{"id":1780939,"date":"2022-12-20T07:17:29","date_gmt":"2022-12-20T12:17:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1780939"},"modified":"2022-12-20T07:17:40","modified_gmt":"2022-12-20T12:17:40","slug":"american-hanukkah-is-insufferably-boring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/american-hanukkah-is-insufferably-boring\/","title":{"rendered":"American \u2018Hanukkah\u2019 Is Insufferably Boring"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">10<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Famerican-hanukkah-is-insufferably-boring%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1780939&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>In the late 19th and early 20th century, assimilating Jewish newcomers to the United States turned\u00a0Hanukkah into the\u00a0vacuous, anesthetized, consumerist, areligious holiday we know today. By creating a celebration that was not only in seasonal proximity to Christmas but one that tried to ape its festive tone, American Jews had their own winter festival.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not a religious man, but I do value tradition. And every few years I feel compelled to point out that Hanukkah is the most <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2017\/12\/13\/every-time-wish-someone-happy-hanukkah-acknowledge-historic-jewish-claim-jerusalem\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">misunderstood<\/a> holiday in American life.\u00a0It\u2019s true that Hanukkah isn\u2019t a Jewish \u201cyom tov,\u201d a \u201cgood day,\u201d handed down to chosen people in the Torah like Passover or Rosh Hashana. It is a minor holiday with no restrictions on work. The two books of the Maccabees are canon in Roman Catholicism and in Eastern Orthodox churches, but not Judaism. <\/p>\n<p>Yet one suspects it\u2019s the one Jewish celebration most Americans have heard about \u2014 a holiday that has something to do with ancient Jews finding a single day\u2019s oil in the Holy Temple that miraculously burns for eight. Though Hanukkah is perhaps the only Jewish holiday <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/National-News\/Unprecedented-finding-from-Hasmonean-period-unearthed-in-City-of-David-333898\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">confirmed<\/a> in archeological evidence, the bit about the miracle of the oil was added <em>hundreds<\/em> of years after the events told in the two books of Maccabee by rabbis who probably wanted to avoid fueling Jewish zealotry under Roman rule.<\/p>\n<p>Today? \u201cModern celebrations of Hanukkah,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/urj.org\/jewish-holidays\/hanukkah\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">says<\/a> the Union for Reform Judaism, \u201cfocus on family and friends and include the lighting of the Hanukkah menorah (also called a hanukkiyah); singing and playing special songs and games (dreidel); and eating foods prepared in oil\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Stop, it\u2019s so boring.<\/em> <\/p>\n<p>There is nothing in the books of the Maccabees about menorahs. There is, however, a lot about loyalty, violence, family, and faith. It is the most openly Zionist holiday. Hanukkah, \u201cdedication\u201d in Hebrew, tells the story of the bloody civil war between the Maccabees and the Seleucids\u2019 Jewish allies, the capture of Jerusalem (800 years before the advent of Islam), the rededication of the Second Temple, and early days of the Hasmonean dynasty. <\/p>\n<p>The Maccabees 1 and 2 are principally concerned with the patriarch Mattathias and his five sons, who rise against Antiochus, the Hellenic king and traitor who desecrated the Temple, banned Jewish ritual, and levied exorbitant taxes on the people. When a messenger of the king travels to a village to bribe Mattathias into sacrificing to the Greek gods, the old man refuses. And when a fellow Jew, hoping to avoid a scene, volunteers to make the sacrifice instead, Mattathias slays the Hellenized Jew and then the representative of the crown, sparking a revolt. The Maccabees, a rural clan, go on to conduct a brutal guerrilla war against the ruling elite.<\/p>\n<p>Many of Mattathias\u2019s children would die badly in the effort, one being trampled by a war elephant. But all get off relatively easily compared to the children of the \u201cwoman with the seven sons.\u201d In this haunting tale, told in the second book of Maccabees,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hanukkah is a\u00a0vacuous, anesthetized, consumerist, areligious celebration. It&#8217;s a shame because its story is brutal, fascinating, and epic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":831,"featured_media":1780942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[4123,10487,6919,10207,10488],"class_list":["post-1780939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-american","tag-boring","tag-federalist","tag-hanukkah","tag-insufferably"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1780939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/831"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1780939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1780939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1780942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1780939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1780939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1780939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}