Hey Rabbi, I got your invitation to the public menorah lighting ceremony. I would love to come, but I feel unsafe attending a public Jewish gathering in the current mood out there.

Look, they had to cancel concerts and speakers because of this. A humungous menorah is a lightning rod. I used to put my menorah in the front picture window of our house, but since last year I’m scared of having my window smashed.

My advice to you is to lay low until things get friendlier again. See you some other time.

-- Nora Fobya

Hi Nora,

You could be right. It depends. Are we commemorating Chanukah, or are we living it?

If we’re commemorating it, what’s the point anyways? What happened happened. So why bother coming.

But it looks to me like you’re living it. The Hellenists and the Maccabees are fighting it out inside you, right now, in those words you wrote to me.

Let’s go back to Mattityahu and his sons in the town of Modi’in where the story of their revolt began.

The Jews were absorbed within a cosmopolitan empire, similar to the Persian empire before it, but with a yet more compelling and powerful culture. Such empires tend to pride themselves in their diversity yet rarely have the patience to truly accommodate it. It’s just so much more expedient and efficient to have everyone be the same.

Alexander the Great was especially known for his admirable speeches about tolerance and the like. “Whatever possession we gain by our sword cannot be sure or lasting, but the love gained by kindness and moderation is certain and durable.” Keeping to such notions in practice was another matter.

Alexander built temples in conquered lands to the local deities. He played a kind of mix and match with gods and forms of worship. It was a pragmatic way of building alliances and keeping the conquered acquiesced so they would happily pay their taxes.

But his governors who took rule after him weren’t always as savvy. To make things worse, many prominent Jews of the time also pushed for assimilation into Hellenist culture.

Then, as now, a sort of double-talk dominated the conversation. Conformity was dressed up as freedom, homogeneity was masked as progress, and authoritarianism masqueraded as intellectualism.

Nobody wanted to say, “Wear the toga and you’re in,” so instead they said, “Bro, your style of dress is so last year.”

They couldn’t say, “Dump your ancient wisdom—it’s not the vogue of the Empire,” so it came out as, “That’s so irrational and particularist, it’s morally repugnant.”

Eventually, they pushed for legislation. Next thing you knew, everything that had held us together as a people was a criminal offense.

At first, traditionalist Jews such as the Hasmoneans backed off, retreating to the towns and villages of the Judean hills, waiting for the wave to pass—as you suggest we do now. But when royal edicts and Greek officers came after them even there, they knew it was time for someone to take action.

The rest is—well, it’s not history, because the story never ended. It’s still playing out—on campus, in the shopping mall, and throughout social media. And the Maccabees continue to walk with their heads high. Because that’s the only way to win the war.

You could say that this was the birth of a critical adaptation for the Jewish people. This is where we learned that survival depends on the courage to stand proud despite all odds. It was a successful adaptation and there was never a time it wasn’t needed.

At the beginning of the industrial era, there were those who advised to be a Jew at home and just another citizen on the street. They claimed that acting as a Jew in the open will cause more antisemitism. Jewish traditions, rituals, and beliefs, they said, had to be modified to match Enlightenment values.

Needless to say, none of that worked. On the contrary, it backfired.

So let’s talk straight and practical: To hide your Jewishness under a cloak is to smother it. When you carry it into the open, you gain admiration and respect. And truly enlightened values can only gain by exposure to authentic Jewish tradition.

The good news is that we are living today within nations that pay more than lip service to diversity. To be a traditional Jew on the street is to embrace modern values. To hide is to surrender to those who would roll back everything that has been accomplished in the long, great struggle for human freedom and dignity that we Jews began back then.

We are all Maccabees today. Every one of us is a torch bearer. And the only way that torch will be seen and followed is if we hold it high, in public, for all to see.