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| Open Orthodoxy founder, Rabbi Avi Weiss. Is this what he meant? (Forward) |
I’m sure that his recent article in the Times of Israel about
Chanukah will make a lot of people angry. And with much justification. That was
in fact my initial reaction. After thinking about it my anger was replaced by
sadness that a practicing Jew can be so ignorant… so wrong… so off base… so off
the wall about Chanukah. And even about Judaism itself.
I can’t think of too many things more
distorted than the views he expressed here. Nor is there a better illustration of how corrupted one’s views can get through the cultural spirit of our times. That too was made painfully obvious by this article.
To briefly sum up, Zahav claims that the violent means the
Maccabees used to regain our Holy Temple in Jerusalem and our sovereignty could
have been avoided had they just been Open Orthodox Rabbis and more tolerant of
Greek culture.
I kid you not. He believes that had they taken the trouble
to make friends with their oppressors and get involved culturally and socially with them,
they would have left us alone to practice Judaism freely and completely.
This is not a holiday about our violent intolerance of others as Zahav
seems to suggest. It is a holiday of freedom from anti religious tyranny imposed
by a kingdom bent on eradicating our faith and traditions. On pain of death. That
was amply demonstrated by Chana and her seven sons who martyred themselves
rather than to succumb to anti Jewish edicts of the Hellenist king.
(Like forbidding circumcision, Kosher food and Shabbos observance.)
Ironically our Hellenist oppressors at the time were not interested
in killing us. On the contrary. They wanted us to thrive and be just like them…
completely assimilating into Greek culture and abandoning all vestiges of
Judaism.
There was no amount of ‘peaceful civil disobedience’ that would
have changed that. Does he really think the Maccabees wouldn’t have tried that first
if had they believed it was even possible? The Maccabees were not extremist
zealots. After seeing what Chana did – refusing to submit to those decrees and
instead dying ‘Al Kiddush HaShem’ - sanctifying God’s name they led a violent revolt
against the tyranny responsible for that.They had no other choice.
We celebrate the miracle of victory of the few over the
many. We celebrate the return of sovereignty over our nation. We celebrate the
freedom to worship as we choose. We celebrate the re-dedication of our Holy
Temple… and the miracle of one container of oil lasting for more than the
single day it had enough oil for – lasting the full eight days until new oil
could be processed in spiritual purity.
Egalitarianism and compromise had nothing to do with what we
celebrate. We celebrate our uniqueness. We are an exceptional people based on
our acceptance of the Torah and its traditions. Compromise with Hellenists is
the opposite of that. Sure – compromise is a valuable ideal. But here is a time
to compromise and a time not to compromise. You cannot compromise with people
that want to destroy you as a people. That is not compromise. It’s suicide.
After completely disparaging Chanukah, Zahav really goes to
town and uses ‘compromise’ to redefine
Judaism much the same way heterodoxy does:
This is the essence of open-orthodoxy. Respect for halacha and tradition but the courage to bend it and twist it so that is malleable and adaptable to contemporary life. And if it breaks, having the courage to say that perhaps if it broke, it wasn’t strong enough. And so, the breaking of the law strengthens it. These imaginative metaphors allow one to respect tradition without venerating it. Thus, even the breaking of the law is an expression of Halacha.
Mine is not the Chanukah of hate, of xenophobia, of patriarchy, chauvinism, white privilege, and the morality of the Stone Age….
Breaking the law strengthens it? Hate? White privilege? Morality
of the stone age? I cannot think of a
more twisted interpretation of Halacha or Chanukah than that. If that is indeed
the essence of Open Orthodoxy, than it truly does not deserve to be called Orthodox.
