COMMENTARY : Hanukkah Story Illuminates Perils of Uniformity

Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish festival of freedom, begins Sunday evening. Bright candles will burn in millions of homes, gifts exchanged among families and friends, and joyous prayers of thanksgiving recited.

At first glance, Hanukkah appears to commemorate an event of 2,100 years ago that resolved some basic questions about religious and cultural freedom.

In 165 B.C. the Jewish people in the land of Israel, though few in number, successfully fought for its cultural and religious survival against the powerful forces of a large centralized Greco-Syrian empire. Jewish guerrilla fighters, the Maccabees, won that battle and recaptured the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, rededicating it to the service of God.

It was a stunning victory of the few over the many, of diversity over uniformity. Judaism was miraculously saved from destruction at the hands of a tyrannical monarch, Antiochus IV, and everyone lived happily ever after. Right? Well, not quite.

Because few important issues in history are ever permanently settled, the problems raised by the Hanukkah story remain central in our own day. There is a growing conviction in the United States and in other parts of the world that uniformity of religion and culture are indispensable to unity, indeed the well-being of the state.

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Many national leaders are fearful of the minority populations that live in their midst. Such leaders are especially repressive in their actions when minorities seek to maintain their unique cultural and religious rights. Political and spiritual uniformity is the battle cry in numerous lands today.

In the former Yugoslavia, some national leaders are carrying out “ethnic cleansing” to ensure a monolithic state, and in Iran a brutal Islamic revolution has been in effect since 1979. But national populations, especially minorities, cannot be molded into uniformity by leaders of a country.

And Americans are currently engaged in a growing debate about what kind of nation we really are. Is this a country led by “counterculture elites” who seek to impose their particular values upon an unwilling society? Or is it a “Christian America” intolerant of those who do not share certain exclusive theological beliefs?

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Is America really a theocracy waiting only to emerge, as has happened in many other societies? Were the first 220 years of American religious freedom merely an interesting experiment based upon the teachings of the 18th-Century Age of Reason? Is pluralism a concept that has outlived its usefulness in the face of an angry and bewildered population that cries out for absolute values?

Is America a “secular society” where religion and its adherents must play no direct role in public life? Or is it a country with a robust voluntary religious life; a nation where religiously committed people participate fully in the marketplace of ideas and public policy?

Above all, will Americans, especially their leaders, celebrate and welcome the extraordinary number of minority religions, races and ethnic groups that exist within the United States? Or will Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Native Americans, African Americans, Asians, Hispanics and all other minorities be considered outside the American mainstream?

The Jews of 2,100 years ago had to fight physically against a regime that sought uniformity of thought, practice and belief.

Hanukkah represents one of the first recorded battles to maintain minority rights, and to resist a state’s attempt to impose uniformity of belief and behavior upon those who were “different.”

Fortunately, the ancient Jewish battle for self-identity was successful. Hanukkah not only preserved Judaism, but it also helped ensure that Christianity could emerge 200 years after the Maccabees’ historic victory.

Hopefully, America will be spared physical violence as it enters a troubling series of cultural and religious wars. But today’s issues are serious enough even without employing weapons of war to solve them. Today the bitter battlegrounds in the struggle for religious and political rights are in the five significant rooms where Americans live and have their being: bedrooms, schoolrooms, courtrooms, library rooms and government rooms.

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Hanukkah means “dedication” in Hebrew. Are there modern Maccabees of the spirit who are sufficiently dedicated to the preservation of religious freedom and cultural pluralism in the United States? Are there modern Maccabees who will actively resist all attempts to impose a uniformity of belief and behavior upon the entire population?

These questions loom large as Jews celebrate Hanukkah and as America faces a painful battle to define itself.