The holiday that makes Jews most visible arrived this year when Jews have been especially careful not to be too visible. The massacre at Bondi Beach during a public Hanukkah ceremony brought home that reality in the darkest way possible.
Now, with our Festival of Light ending tonight and Jews shaken by an alarming rise in Jew-hatred, a tough new era begins. What Hanukkah lesson can we take with us into this new era?
It’s too easy to settle for the cliches of defiance. Yes, we must be resilient. Yes, we must double down on our Judaism. Yes, we must replace fear with pride.
But when our need for security is as real as our need to reinforce identity, our approach will need to be both tougher and deeper.
Maybe it’s not a coincidence that American Jewry lost one of its intellectual heroes this past week, Norman Podhoretz. In the many tributes and interviews I’ve come across, one item in particular caught my eye: In his youth, Podhoretz was part of a gang called Club Cherokees.
“We were a typical Brooklyn gang of the 40s,” he told historian Harry Kreisler in a 1999 interview. “The main desideratum was to be tough and not to back down from a fight.”
It’s hard to imagine someone with a giant intellect talking about wearing a satin gang jacket as if he were a character in “West Side Story.” But Podhoretz balanced that duality since his early years: “Being a street kid in Brooklyn, which I definitely was, I was a good boy in school and a bad boy on the streets.”
Podhoretz was a kid from the streets who never forgot those streets. But he was also a man of letters who caroused in the intellectual salons of his day. He was ferocious in his search for truth and in his defense of Israel and America, but he did it with scholarly depth and literary flair.
Podhoretz, in his own way, embodied the Hanukkah story. Jews were threatened spiritually and physically. They needed to be smart and tough. The Jewish revolt led by the Maccabees was a revolt to protect Jewish identity. Our enemies didn’t just conquer territory; they were out to eradicate Jewish religious life altogether.
“Hanukkah marks the moment when a small outnumbered group of Jews fought back, militarily and spiritually, and reclaimed their right to exist as Jews,” Leslie S. Lebl and Tali Gillette write in a Journal essay this week. “The rededication of the temple was not just a ritual act, but a declaration that Jewish identity would not disappear quietly into history.”
As we light the last candle of Hanukkah tonight, that strikes me as the mission we must take with us: To declare that Jewish identity will not “disappear quietly into history.”
Just as the Maccabees fought back militarily and spiritually, we will need to fight for our physical safety while continuing to strengthen our identity. As we add security to our synagogues, we must add joy inside those synagogues. As we fight against Israel-haters, we must spread the message that Zionism is great for the world.
As we fight for the Jews, we must remember we’re also fighting for America and the West.
For inspiration, we can look at the scrappiness of Podhoretz and the power of his intellect; at his love for America and his love for truth; at his ability to fight for his tribe while bringing light into the world.
It turns out that today is the Winter Solstice, the day with the least daylight and the longest night. Maybe this is the perfect time to begin this new era, when darkness has hit its bottom and we can prepare to be as visible as ever.
That would be indeed an ideal desideratum.
Happy last night of Hanukkah.
