Replies

Not only is Chanukah really a foolish and unnecessary holiday, it is also one that is dangerously fanatical and illiberal. The first act of rebellion, the first enemy who fell at the hands of the brave Jewish heroes whom our delightful children portray so cleverly in their Sunday and religious school pageants, was not a Greek. He was a Jew. When the enemy sent his troops into Modin to set up an idol and demand its worship, it was a Jew who decided to exercise his freedom of pagan worship and who approached the altar to worship Zeus (after all, what business was it of anyone what this fellow worshiped?) And it was this Jew, this apostate, this religious traitor who was struck down by the brave, glorious, courageous, (are these not the words all our Sunday schools use to describe him?) Mattathias, as he shouted: "Whoever is for G-d, follow me!"

What have we here? What kind of religious intolerance and bigotry? What kind of a man is this for the anti-religious Ha'shomer Ha'tzair, the graceful temples of suburbia, the sophisticated intellectuals, the liberal, open-minded Jews and all the drones who have wearied us unto death with the concept of Judaism as a humanistic, open-minded, undogmatic, liberal, universalist (if not Marxist) religion, to honor?

Another home run by Rabbi Kahana' (zt"l; Hy"d)!

The Maccabees were not forerunners of the American Civil Liberties Union and did not fight for the "enlightenment" concept of the "right" to worship any and ever "gxd," idol, and abomination out there. They were actually much closer to (lehavdil) right wing Roman Catholics who reject Vatican II. Now ain't that irony???

The only true religious freedom is the freedom to obey the True G-d!

'Amen!