Hanukkah ended this week. This year was a relief for Jewish people everywhere because our little Festival of Lights didn’t cross over with often overlooked Thanksgiving or the commercialized juggernaut that is Christmas. This year, we can light our candles and spin our dreidls and eat our latkes in peace, free from the prying eyes of the outside world and their often bizarre names for the holidays created when Hanukkah interrupts one of their holidays (Christmahanukkawanzaa, I’m looking at you).
At least that’s what I thought until I saw Emma Green’s Atlantic article about how American Jews have ruined Hanukkah.
This is all I have to say to that: What the f**k?
It’s not enough that American Jews have to live in a country that defines ‘religious freedom’ as the ability to refuse to bake wedding cakes for gay couples, to avoid paying for employees’ healthcare, and to force children to say ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance. It’s not enough for Jewish kids to have to grow up dealing with all manner of dumb-ass questions from non-Jewish children and adults alike. Apparently, we have to deal with articles from major news outlets about how our holidays are some form of “penis envy” Jews hold for Christmas. (That’s an actual line from the article. I’m not joking.) What the f**k?
Cursory Googling didn’t allow me to determine whether or not the author of the piece is Jewish. But then I got to thinking about it, and I decided it doesn’t matter if she is or not. If she’s not Jewish, she’s just another in a long line of Gentiles sticking their nose into our religious practices, stealing what they like and mocking what they don’t. If she is Jewish, what business does she have airing an intra-community discussion in a major news outlet for the gratification of non-Jews who wonder why we don’t get with the program and celebrate Christmas already. Either way, what business of hers is it how individual Jews and Jewish families choose to celebrate their holidays?
The article goes into some detail about the historical and psychological turmoil Jewish people have faced due to assimilation pressure in the United States – but then it turns around and declares that celebrating one of our holidays instead of caving in and buying a Christmas tree is assimilation. It misses the point about Hanukkah. I learned about Hanukkah before I learned about the Holocaust. The first thing I learned about the oppression of Jews by members of other religions and ethnicities wasn’t that we were nearly exterminated while the world sat by and watched. It was that my ancestors were fighters, that my people have never sat down and taken the garbage that other people try to throw at us. That our culture has survived for thousands of years because we are survivors.
Emma Green’s article isn’t revolutionary. It’s not smart, it’s not insightful, it’s not worth the screen space it takes up or the 10 minutes of my life I wasted reading it. It’s just another handful of garbage thrown our way.
Happy Hanukkah, everyone. I think I’ll use my hanukkiah to set a nutcracker on fire.
