In fashioning a better world, it pays to know when to keep with traditions and when to be heretical. Today is the last day of Hannukah, and in a few days it will be the first day of Christmas. Both are festivals of lights. Americans' readily make the connection, though the religiously sensitive tend to want to keep a distance between the two. But basically the core archetype is that this is the time when the solstice is here and we need the lights of candles to remind us that it won't be dark forever.
None of what we are going through is all that new except maybe the technology with which we do the things we do. There have been dark times before. Hannakuh celebrates when those dark times were at their worst for Jews in Israel. Israel had been allowed to return to it's homeland, but the Greeks and "Hellenizing Jews" had decided to mess with the religious freedom of Jews in Israel, and so they had to struggle to keep their faith. That struggle involved violence. The religion they were upholding was not the same religion as either the Rabbinical Judaism of the present nor Christianity but they managed to uphold it. Rabbinical Judaism and Christianity would be rebirthed after the Romans first raised hope for freedom and then utterly quashed it with their armies in two wars that were statistically as effective with more elemental means (swords and crosses) as Hitlers efforts to kill every Jew in Europe.
The Romans were killers. Their symbol was the wolf. This Jesu character, his symbol was the lamb. How can the lamb be transformed into a wolf? It takes the wonderful deviousness of those who have selfish faith. But Christians managed to do this with 1700 years of systematic replacement theology and anti-Rabbinical Judaism traditions and teachings -- starting with Jewish self criticisms by a Jewish teacher and using those as justifications to kill his people. But Hannukah symbolizes the hope that even that persecution will end and that "God" will spare a remnent to be a witness to better days and kept promises.
On the eighth day of Hannukah it was traditional to celebrate the apocryphal story of Judith-- who saved a whole town by cutting off the head of a "bad" Syrian-Greek General who was camped outside it with an army. Traditions can always be found to emphasize the positive. There is always hope if people uphold hope rather than fear. The Judao-Christian religions do not have to be anti-feminist, anti-semitic, nor anti-enlightenment or foolish groups. Hannukah symbolizes that enlightenment can be found even in the darkness.
The motiffe of light is important in religion. The motiffe of Christianity is also about the "light". The term for enlightenment is about light. The founders of various religions such as Nichirenism, "Sun-Lotus" made their central motiffe light. Often we simply need to have faith in the light that is somewhere to be found even in the darkest moments. The Buddha promised enlightenment to those who wake up to the nature of life. Rabbi Jesu promised salvation to those who had faith in salvation. The promises will be kept. We will light candles and dispell the night.
Posted by cholte at December 15, 2004 06:14 AM