Found a funny bit in the JPost today about Christopher Hitchens’ ignorance of Judaism. This is the best part:
Hitchens’ avers that: “If one could nominate an absolutely tragic day in human history, it would be the occasion that is now commemorated by the vapid and annoying holiday known as Hanukka. For once, instead of Christianity plagiarizing from Judaism, the Jews borrow shamelessly from Christians in the pathetic hope of a celebration that coincides with “Christmas.”
What? Hanukka takes from Christians? Awesome! The Maccabees were time travelers!
A BRIEF Hanukka refresher: The festival is a celebration of the victory in 165 BCE of the Maccabees, over the armies of the Hellenistic Syrians led by Antiochus Epiphanes IV.
Oops. Hey, feel free to be an atheist, Hitch. But perhaps you should know what you’re talking about before putting it down.
The tragedy is that there are people who forget the true meaning of Chanuka and who the Maccabis actually had to fight against (the Hellenist collaberators). If you take his sentence literally, turning Chanuka into a “vapid copy of Xmas” is indeed a great tragedy for the world.
Especially when you consider the possibility that Xmas was created in order to give the nonJewish Xians something to claim as a holiday in place of Chanuka. Note that Chanuka is the 25th of the month of Kislev. Converting it to a solar calendar day gives the 25th of December, the month that has the shortest day of the year. It also allowed the pagan converts to continue the Roman holidays of Calendria and Saternalia.
Maybe he confused it with Kwanza. :)
Although the Kislev 25/December 25 correlation is striking, it’s always been my understanding that this is coincidence.
Although there is no historic evidence that explains exactly when Christmas was chosen to be the 25th, it is well known that the Church sought to co-opt the date from several pagan solstice holidays, including “Dies Natali Solis Invictus”, “Yule” and the birthdays of Ishtar and Mithra. (December 25th is the winter solstice, according to the Julian calendar; when the world started using other solar calendars, the solstice “moved” to the 21st, but the holidays remained on the 25th.)
It’s worth noting that some churches (especially Eastern Orthodox) celebrate Christmas on January 6th or 7th. (See also Wikipedia)
I’m a bit surprised that Hitch didn’t try to say that it was taken over from Sir Issaac Newton’s birthday (December 25).
Whenever he talks about religion Hitch loses his rationality and becomes a creature of his passions and biases.
Yes, and this is only one of many complete distortions of reality that Hitchens indulges in throughout what could be a close contender for The Worst Book Ever Written. Michael Lonie (#4) may well have put his finger on it, because I’ve been at a loss to figure how Hitch can be so erudite and articulate on so many subjects and yet fail so miserably (whether you agree with him or not) on this one. Feh!
I tend to agree with Hitch in that Hanukah has been commercialized to match the Christmas sentiment.
And thats fine. Its very fun. I love Hanukah. I love Christmas. People should get over themselves.
Christopher Hitchens is no authority on Judaism, and, though he claims to be a philosemite, he’s no friend of the Jews. He even claims to be Jewish himself. That’s because when he was 38 years old, he found out for the first time that he had some Jewish ancestry, when his mother or grandmother told him. They hadn’t bothered before, you see. But because he is descended from a female Jew through the maternal line (great grandmother? I’m not sure), he claims that he’s technically Jewish.
But all he uses his “Judaism” for is to preach anti-Zionism. That’s right, he’s for the war on Iraq. That was a switch from his traditionally left-wing politics, but he remains a staunch anti-Zionist. So now, he likes to say, “as a Jew…” You can figure out the rest.
No, actually he’s got a point here. Chanukkah traditionally has been a minor holiday. Making it into something major and turning it into a major gift giving holiday is actually pretty much what American Jews have done. I assume everyone reading this knows, by the way, that the “miracle of the eight nights” is not found in the historical sources.
We shouldn’t have done this, either. Chanukkah just happens to come around this time but it does have significance that has nothing to do with gifts or Christmas or winter festivals as such.
There was some sitcome a while back with Susan Dey and the guy who played Murphy Brown’s right-wing boyfriend. She was a non-Jewish restaurant owner, I forget what his Jewish character did, and in the obligatory holiday episode they agree at the end that “both Christmas and Chanukkah are really about ‘peace on earth, good will towards men.'” Peace and good will are, of course, the last things Chanukkah is about.
That said, while I learn a lot from Hitchens, it must be said that he has a blind spot when it comes to certain people. 9/11 had a profound effect on him in many ways, but somehow he still sees Israel and Israel’s situation just as he did before.
Anyone have any ideas why? Yes,I know the standard and quite possibly real explanation, but I wonder.
Alex, I think part of the core of Hitchens is his need to see himself as an iconoclast, and hold a number of opinions contradictory to whomever he’s associating with at the moment. Remember, this is the guy who wrote a book-length screed and documentary about the hypocrisy and perfidy of Mother Theresa.
In addition, post-September 11th he’s made a project of opposing Islamofascism and supporting the GWOT without publicly walking back or repudiating any of his pre-September 11th positions. He wants to be a modern Lincoln Brigader, fighting the new face of Fascism while carrying the banner of International Socialism. The fact that there isn’t anyone else there holding the banner with him just makes the position all the more attractive.
So his hatred of Israel and support for the Palestinians comes from the ’70s-’80s world view where Arafat and the Palestinians were an Arab Socialist vanguard, using the rhetoric and iconography of a Socialist revolution (when their audience was sympathetic to such.) He became steeped and learned in every mistake the Israeli army and government made in the ’82 Lebanon war, and was an eager audience for anti-Zionist propaganda. And he’s felt no need to reappraise that position, given his faith that all religions are equally bad, and therefore a Jewish state is as despicable as an Islamic one.
Eric, you’ve got a good point. However, after 9/11 he abandoned for the msot part his iconoclastic/left-wing stance on most issues but kept his viewpoint on Israel. In other words, in most areas except this one he’s been able to adjust his thinking to reality.
It’s entirely possible, of course, that the obvious explanation is the correct one–he doesn’t like Jews, at least not Jews organized into a state with armies and jet fighters. (For a lot of people Jews as violinists and comedians are just fine, it’s when we start getting into this other stuff that they sadly see that we’re abandoning our great traditions.)
So he re-appraised a lot of issues but doesn’t seem to have done so on this…I don’t mean changing his mind, he doesn’t appear to have even gone through a re-appraisal that brought him back to where he was before. As I say, it could well be the obvious reason but I wonder.
There are a lot of areas where I used to ascribe the situation to deep, complex, socioeconomic or historical forces and I later realized it was a lot simpler: a lot of people don’t like Jews.
Alex and others have summed it up nicely. Hanukka obviously could not have started as an imitation of Krechsmacht, but if you read the full article, you’ll see that Hitchens never claims it did. In the US especially, the imitation of Krechsmacht is rampant, from the gift giving (never a part of traditional Hanukkah observance) to the nauseating but mercifully seldom seen “Hanukah bush” that started as a bad joke.
Alex, the guy who played Murphy Brown’s right-wing boyfriend played a sports writer in the show with Susan Dey. Susan Dey left after the first season or two and was replaced with another non-Jewish girlfriend, played by one of the former Designing Women.
Yes and no. The article does, in fact, take Hitchens’ quote somewhat out of context. Because it looks like he’s saying that the evil of Chanuka is that it “plagiarizes” Christmas, whereas that’s only an aside. He then goes on to his main point, which is that Chanuka commemorates such an “absolutely tragic day in human history,” because it represents the triumph of the Zealots’ backwards, parochial, ignorant cult superstition over the enlightened Hellenized assimilationist Jews. He asserts, as I recall (I don’t have the book in front of me — I refuse to pay for it and the library wanted it back) that had the assimilationist Hellenized Jews won the day, Judaism as a religion would have disappeared, thus eliminating Christianity, Islam and all the evils of the world in one fell swoop, thus allowing the Jewish people to make a genuinely positive contribution to world civilization.
That’s the world according to Hitchens. FWIW.
Thanks to LynnB for an interesting point. Of course, had the Hellenists won, Al Gor would not be faced with global warming as most human beings would have died, civilization would never have arisen, and we would be waiting for a replacement for Avraham Avinu to arise.
Actually, though, the Hellenists would have failed to wipe out all the (religious) Jews though they may have triggered a massive plague rather than going underground as the Sadducees and causing the destruction of the second temple and our past (almost) 2000 years of exile and turmoil.
Hitchens’ comments are similar to ones that the Hellenists would have made. Perhaps that is why he is so nostalgic for them.
If I recall correctly what the “enlightened, rational” Hellenistic king Antiochus wanted the Jews to do was worship him as a g-d, and not The Lord. That was the sticking point. It does not seem to support Hichens’ view very well. We might not have had Judaism and Christianity today, but given that precedent we might be worshipping any power-mad tyrant who seized rule by force instead. Idi Amin as “G-d Made Manifest” anyone?
Perhaps I’m wrong about this, but I sometimes get the impression that Hitchens’ dislike of the Jihadists is based solely on their being religious fanatics, and that if they were doing the same things in the name of establishing atheistic, world-wide socialism he’d be copacetic with the whole thing.