The usually-amusing Senor Hitchens presents us with an interminable history lesson about Hannukah on Slate this morning – “Bah, Hannukah!”. His point, I guess, is that the Epicureans were more fun than the Ancient Hebrews.
Maybe. I wasn’t there. But where I have been on numerous occasions are Hannukah events and, as a fellow atheist (okay, I’m more of an agnostic – Hitch knows God doesn’t exist… I think it’s over my head), I will remind him that Hannukah was traditionally a relatively minor holiday in the Jewish calendar that grew in importance mostly in America during the Twentieth Century.
The reason had nothing whatever to do with Hasmoneans, Epicureans, gray-bearded Talmudic scholars, candle oil or anything really religious. It had to do with that immortal triumvirate – children, food and presents!
Christian kids had this great holiday called Christmas and what did the Jewish kids have? Some minor event called Hannukah. Jews built it up, so our families would have celebrations too. Hence, Hannukah crossed the bridge from Brooklyn and menorahs proliferated in Manhattan, much to the joy of Macy’s and Gimbal’s.
Maybe Hitchens missed this in the UK, a less important Jewish outpost. But he shouldn’t be such a Scrooge around Christmas/Hannukah time. What’s wrong with a little mythology if it’s a good excuse to have a few drinks and exchange gifts? Who knows? They may even include a copy of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. [Hitchens didn't write that article to sell books, did he? -ed. Nah.]
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14 Comments
1. dclydew:Heh, the problem with guys like Hitchens is that they fail to understand how the human brain works. I hold no belief in Deity, but I do think that the human mind deals with metaphor and symbols better than simple observed reality. I agree with Hitchens and Dawkins that people who confuse the metaphors with Truth are a problem (see Fundamentalists from any religion for proof). However, its an issue of changing how people perceive their metaphors, not the utter destruction of those symbols.
Everything we humans know, we know through symbols. Language (written or spoken) are symbols that represent ideas. Everything we see are symbols that our brain creates to represent whatever data our sensory organs are sucking in. I think the world would be much better off if Joseph Campbell’s writings were bestsellers, rather than fools like Dawkins and Hitchens.
Dec 4, 2007 - 9:18 am 2. Roger:Not to worry, dclydew. Over the years Campbell has probably sold considerably more books than either of them… And he had a TV series!
Dec 4, 2007 - 9:30 am 3. dclydew:Roger:
LOL, yeah, maybe we need a new edition of the “Hero with A Thousand Faces”
Dec 4, 2007 - 9:45 am 4. Boojum:There’s plenty of mumbo-jumbo in religions, but I fail to see how the complexity of living organisms can have come about unintentionally by the random collisions of molecules over millennia.
When I can be convinced that the junk in my basement will evolve into something intelligent if I leave alone long enough, I might change my mind.
But I’m not holding my breath.
Dec 4, 2007 - 11:55 am 5. heather:I agree with Roger, the existence of God is way over my head too. However, I have noted that the closer we look at tiny things, like viruses, the more complex they are; while looking the other way, there seems to be SEVERAL universes. Which means that ????
Whatever. Roger’s explanation re Hannukah is GREAT. Children. Food. Light. FUN.
Does Christopher Hitchens know about ‘fun’? Maybe that will be his next book!
Dec 4, 2007 - 12:30 pm 6. Barry Dauphin:What’s wrong with a little mythology if it’s a good excuse to have a few drinks and exchange gifts.
Hitchens, of all people, can’t be totally against something that encourages drinking. Surely, that’s a cause he can rally to!
Dec 4, 2007 - 12:36 pm 7. Lem:What is really strange to me is that just 48 hours ago the murderers of Shawn Taylor would have been shown more compassion than the compassion shown to the teddy bear teacher who named the teddy bear the merciful and the compassionate Muhammad.
Ohy vey.
Dec 4, 2007 - 1:44 pm 8. Steven:I agree with Roger — this is way over our heads, and agnosticism seems to be a more sensible response than atheism. Imagine trying to explain the workings of a computer to an ant. You won’t get very far. The ant’s brain simply isn’t capable of processing the information. I think when it comes to understanding the nature and origins of the universe and of life, we are in the position of the ant trying to understand the computer. How anyone can claim to know with certainty (or anything remotely close to it) that there is no God is beyond me.
As for Chanukah, it’s one of those holidays that fits the generic Jewish holiday description:
1) They tried to kill us all.
2) We won.
3) Let’s eat!
(See also: Purim, Passover)
Dec 4, 2007 - 2:48 pm 9. Wellspring:Hitch is in over his head.
The glory days of the greeks were long behind them when the Maccabees revolted, and the Jews revolted for good reason. Not to impose a theocratic orthodoxy that couldn’t win on its own merits, but because the once-tolerant greeks had decided to impose their own ideals by force and the Jews wanted the right to practice their own religion at all.
They appropriate the Temple for their own religion. They banned Torah study. The celebration includes gelt and the dreidel game for a good reason: Jews had to study Torah in secret, and when the greek secret police (or its equivalent) caught them, they would whip out their dreidels and coins and pretend that they had actually been gambling.
It’s ironic, because Greek philosophy posed the first serious intellectual challenge to Judaism. Had the Greeks not not tried to impose their polytheistic-but-mostly-secular world view by banning the study of Torah and occupying the Temple to their own ends, then they might have had a better chance of stamping judaism out.
So the lesson as I read it is twofold: first, in Iraq, that respect for local culture and religion are paramount. Our forces’ respect is certainly paying off at the moment, and al Qaeda has suffered grievously for their lack of tolerance of the locals.
Second, to secularists in the United States: defending the separation of church and state is good and important. However, as the state grows to absorb more and more of our daily life, it’s pushing religion out of the way. People should be free to have and practice their own beliefs, however superior your philosophy seems to be to you. If you’re really that smart, they’ll come around in time. And if not them, their kids. Impose your views by force and they might still be around twenty five hundred years later gloating about their victory.
Happy Hanukkah!
Dec 4, 2007 - 4:16 pm 10. Richard Nieporent:It appears that the militant atheists have become the new Puritans – they can’t stand the idea that someone somewhere is enjoying a religious holiday.
Dec 4, 2007 - 5:41 pm 11. TomTom:(Militant) atheism is ultimately nihilistic.
That a Power higher than myself exists seems painfully obvious to me. That cells in the young embyro of all mammals migrate toward the same point and join together to start forming a kidney is an example; one cell line forms the blood-filtering structures, the other line the urinary collection system. Or, that 1+1 always=2. Or, that long strings of pure prime numbers dimensionally exist in the real world. Or, that water is densest at +4C.
Hitchens is clearly an alcoholic; an alcoholic personality at the least, featuring self-centeredness. Part of that is his unwillingness to leave my belief system unchallenged. Won’t work.
Dec 5, 2007 - 7:28 am 12. dclydew:Part of that is his unwillingness to leave my belief system unchallenged. Won’t work.
Trying to challenge the belief system of someone else rarely works… but I think we’d do well to constantly challenge our own belief systems. Too many people seem to confuse the Map and the Territory.
Dec 5, 2007 - 12:14 pm 13. TomTom:dclydew-
Dec 5, 2007 - 5:15 pm 14. Tim Oren:Odd that a spate of books trumpeting atheism has recently leapt into print, if challenging “the belief system of someone else rarely works”. Odd, too, that Christian missionaries converted more than a few over the years….
I’m usually a Hitch fan, but he’s off base on this one, and Roger has it right. Higher powers and an afterlife are uncertain, long winter nights and a need to party are for sure. Happy Hanukkah, you all!
Dec 5, 2007 - 5:34 pm