Article: Responding to Hitchens on Chanukah

2. Hitchens is joined by David Brooks in the N.Y. Times on Thursday, Dec. 17 where Brooks talks about the resistance to Syrian Hellenistic rule as a resistance to Western culture. As I've argued above, Hellenistic culture was part of the imperialist package, and that was part of what the Maccabees struggled against. But the struggles between Syria and Egypt to dominate Judea which went on from the death of Alexander in 325 BCE till the actual rebellion against Syria by Jews in 165 BCE was not a struggle about whether Syria or Egypt would have the primary honor of extending Greek culture to the Jewish peasantry. They were not fighting about who could present the Greek plays or philosophy or science or be the most effective in teaching the masses how to reason according to the Greek's system of logic. Rather, the struggle was about who would have the right to exploit the Jewish (and other) peasantry, take away the agricultural surplus (and some of the basic necessities) so as to enrich their own Syrian or Egyptian society. The Maccabees were set into motion when the Syrians started punishing by death those who practiced Judaism, but the underlying grievances had much to do with the economic imperialism that motivated the Hellenistic powers.

3. It is true that the revolt we celebrate at Chanukah did not produce an ideal society. The grandchildren of the Maccabees created a corrupt theocracy that I would not have wanted to live in. And some fundamentalist expansionists in Israel today rely on the Chanukah story as part of the cultural foundation for their oppressive rule over Palestinians. But that does not invalidate the celebration of Chanukah as we in the spiritual progressive world interpret it.

Here we have to understand the value of partial victories in the struggle for human liberation. I celebrate the American Revolution on July 4, even though what followed from it was a society in which slavery grew and prospered. I celebrate the parts of that revolution that opened up a process that could eventually lead to an expansion of democratic rights, even though at first the democracy it achieved was really restricted to the well-to-do men of the colonies. Similarly, I celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall and of Soviet-style communism even though the societies that emerged in Eastern Europe reestablished forms of capitalism that have so far denied to many the fundamental human rights of education, employment and health care that were more widely available before 1989.

My point is that we have to recognize how to celebrate partial victories that can (but won't necessarily) be built upon in the future, because that's all we are likely to get in any given lifetimepartial and somewhat flawed victories. If all we can focus on is "what has not yet been accomplished," we create a psychological dynamic that leads to depression, passivity and what I call in a 1990 book Surplus Powerlessness. So, yes we can celebrate partial victories, and build upon them, and while we might give lots of focus all year long to the limitations of those victories, it is not a bad idea to have a few days dedicated to celebrating what was accomplished, however lacking.

What's really at stake in all this is the ability to think about religion in a more nuanced way. I think I understand why David Brooks and Christopher Hitchens seem to identify with the Helleniststhey never met an imperialist they didn't embrace. They have been among the more enthusiastic supporters of U.S. imperialism in the last decade, so naturally they'd find more in common with the imperialists of the past. But that doesn't mean that I or spiritual progressives find more in common with the fundamentalists of the past. On the contrary, we reject both alternatives and embrace instead a path that is both pro-science and rationality as well as pro-spiritual consciousness, God, and progressive forms (but not reactionary versions of) religion. In fact, that is what Tikkun magazine (subscribe at http://www.tikkun.org) and the Network of Spiritual Progressives (join at http://www.spiritualprogressives.org) are all about, and that is why we find ourselves in the forefront of the struggle against Israeli occupation of Palestinians, the U.S. role in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Russian role in Chechnya, the Chinese role in Tibet, and the human rights violating societies of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and countless others. In fact, you don't have to be a religious person or believe in God to be a spiritual progressiveyou only have to support the New Bottom Line described above. And with that understanding, you can see why we support both Chanukah and Christmas and many other religions' celebrations, at least the versions of them that are being developed by spiritual progressives, while rejecting the ethos of materialism, selfishness and me-firstism (and chauvinism of every kind including that embodied in some interpretations of "Jews as the chosen people") that have been fostered in the contemporary world by the logic of capitalism.

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