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Jewish World Review Dec. 27, 2000 / 2 Teves, 5761
The ancient message of Chanukah, argues Rabbi Yonason Goldson, is quite contemporary --- especially when viewed in light of the recent American elections. But will it be heeded?
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
AFTER TWO YEARS of relentless campaigning, the presidential race finally
culminated not in a crescendo of political drama, but in a cacophony of
political high jinks, low farce, and post-modern surrealism. Most Americans
didn't seem to care who would win and regarded the respective camps'
oneupmanship, legal maneuvering, and character slurs with a certain cynical
amusement, even as the future of the free world seemed to hang by a dangling
chad. On a whole, Americans yawned their way through what should have been
(and was reported to be) the most dramatic election in history.
Why didn't we care? Quite simply -- and quite obviously -- because the
choice between a candidate who inspired a lack of trust and a candidate who
inspired a lack of confidence rendered the entire election process
irrelevant. Few of us managed to summon up any excitement over who would
win, even with the result a month late in coming.
We live in an age of moral anarchy: in spite of once unimaginable
prosperity, medical miracles, and technology accelerating faster than the eye
or the mind can keep their focus, we have allowed ourselves to wallow in
selfish indulgences, to deny the less fortunate among us a share in our
prosperity, to shirk the responsibility of providing our children with a
solid foundation in educational standards, in personal responsibility, and in
basic moral values.
The Jewish nation 2,164 years ago faced a similar dilemma. Hellenist
ideals had infected the traditions handed down from Sinai and faithfully
preserved for over a thousand years. Many Jews no longer knew what it meant
to be a Jew; they couldn't appreciate the ancient wisdom of their ancestors,
and they didn't recognize the danger of tampering with the heritage that had
enabled their fathers and grandfathers to survive the temptations of the
material world for fifty generations. They had come to believe that the best
hope for Jewish continuity was to blend in with the powerful and aesthetic
Greek culture that threatened to annihilate them. If left to themselves,
that generation might well have culminated in cultural extinction instead of
celebrating victory with the miracle of Chanukah.
But they were not left to themselves. One man, Mattisyahu, son of
Yochanon the High Priest, recognized that the Syrian Greeks could not be
permitted to push the Jews back one more step, lest we topple backward over
the ideological precipice into historical oblivion. In one spontaneous
moment of cultural indignation, Mattisyahu struck out against a Syrian
soldier and his Hellenist acolyte, sparking the resistance movement that
eventually expelled the Syrian army from the Temple, that ultimately restored
autonomy to the Jewish nation, and that reignited the torch of Jewish
leadership.
A few Jews rallied around Mattisyahu, inspiring others to follow their
example and take arms against their oppressors. The patina of Greek
aestheticism quickly melted away before the eyes of Jewish
apologists once so eager to dilute their own cultural values with the
seductive spirits of modern philosophy. Jewish unity, under the guidance of
moral leadership, carried the day and preserved the nation.
Once upon a time the United States could boast of moral leadership: from
Abraham Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt to Harry Truman, the greatest leaders have
often been unpopular in their own times for threatening to upset the status
quo of comfort and complacency. Yet they succeeded in prodding us toward
social responsibility by rallying the people to heed their call. On the
other hand, leaders who tell people only what the people want to hear may
become popular; but they are not true leaders, either because they lack the
courage to lead or because they believe the people will refuse to follow.
By preparing ourselves to answer the call of moral leadership -- both
nationally and spiritually -- we may discover that the only real crisis
resides in the unwillingness to recognize inspired leaders and follow
Chanukah: Igniting the
torch of leadership
JWR contributor Rabbi Yonason Goldson teaches at Block Yeshiva High
School and Aish HaTorah in St. Louis, and writes a regular column for the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch. Comment by clicking here.
