Chanukah is considered by the world at large, and by those who like to pontificate, as a stunning military victory. A small band of Jews defeated a mighty empire. The miracle of the oil is mentioned as a sidebar. But we all know that Chanukah was not merely a military battle of arms. It was a battle of language, culture, and spirituality. Kedusha versus tumah. Long before the Greeks entered the Bais Hamikdosh, they entered the Jewish mind.
The greatest golus and the greatest tragedies do not begin with the invasion of armies but with the invasion of ideas. Sometimes the ideas are directed against the Torah, and more often than not, they are directed against the nation that embraces it. Persecution does not begin with physical degradation; it begins with a moral and spiritual one.
Daniel Goldhagen’s unsettling book Hitler’s Willing Executioners makes that observation about the Holocaust. He rejects the comforting narrative that the genocide was carried out by a small group of coerced sadists under a tyrannical regime. Instead, he demonstrates how generations of antisemitic theology, folklore, scholarship, and state rhetoric transformed Jews into moral nonentities. Long before bullets were fired, Jews were stripped of humanity. By the time violence erupted, it did not require force. It required permission. The floodgates were open, and the flood poured in.
Today’s demonization of Yidden does not even have to speak the language of blood libels or racial purity. It speaks the language of morality. Jews are not accused of poisoning wells. Through the medium of anti-Zionism, Yidden are accused of poisoning humanity. Israel, and those who long for it, citizens or not, are portrayed as a uniquely evil state. Torah values are not attacked as false; they are attacked as dangerous. The words have changed. The outcomes have not.
Imagine. Two days after October 7th, while Jews were still counting hundreds of dead and wounded and burying the murdered, a public gathering took place in Australia where crowds openly chanted, “Gas the Jews.”
They did not say Zionists. They did not say Israelis. They said Jews. And it was not whispered. It was shouted. And as far as we know, no one was arrested. No one was charged. No one paid a price.
That moment should have shocked the conscience of the civilized world. Instead, it passed with little more than a shrug.
Are we surprised, then, that Jews celebrating Chanukah in Australia were later gunned down, surely by either one of the shouters or the willing abiders? We should not be shocked that when governments tolerate calls for genocide in the name of free expression, they are not being neutral. They are granting permission. They fuel the fires of the willing executioners.
The perpetrators were “lone wolves.” They simply drifted from the shouting pack to the shooting pack. They did not slip through the cracks. They stood on the foundations built by the rhetoric.
They talk about watch lists. When a stadium of antisemites is allowed to rant and rave, the Yidden are on the being-watched list — watched and targeted. Through what? Through the words that are heard from mouths, from the news, the blogs, the posts of our haters.
Is there really a difference between two Nazis lining Jews up against a wall and pulling the trigger, and two men walking into a Chanukah celebration and opening fire? The uniforms are different. The slogans are updated. But in both cases, the murderer believes he is participating in a moral act. In both cases, Jews have been rendered undeserving of protection. And it begins with the rhetoric, the noise, and the tacit approval of governments and politicians who nod their heads or, worse, openly spew their hate through political platitudes.
And when the mayor of New York legitimizes the concept of globalizing the intifada, do not be shocked when his followers, idolizers, and aficionados aim to abide by his murderous rhetoric and intonations.
But it may not even start with calls for murder. It begins with the idolization of the banal, to the extent that frivolity replaces sanctity, and human life and tragedy take second place to the culture of the times.
There was a moment following the shooting in Sydney that revealed how deeply this moral flattening has penetrated even Jewish leadership. Imagine. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, one of the most powerful leaders in Congress, was asked to comment on the Australian tragedy — the murder of his co-religionists. One would expect a choked-up voice. Instead, he opened his remarks this way: “Of course, I’m going to say a few words about the terrible shooting in Sydney, Australia, OK?” he said. “So, and first of course, as I always say, no matter what, Go Bills! They beat the Patriots today. It’s a big deal.”
It could not have been said better by a Yevoni leaving the stadium after a gladiator match.
No one imagines that Senator Schumer values football more than Jewish life. The remark was not cruel. That is precisely what makes it revealing. The culture has pervaded the minds of leaders, who decry the killing of Jews as an afterthought to the throwing of a discus. The instinct to preface Jewish bloodshed with sports banter is not a personal failing. It is a cultural reflex. It reflects a world trained to process everything, even tragedy, through the language of entertainment, competition, and distraction. And that is the influence of Hellenism.
What is the response? We watch this week how Yosef is pulled from the abyss and elevated to the highest levels of government. It was not because of his political prowess, good looks, or charm. Those had gotten him into trouble. Yosef was known for constantly mentioning Hashem on his lips, Sheim Shomayim shogur b’fiv. The Name of Hashem, and the fact that he was an Ivri, were always part of his essence. It was the expression of anti-culture. It was the fearless embrace of the Ribbono Shel Olam, whether in his master’s house or when resisting his master’s wife. “How can I do such a thing? I will be sinning before Hashem!” Even in jail, the Torah tells us, “The chief warden did not supervise anything that was in Yosef’s charge, because Hashem was with him”
The Bills or the Goats did not spill from his mouth in times of crisis. The Name of Hashem did.
And that is why the victory of Chanukah manifests in praise and thanks to Hashem’s Great Name. It is the same Name that kept Yosef strong. It is the reiteration that made the whole world bow to the feet of the former Jewish slave. And it is the same Name that will extract us from this lengthy and miserable golus.
But we must replace every ounce of outside culture with the purity of that Name and that thought process. And if the Name of Hashem is in every word of Torah, then those are the words and mantras that should influence us in a way that can defeat the awful rhetoric that leads to the devastation we saw on the eve of Chanukah.
And the first place to begin is with the lighting of the menorah, Hallel, and Al Hanissim, “Lehodos ul’Hallel, l’Shimcha Hagadol.”
Just saying.
