Kesher Talk

Hanukkah - tres kandelikas. Imshin comments on Jonathan's thoughts about the Maccabees. Yes - they were religious fundamentalist zealots. But - they were fighting deliberate enforced cultural genocide. It's a complex topic and both bloggers do it justice. Naomi Chana has similar mixed feelings about the obligatory hymn of Hanukkah, "Ma'oz Tzur."

This is also how many modern liberal Jews tend to feel about Israel. When we are actors in history, when we have agency - in other words, in the real world where there is no perfect good, we have to make imperfect and agonizing decisions in favor of the better over the worse, and hindsight will always show a rosy potential future that we failed to achieve. We Jews do like to think that when we have a chance to make history, we can do it better than all those callous brutal gentiles. The ways Jews have handled our moral choices compares favorably to most of the world's peoples, but we want to be perfect. So we end up with three liberal modern Jews grappling with the zealousness of the Maccabees and the bloodthirstyness of the hymn commemorating their deeds.

But we do like to grapple.

UPDATE: Jonathan responds to Imshin.

posted by Judith @ 12/21/2003 05:26:12 PM