniel Greenfield, Sultan Knish Blog
reason. The party is a celebration, but if we forget what it celebrates, then it becomes a celebration of nothing but materialism. A hollow and soulless festival of the self. The Maccabees fought to resist having their culture and their religion, replaced with just that kind of empty hedonism and self-worship. They fought because they believed they had something worth fighting for. Not for their possessions, but for their traditions, their families and their G-d. The celebration of Chanukah is not just how we remember them, but how we remember that we are called upon to keep their watch. To take up their banner and carry their sword.”
The following is more from Daniel, December 6, 2015.
The Governor of Syria who dispatched two generals, Nicanor, and Gorgias, with forty thousand soldiers and seven thousand horsemen to conquer Judea, destroy Jerusalem and abolish the whole Jewish nation forever. So certain were they of victory that they brought with them merchant caravans to fill with the Hebrew slaves of a destroyed nation.
Judah walked among his brothers and fellow rebels and spoke to them of the thing for which they fought; “O my fellow soldiers, no other time remains more opportune than the present for courage and contempt of dangers; for if you now fight manfully, you may recover your liberty, which, as it is a thing of itself agreeable to all men, so it proves to be to us much more desirable, by its affording us the liberty of worshiping God.
Greenfield is a columnist, a Shillman Fellow, the author of the Sultan Knish blog (home page here), covering US and Israeli politics, and the struggle against Islamic terrorism. I believe he is also a fine photographer. His home page is here. Read either or both of Daniel Greenfield’s posts for a better understanding of what it means to keep the torch of liberty burning. While Chanukah is a Jewish celebration, all free men celebrate the light.
Here is Rabbi Wyne on the meaning of Chanukah/Hanukkah:
