The Universal Chanukah

 

The holiday of Chanukah begins at sundown on December 1^st.  Many think of Chanukah as the “Festival of Lights” (which it is) and the “Jewish Christmas" (which it most certainly is not).  But more than anything, Chanukah commemorates the first time in recorded history that a conquered people revolted over the right to pray.  The victory led by Judah the Hammer (the Maccabee) was the victory of a people who won the right to pray as they felt called. 

 

I believe that an important part of celebrating Chanukah is to ponder the meaning that that wonderful victory carries for us today.  For the right to pray as we feel called is under attack all over the world, including in Israel, though it doesn’t make headlines in the United States very often.  I was moved the other day, as I was pondering Chanukah, when a friend sent me an article in an Israeli paper about what it happening there, in this case to Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

 

I was born in the aftermath of the Shoah, what most still call the Holocaust.  I was born into a United States that told Jews as it did African-Americans, where they could and could not live, what colleges they could and could not attend and what clubs they could and could not join.  I remember as a child learning that one of every three “like me” on planet Earth had been murdered by Hitler.  There were roughly eighteen million Jews on earth before Hitler, and six million or one third of them were gassed, or shot, or hanged, or starved to death while the world watched – including the United States, which kept its quota on Jewish immigration intact even as Jews were desperately trying to flee Europe.  And I remember as recently as seminary, where I was studying to become an Interfaith minister, hearing from a person who up to that moment I had thought to be a friend, a good friend, that the Shoah wasn’t really so bad as I said, and Jews should “get over it.”

 

I bring this up because I do understand why many Jews felt that they could no longer leave themselves to the whims of a world which had consistently turned its back on them.  Why they felt a homeland was necessary.  Why they felt a return to Israel was necessary, the home from which they had been forcibly evicted some two thousand years before.  Indeed, the state of Israel and I were born in the same year and month.  I have always felt a bond.

 

But knowing all this, how can I, as Chanukah approaches, keep silent as Israel treats so many Palestinians with such disdain and so little humanity?  How can I keep silent when Jews, who for two thousand years have felt the back hand of country after country, tyrant after tyrant, now at last with a homeland of their own, turn around and much too often treat others in precisely the same dehumanizing way that they have been treated?  The question I would ask of Israel is the question I ask of my own country: Can we not fight terrorism without becoming terrorists ourselves?

 

Israel is not me, and I am not Israel.  Israel is a Jewish state, but it does not represent all Jews.  Indeed, as a democracy, it is fair to say Israel does not represent all Israelis.  There was much discussion and, shall we say sharp division, regarding our previous president, his now admitted use of torture, and what many consider an unnecessary and so very costly war in Iraq.  Would it be fair for the world to judge all Americans based on the actions of a president they may not have voted for?  So to judge all Israelis, let alone all Jews, based on the actions of the state of Israel is incalculably wrong and unfair.

 

Yet, Israel is a Jewish state.  And I am a Jew.  Earlier this year, I celebrated Passover and the sacred right of every human being to be free.  At our Seder we prayed for the coming of the Universal Passover, the day when all of humanity will be free. 

 

On this Chanukah, let us indeed remember the right, the sacred right, of Jews to pray as they are called.  And let us also remember the Baha’i in Iran, who seek the right to pray as they are called.  Let us remember Christians in China, who seek the right to pray as they are called.  Let us remember Buddhists in Tibet, and let us remember Muslims in the United States and within the State of Israel and in the Occupied Territories, who seek the right as human beings to be treated as human beings and to pray as they are called.

 

May this be the year we recognize the Universal Chanukah.  May the Universal Chanukah serve to remind us to treat each other with dignity and respect: both for our common humanity and our diverse spiritual paths. 

How We Punish Says Who We Are

 

Yet another person has been sentenced to death this week.  The man committed an horrific crime.  He is indeed a monster.  What he did speaks volumes about him.  What we do in response speaks volumes about us.

 

There are older laws, but certainly the Code of Hammurabi of Babylon, dating nearly four thousand years ago, is pretty old.  And pretty stark.  “An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” stems from the code.  More than that: a pick pocket?  Cut off the hand.  A peeping Tom?  Put out his eyes. 

 

Today, we consider such punishments crude.  Barbaric.  And yet … and yet we still put people to death.  Poison them.  Hang them.  Shoot them. 

 

We say we hold life sacred, and yet we put people to death. 

 

I understand anger.  I understand the desire for vengeance.  But our entire system of law is supposed to be based on the concept of justice, not vengeance.  Yet we are ever increasingly a society of vengeance, not justice.  It’s something to ponder.

 

It’s not just putting people to death.  By and large, our prisons have become houses of vengeance.  They were supposed to be houses of rehabilitation.  The concept behind our prisons was, we separate the criminal from society (a necessary thing!) and then work to rehabilitate the criminal so that when she or he is released back into society, that person may become a productive member of our society.

 

I know of some people working within our prison systems, trying to help those behind bars to understand not only the crime that put them there but how to become a positive force in society, not a negative one.  But these efforts are woefully underfunded, and underappreciated. 

 

Much too often, our prisons release back into society not rehabilitated people, but even more hardened criminals.  And yet those who truly make the effort to help prisoners rehabilitate are much too often accused of “coddling” the prisoner. 

 

The bottom line seems to be: we want vengeance.  We are committed to vengeance.  Rehabilitation is more of a “pleasant thought” than a real commitment.  I do not say this to detract from the real and important efforts of those who spend their lives trying to help rehabilitation.  I say this in support of them, and praying that as a society we will rally to support their efforts.

 

Let me be clear.  I believe that there are some crimes so heinous, so terrible that the perpetrator of that crime should never be allowed back into society.  Some criminals are beyond rehabilitation.  But if life is sacred, if we want to teach our children (and, let’s face it, remind ourselves!) that life is truly sacred then we must not kill, unless and except if it is self-defense.

 

It’s not self-defense when the criminal is behind bars.  When you kill a person who cannot possibly threaten you, that is murder.  Capital punishment is cold blooded murder.

 

I will close with a personal example.  A cousin of mine was senselessly murdered.  I wanted his murdered found, and put behind bars; but not killed.  Taking a human life is wrong. 

 

In all honesty, my more emotional response to murder came when Adolph Eichmann was found.  As a Jew born in the aftermath of the Shoah, there aren’t words to describe how much I loathed the man, despised, hated … there truly aren’t words.  How can such a thing as Eichmann be described?  I was fourteen when he went on trial.  And yet, even then, I prayed that Israel would not kill him.  I prayed that Israel would say, “Murder is wrong.  All murder is wrong.  It is so wrong that despite the crimes against humanity perpetrated by this monster, we will not kill him.  He will live out his life behind bars.  And perhaps, someday, God willing, he will realize and repent of the evil he did.  But regardless, we will not compound the act of murder, even mass murder, by another act of murder.”

 

My prayer was not answered.  But I continue to pray.

________________

 

(I wrote an article on this, specifically as it relates to terrorists, a few years ago )