Happy Hanukkah (a day late)

I’ll just have to make up for it tonight. Oh well. I’ll figure it out one of these days.

Hanukkah is the Festival of Lights, a celebration of the victory of the Maccabees and the rededication of the Jerusalem Temple. It also commemorates the miracle of the oil that burned for 8 days and was only supposed to last for one. In celebration, we make potato latkes (symbolic of the oil) and light one candle in the menorrah for each day of the eight days of the holiday.

So why do I celebrate Hanukkah? Do I really believe that the oil lasted eight days? Well, not really. Someone just wrote a book about Daniel Boone and spent a good bit of effort dispelling myths of someone who lived a mere 250 years ago. Despite Boone living during a time when many could read and write (free men, that is), with the ability to keep historic records, a lot of tall tales still managed to become “fact,” passed down from one generation to the next. For this reason I approach historical “accounts” with a bit of skepticism, and the older the story, the less convinced I am that all the facts are 100% accurate. That said, I also allow that a miracle really did happen. I wouldn’t bet my life on it, but who knows? At any rate, the truth of the miracle of the oil is irrelevant to me.

The reason I celebrate Hanukkah, is not only because I think fried food is God’s special gift to us in exchange for all the slings and arrows of life, and because I love candles and an excuse to play with fire, but because it’s a celebration of religious freedom. Even in 2007, in the country that likes to tout itself as being the most respectful of any nation in the world of free speech and religious freedom, I find many give lip service to these ideals. Deep down, many people here believe that we are a Christian nation first and everyone who isn’t Christian should just accept this fact and go along, even in our public institutions and at public events. If someone wants to say a prayer in Jesus’s name at a professional sporting event, as remarkably, people do here, anyone who doesn’t agree, should just shut up and keep the peace. I’ve received many emails in recent years, those “forward this if you’re outraged too” in indignation of someone having the nerve to contest prayer in a public school, the same public school that the citizen in question paid taxes to support. This, in the nation that prides itself on religious freedom and our principles of separation of church and state.

Since most people don’t know I’m Jewish, I don’t “look” Jewish and I don’t have a Jewish name, I’ve been privileged to learn what’s really in some people’s hearts. I’ll just say that we’re not as enlightened a country or a civilization as we like to believe, and I think most people don’t even admit to themselves their ethnocentric and racist tendencies. It was a shock to me in my first years in Charlotte how many people asked me within the first few minutes of our meeting, “So what church do you go to?” I know they meant well, and the intention was to bond and connect, but coming from a culture where, in 22 years the topic of religion never came up as a way to make social connections, it made me really miss the diversity of Baltimore. While Charlotte has become more diversified in recent years, I wonder that maybe our nation, as a whole, hasn’t regressed in the last decade.

When we hear about the practices of the Taliban in Middle Eastern countries, we consider them barbaric and backwards, maybe we even feel a little prideful about our comparably more enlightened society. It behooves us to proceed with caution though in estimating ourselves so highly. The tide of religious fundamentalism in our country is growing stronger. While some of these people are peace loving, as are many Muslims, right here in our own country, there are those that have murdered abortion doctors, and, as witnessed in the Dover school, made death threats to teachers for not teaching a religious doctrine as science, all in the name of Christianity. Like Bill Buckingham, there are many who really aren’t interested in religious freedom, and think that integrating religion into the curriculum is a way to make things “better.” They want specifically, Christian prayer, in public schools and want to unsecularize our institutions as much as possible.

I like to hope and believe that, despite all the political rancor, most of us are somewhere in the middle, rational, not just tolerant and respectful of differences, but relish that we coexist and can learn and grow from our diversity. Our diversity is an asset. We can’t evolve by locking our minds in a closet. We can’t even understand and know ourselves without it. An American is never better able to define what American culture is until after he visits another country.

I say all this in hopes that it will make people think. The next time you get an email about that terrible atheist who is protesting “God” in a public institution, think for a minute. Your first impulse might be to say, “what’s the big deal about one little prayer?” For many people, if they were honest, they would admit they’re mad at the atheist (or whoever is the “evil doer” at the moment) and can’t understand what the big deal is because they assume the prayer will be Christian in nature. Consider for a moment though, who do you want teaching religious values to your children? Do you know that the teacher’s religious values match yours? If we say we’re okay with prayer, what happens when the teacher isn’t a Christian and wants to pray with your children and teach him/her all about the magic of crystals and energy or make an entreaty in the name of Muhammad? What if the teacher is a Wiccan? Then it becomes a whole different matter, doesn’t it. Now who is doing the protesting?

If that’s a scary thought, then maybe you understand why religion is deeply personal and why its a violation of the our most sacred principles to eliminate the division between “church” and state. Our nation was founded by people who believed in religious diversity. If we want to throw that away, we should burn the rest of the Constitution too. If you don’t understand it, then perhaps you should travel to the Middle East and see the effects of religious fundamentalism first hand and see how great life is for those living under religious intolerance and oppression.

Perhaps because it seems there have been so many attempts to blend politics and shared public spheres and religion, and because I am the token Jew, and often find that I stay silent in order to keep the peace, that I fear generating anymore antisemitism than I witness already, and because it seems that we are losing the notion of separation of church and state because I meet so many who are not infuriated by the attempt to fuse the two, but infuriated at the attempt to keep them separate, I treasure more than ever the celebration of religious freedom. I am scared that we are moving more and more toward a theocracy, I am nervous about the deliberate and calculated agenda of the religious right to gain power and influence our law to meet their beliefs, and I worry that one day we will forget why our forefathers were so careful to set up a country that meant for these spheres to not overlap.

On the lighter side, I also like celebrating Hanukkah because it’s a reminder of how precious oil is. It may be something that we often take for granted, like most things in our lives, but can you imagine a world where you couldn’t fry things or whip up a vinaigrette? I shudder at the thought.