Of all the Jewish holidays, the one that best captures the contemporary Jewish
Zeitgeist, the one that is the most relevant to the current and possibly the last chapter in Jewish history, is
Chanukah.
Chanukah is of course the story of Jewish national liberation. It is the story of the military victory of the few against the many, of the champions of Judaism against the pagan barbarians. But more than this, it is the saga of the heroic struggle of Jewish survivalists (those you would today label "Zionists") against the
assimilationists and self-hating Hellenists of the second century
BCE.
Chanukah is less about the battle against the Greeks than it is about the battle against the predominant
assimilationist paradigm at the time amongst the Jews. It is about the battle against the anti-survivalists, those who hated themselves for being Jews and so sought to be progressive and modern and "in" by rejecting and disgracing and degrading themselves in their struggling AGAINST Jewish survival. In other words, it is about the battle against the Oslo of
Chanukah Past.
At this stage in Jewish history a convergence has occurred between the main Diaspora Jewish community (in the U.S.) and the Jews of Israel. It is a convergence toward self-destruction, self-abasement, and self-elimination. While it takes different forms, in both cases it is about Jews who are embarrassed because of their being associated and identified as such by the barbarians. They are ashamed of themselves and seek to gain acceptance in the Greek world by overtaking the anti-Semites in attacking their own people. They grovel before the enemies of their people. They demand that their people abandon their archaic and backward religion and traditions and values.
History books will recall the second half of the twentieth century as that era in which the Jews lost their will to survive, first in the Diaspora and now in Israel. Whether or not Jewish history ends in the next decade or so depends on the unlikely proposition that the small numbers of Maccabees still fighting against Hellenism will triumph. They appear to be losing this war. It is not 200
BCE. One should not take a miraculous intervention for granted.
In the United States, the dominance of the Jewish Hellenists is in the form of the
assimilationist liberals. These are the Jewish leaders and organizations who dominate the non-Orthodox segments of American Jewry and promote the view that all of Judaism can be reduced to the pursuing of this week's liberal political fads. They practice the "Political Liberalism as Judaism" form of Hellenistic paganism. They reduce all of Jewishness to support for the "progressive" agenda of the left wing of the Democrat Party. They even endorse all forms of politically correct wackiness - from radical feminism to extremist environmentalism to affirmative apartheid. They will only support Israel as long as it is pursuing self-destruction, lest it embarrass them in front of their progressive gentile friends by defending itself.
In Israel, the country's politics - particularly its cultural/educational elite and its chattering classes - are now almost entirely dominated by those motivated by the desire to commit national suicide. These are people who are ashamed of their country and of their own people. They scorn themselves the same way that the
Hellenized Jews did at the time of the Maccabees. Like the
Hellenized Jews, they are convinced that traditionalist Jews are reactionary and primitive, and that the greatest priority is renunciation of Jewish peculiarity and the striving to assimilate amongst the cosmopolitan progressive Greeks of the world. They insist that a Seleucid "narrative" should replace their own reactionary provincial national one.
Israel's universities are by and large the Occupied Territories of these Jewish Hellenists; the same holds true, almost to the same extent, for the Israeli media. Jewish Hellenists dominate the Israeli military and intelligence services. Hellenists are rewriting the school curriculum to teach Israeli-Jewish children to despise themselves. Their message is that Jews must feel ashamed because they are evil and immoral people, while the truly superior sensitive people are the barbarian anti-Semites. The aim of these Hellenists is to convince the Jews that the only way they may become accepted in the world is to conform to paganism, to turn the Temple Mount over to the barbarians, to stop seeking to exist as an archaic separate national entity, to commit national suicide.
Moreover, their campaign is aimed at challenging the moral existence of the Jews. They realize this is the weakest chink in Jewish armor. If Jews can be convinced that they are morally in the wrong, then no Maccabees will arise. The aim of the Hellenists is the
delegitimization of the Jews as a nation, discrediting the moral position of Jewish
survivalism. They insist over and over that Jews are evil, immoral, selfish people, who must cease to exist as Jews if they want peace.
The message of the contemporary Hellenists is unambiguous: Those who wish to purify the Temple, who seek pure oil for the Temple lamp, who wish to evict the barbarians from Jerusalem, are the enemies of peace. The Maccabees must be arrested for incitement. The Jews must provide
Antiochus with concessions and arms and funds. Under no circumstances should the Jews seek to defend themselves from the
Seleucids, for there is no military solution to the terror. If the barbarians murder the Jews it is because the Jews are selfish people and because they have been too reluctant to abandon their primitive
survivalism.
The era of national separateness is over; all must join in the great Hellenistic politically correct pagan enterprise. The Post-
Hasmonean era is upon us.
"It is unthinkable in an American context that the Supreme Court should insert itself at will into the decisions of the political or military establishment, and micromanage government and security. Cases take years to get to the Supreme Court, so American judges already have real-life experience as to what works, what doesn’t work and what real harm is caused, if any. " - Rabbi Steven Pruzansky with a glimpse into Judicial Oligarchy. 
Pictured: Frank Rich, smugly liberal New York Times columnist.
So some Israeli parents are enraged because the Ministry of Education has recently mandated that students' trips to the concentration camps in Poland be totally kosher. It seems that up until now the food wasn't kosher. And now that it will be, the price will go up. By how much? Parents say a few hundred dollars, the ministry says tens of dollars.
"As the conflict with Israel hardened throughout the 1950’s, Nasser came to see that Palestinian nationalism, if carefully manipulated, could be an asset instead of just a threat and an annoyance. But Nasser’s ability to support such a useful terrorist group was limited by the failed economy over which he presided; and so, in 1964, he was delighted to cooperate with the Soviet Union in the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization." David Meir-Levi and the Propaganda War.
"'In hindsight it appears that bombing Iraq was the obvious thing to do because it was successful. But try to look at it through the eyes of Ezer Weizman or Yigal Yadin or Yosef Burg in 1981 when they had to make a decision. They said, "Look, we just signed a peace treaty with Egypt, and in the end the Arabs will have a nuclear bomb anyway, you can’t stop it forever, and they know we have one so if they try to do something they’ll be wiped off the map. So why bomb Iraq? What do you expect Israel to do, go after every country that has an atomic bomb and bomb it?'" - an interview with Ze'ev Raz about the day sun stood still.
Dennis Prager, the sometimes controversial, always thought-provoking radio host and syndicated columnist, wrote a column last week on the legacy the baby boom generation has bequeathed to younger Americans. 
"Every war has its chain of command. Soldiers may detest a general, but the consequences can be lethal if they choose not to listen to authority. Calls for massive protests against possible Israeli decisions, no matter how compelling, have to be seen against this backdrop. The stakes are not Israel’s borders, but its existence." Rabbi Broyde and Rabbi Adlerstein with thoughts for After Annapolis.
Of the writing of baseball books there is no end. Of the writing of good baseball books there is not nearly enough. For every The Glory of Their Times or Ball Four or The Boys of Summer or Baseball’s Great Experiment, there are hundreds and hundreds of instantly forgettable hack jobs, clip jobs and ghost jobs.
As fellow bloggers and others commence the annual bemoaning of Chanukah's ever-growing commercialism, I've been thinking about another angle:
