Every year, as Chanukah approaches, I find myself unconsciously bracing for something entirely unrelated to the spiritual preparations of the Yom Tov.
Maybe it’s because I live a life outside the walls of a yeshiva and interact with all types of members of all types of communities, but it’s painful. But I think that the uneasiness transcends the borders of the Five Towns and permeates into most of golus societies as well. I am not talking about the cold, nor the traffic, nor the endless stream of silly advertisements and gift catalogs and stuff that pops up everywhere, if you know what I mean.
I have learned, through too many seasons of experience, that as soon as the menorah appears in the public square, an extraordinary number of people who do not understand the first thing about the Yom Tov feel compelled to explain it to the world and celebrate it in ways so foreign to its original intent.
Some of the explanations, if we are being charitable, are bewildering. If we are being honest, they border on the absurd. It was one thing years ago, when the confusion remained mostly in the realm of harmless clichés.
I once sat at a public swearing-in ceremony of a local politician, where I was asked to give a blessing to the newly elected politician. I forgot that I would not be the only representative of religion, and after my words, I had to sit and listen to a well-meaning representative of a certain faith earnestly recite a “season of lights” meditation that blended Chanukah, their holidays, winter solstice imagery, unity, vague spirituality, and a general sense that all religions were simply interchangeable reflections of the same sentiment.
Even then, I remember wanting to stand up and shout like a high school or bais medrash bochur, “Chanukah? Shaychus?! What is he talking about?” But I understood that from his perspective, seasonal symbolism was as elastic as a rubber string and the spin as fast as a dreidel’s. He knew nothing of the actual events and deeper meaning of Chanukah, and he filled the void with whatever themes the calendar suggested.
But that was then, and one could almost chuckle and move on. Today, the world has grown bolder, more ideological, and far more reckless in its desire to graft current political narratives onto ancient Jewish history.
The result is a staggering display of interpretive creativity that the Chashmonaim themselves would not recognize. What once was merely confused is now confidently wrong. What once was a benign attempt at interfaith good feeling has morphed into brazen, and sometimes offensive, attempts to hijack Chanukah for agendas entirely antithetical to its essence.
With the Middle East’s narrative being hijacked by some of our co-religionists who have no inkling of any of the tenets of Yiddishkeit, Chanukah can be transformed into a holiday about immigration policy, prison reform, universal tolerance, environmental activism, electoral politics, and every variety of social movements. And most shockingly of all, we now hear the outrageous suggestion, repeated in academic circles and media commentary with a straight face, that the Chanukah story is somehow analogous to the modern Palestinian “struggle.”
That comparison, which ignores every historical, moral, and theological detail of the Chanukah narrative, is not only wrong. It is grotesque.
Yehuda Avner, the secretary of former prime minister of Israel Levi Eshkol (among others), recalled Eshkol’s visit to Lyndon Johnson’s ranch not long after the Six Day War. He had gone primarily to plead for increased American arms sales to Israel after the depleted supply from the war.
Eshkol was greeted by one of Johnson’s aides, who offered to drive him around, but President Johnson insisted on taking the wheel himself and proceeded to squeeze Eshkol, Avner, and two members of the Israeli entourage into his station wagon. “Let me drive you around my ranch,” Johnson drawled in that unmistakable Texas accent.
The drive was anything but leisurely. As the story goes, Johnson barreled down the rutted dirt roads at breakneck speed, all the while jabbering enthusiastically about cows, calves, and every form of livestock and ranch protocol that could possibly cross his mind. Eshkol, wholly unfamiliar with both the terminology and the terrain, bounced up and down in the car, his Homburg hat popping like a cork with every dip and bump.
At one point, they encountered a cow standing squarely in the road. Johnson tried to nudge it aside by grazing it with the fender. When the cow remained unmoved, Johnson shook his head and said, “That’s Daisy. She’s as pigheaded as a Texas senator with colic.”
Eshkol, who neither understood the reference nor the culture that produced it, turned in bewilderment to his companions and muttered in Yiddish, “Vos redt ehr, der goy? What on earth is this gentile talking about?”
This willingness to turn our Yom Tov into a political tool reflects a broader cultural impulse: the determination to universalize everything. In a society uncomfortable with particularism of any kind, a holiday that celebrates Jewish resilience in the face of cultural destruction must be reframed as a generic victory of “light over darkness” or “oppressed over oppressor.” But if one reads even a few lines of the Chanukah story, it becomes immediately clear that the struggle of the Chashmonaim was not, and never claimed to be, a fight on behalf of humanity at large. It was a specifically Jewish battle, undertaken to preserve mitzvah observance, Torah values, kedusha, and the sanctity of the Bais Hamikdosh against a very specific cultural and ideological threat.
It is precisely this uncomfortable truth — that Chanukah is a celebration of distinction, of havdolah, of the refusal to surrender Jewish identity to the dominant culture — that makes the modern reinterpretations so jarring. We are living in a world that expects every story to serve as a metaphor for inclusivity, diversity, and universal empathy. But Chanukah is not a metaphor. It is not a parable. It is not a symbol waiting to be molded by the political fashion of the moment. It is a historical event rooted in a fierce, unapologetic insistence on Torah’s uniqueness.
The Chashmonaim did not take up arms because of economic inequality, political oppression, or demographic displacement. They did not resist a foreign empire in the name of universal human rights. They resisted because the Greeks sought to eradicate the foundations of Torah life. They resisted decrees aimed specifically at bris milah, Shabbos, Kiddush Hachodesh, taharah, and any connection to the kedusha that separates us from the world, not their moral principles and the camaraderie they seek through all types of celebration, holiday parties and otherwise.
In response to their efforts to place the Maccabim in the same category as modern revolutionaries, or compare their struggle to the narratives of groups whose goals and methods bear no resemblance whatsoever to Torah, we must powerfully say: This is not your story to reinterpret.
Chanukah is neither an immigrant parable nor a social-justice fable. It is not a platform for international grievances. It is not a symbol of resistance for those who fight in the name of values antithetical to Torah. It is a uniquely Jewish moment — a moment of clarity, of courage, of purity, and of drawing lines where the world insists on blurring them.
The world may insist on telling its story through our menorah. But we have the responsibility to keep the oil pure and to ensure that what burns in our homes, our shuls, and our children’s hearts is the authentic flame of Chanukah, our allegiance to gedolei Torah unpolluted by agendas that know nothing of its true origin or purpose.
And that, in our confused world, in an atmosphere hijacked by golus, would also be a miracle.
Just Saying.
