Chanukah 2020

Rabbi Dr Walter Rothschild

POLSKĄ WERSJĘ Beit Warszawa – The German Government has just done something really quite remarkable as I write these words – but I am sure anyone interested will find still on the Internet the relevant items under ”www.bundesregierung.besonderehelden” or similar. They have produced three short 90-second videos in which elderly people look back to ”the Corona winter of 2020” and how they were then young students behaving as young students do (this is SO funny and so realistically portrayed) and how they were ”especial heroes” in that period in that they obeyed the government instructions to do: NOTHING. To stay at home, to stay away from crowds, to isolate themselves and effectively to be pretty lazy, this being considered to be the best way to slow or prevent the spread of the pandemic.

Now, Germany being modern Germany, it did not take long for some people to complain, to rise up against the Government and to protest against this ”waste of taxpayers’ money” and how they ”ignored the real heroes working in the hospitals” and so forth and how wrong it was to use wartime symbolism and terminology I was even asked as a rabbi to rule whether these videos might be hurtful to wartime or Holocaust survivors. Personally I found them wonderful for several reasons (apart from the ethnic diversity portrayed and the mild humour, so rare in government pronouncements); They showed young people today that one day, if they behave sensibly, they may indeed live to become old people and that old people were themselves once young people – this gap across the generations is as much psychological as chronological. Actually older and younger people have a lot more in common than both groups often realise. This is a healthy and important message of solidarity.

In many respects the message was also ‘spot on’ – in a more ‘normal’ war (and alas, wars have been ‘normal’ for millennia) there are the fighters and those others on the front line or in the rear whose efforts are vital for the conflict and the victory – and then there are the rest, the civilians, who are told by the authorities to ”keep out of the way”, not to take ”unnecessary journeys”, not to ”waste food”, and when things get bad to go into the bunkers and take shelter there and just wait until it is passed. In other words, when you cannot do anything active, at least stay quietly passive and make your contribution to the struggle for survival by not occupying capacity needed for other purposes, by not obstructing the front line people in their efforts, by not adding to the difficulties. If it takes a message like this to tell otherwise-intelligent people to stop going to parties and large demonstrations and not ending up filling the intensive-care wards at the hospitals, then so be it. Sometimes all you can do is to stay at home. How you then use the time – whether just to laze about, to play computer games, to read, to watch endless online movies, to meditate, to tidy up, to TALK to each other…. this I leave to the individual and their circumstances and interests and talents and their stamina. I know from experience it is not easy after a while; that boredom and isolation and depression are real risks to be taken seriously; that much depends on your age and character; That there are frustrations when one cannot visit friends and relatives – but the essential message is the same: Doing Nothing is sometimes a positive action. What an intriguing view of an enforced locked-down Shabbat! And 2020 feels in some respects what a Shemittah Year must have felt like, when one was not permitted to go out and work the land and tend the produce.

There is much more to think about. In Israel for example almost all public life closes down in most places one day a week – apart from synagogues. No shops, no buses, no cinemas, no amusement parks. In very pious Christian countries the same applied to Sundays; in Moslem countries there are many government-imposed restrictions – no alcohol, certain foods forbidden, compulsory codes of dress – especially of course for women – and restrictions on personal liberties that seem draconian to many Westerners. Entire cities are closed off from certain groups in the population, for instance, on religious grounds. But atheist countries have also had many restrictions on what one may read, watch, hear on the radio, which areas are sealed off for ‘security reasons’, which secret cities exist that are not on the maps, and so forth. So – as Kohelet would say (Ecclesiastes), ”There is nothing new under the sun.”

We observe – with concern – some of the internal conflicts in our society. Should one be inoculated? I think the government could save a lot of time and money by only offering vaccinations to those who believe in them. This will do two things: Firstly, the anti-vaccination campaigners will see here proof of the ‘Placebo’ effect whereby it is only because those who believe in serum who will actually stay or get better, Ha! We told you so!; secondly, the anti-vaccination protestors will die off more quickly and then there will be a bit of peace and quiet. Poetic justice. There was a nice comment on a magazine cover a few months ago: ”Should I have my children vaccinated?” Answer: ”Only those you want to keep.”

But there are the various Conspiracy Theories. (Did you know, by the way, that all the Conspiracy Theories are prepared by special secret departments at the CIA and the Mossad to distract ‘Us’ from what ‘They’ are doing? It MUST be true, because I heard it from a chap in a café who had heard it from another chap who had read it on the blog of someone who found it on a secret part of the Internet…but this blog cannot be found any more!!! That must prove it!) One conspiracy theory that, as I write, is still current and may even continue for the next four years, is that certain people cannot count ballot papers properly and so the True winner of an election was cheated of his just triumph. (Take the letters ‘i’ and ‘h’ from the word ‘triumph’ and you will see what I mean – spookey, eh? Not to mention the first three letters of ‘True’? That MUST be another plot, yes? And ‘Soros’ is a palindrome, yes? And Jewish?)

I must confess that at times it gets depressing to see just how stupid people are – WE call ourselves ”Homo Sapiens” but it is doubtful whether an average chimpanzee would really agree. You may recall that in the Middle Ages it was considered that the best way to check if a woman was a witch was to throw her into the water. If she drowned, then she wasn’t one; if she lived, then this proved that she should be dried out and then burned in public as a danger to civilised society….. I have given various examples of how governments over the centuries have imposed certain powers and certain restrictions on the populations – only some examples, there are thousands more including entire legal systems, compulsory conscriptions, land expropriations, seat belt and speed restrictions, compulsory schooling, taxation, employment legislation, continue the list as much as you want) and most are accepted eventually with good or less good grace as being ”That’s the way it is.” Jewish law also teaches us to obey civil law in all civil matters – the term ”Dina d’Malchuta Dina”, Aramaic for ”the law of the land is the law”, comes four times in the Talmud and Jeremiah also told the exiles in Ch. 29 to ”obey the laws in the land where you are exiled”. The big question comes when it appears that the laws of the land are unjust, immoral, even criminal?

Here we hit an area of much confusion because of course for many people this is a subjective matter and not an objective one. Any law they like is automatically good, any law under which they appear to be disadvantaged is by definition Wrong. This is a Kindergarten attitude which plays out in remarkably large areas of adult life as well. So I shall focus on a Jewish religious aspect upon which – I hope – we can agree: Judaism teaches us to worship God and nothing and no-one else. What if – say – the Government now tells us to worship someone else? Either – through an inquisition – Jesus or – through a State—sponsored personality cult – the President, the King, the Head of the Army who through a bloody coup and massacres is now suddenly the symbol of love, peace and brotherhood for his loving people – or else?

History is full of (mostly) Men who thought they were somehow superhuman, almost immortal, semi-divine and always right. Usually they display various psychological characteristics which one can describe only as pathological, psychopathic; they are unable to love but they are desperate to be loved. Many wear grey suits and dark ties (or blue suits and red ties), many wear a General’s military uniform emblazoned with medals and ribbons which are never fully explained and a cap whose peak reaches out to the sky; many wear religious robes. We know about these people, we know about many of them in the past and we know about many of them in the present – this is what is so depressing, that there are ALWAYS people prepared not only to tolerate such types and keep their heads down and wait for them to drop off their perch, but actively to support them too. As a British citizen and a rabbi I have no problem in asking God to ”save my gracious Queen” but I might have problems if the next King thought he were God……

This, essentially, was the problem facing the Jews of Eretz Yisrael in the middle of the second century before the current counting. (‘BCE’, we say – ‘Before the Common Era’.) The King of Syria, the Seleucid General-turned-Ruler Antiochus the Fourth, took the additional name ‘Epiphanes‘ which effectively means ”God Revealed’ and passed a law stating that everyone – EVERYONE – should bow down to his statue and acknowledge him as divine. And here – a borderline was reached and passed. Though pious Jews had already faced other quandaries – such as coins bearing the face of a human ruler – there were some who said ”No – this is one government decree we will not accept; this is where we shall start our protest and, if the protest turns out violent, then so be it.” The result was what became known as the Maccabean Revolt and, some years later following their victory, the inauguration of the Festival of Chanukah.

So we need to look at Chanukah carefully. Is it a festival to celebrate revolution? Civil disobedience? Or religious fundamentalism? The answer probably has to be ”a bit of both” but this is where nationalist fundamentalist Jews may take a different approach to liberal universalist Jews. I suppose many Jews could have become ”especial heroes” just by staying at home, getting on with their lives, paying their taxes….. whereas others felt they had to go onto the front line of armed resistance against an unjust and immoral personality cult. The political situations in many parts of Eastern Europe or the Middle East – not to mention China in the time of the Great Chairman – show how common it is that governments try to command not just what citizens Do but how they should Think and what they should Believe. Such authoritarian systems, with their ‘Thought Police’ and their ‘Guardians of Religion’ and their burnings of books and their blockings of internet and their inability to tolerate diversity, pluralism and individual initiative, their demonisation of their predecessors and their opponents, are based usually upon personal weaknesses at the top and an inability just to get on with running a country on rational lines, making sure the budget is balanced and the rubbish is collected and recycled properly – but this is of little consolation for those caught up lower down in the grinding mills of such a totalitarian system. And at the same time, it is sadly remarkable how many people will abuse the freedoms they have and switch off the critical part of their brains. The authoritarian rulers in the fictional description of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ describe how in the ”evil past” there had been ”freedom to” but that now in a rigidly-controlled police state there was the (much more preferable) ”freedom from”: Freedom from the need to think for oneself; Freedom from encountering new ideas; Freedom from being challenged by other opinions; Freedom from chaos.

As Liberal Jews we need to acknowledge that the message behind Chanukah is a dual one and that we choose – deliberately – to celebrate the part about fighting for religious freedom and not the part about fighting to re-establish the authoritarian priestly and temple power system. Do we have the right to protest? Assuming we do, do we have the duty to protest wisely and about things that really matter? Do we have the right to fight to work from ”home office”? Do we have the right to resist vaccination? Poland is not Germany, neither is Romania, Hungary, Belarus, Turkey, Syria (where Antiochus reigned over people who, so far as we know, did NOT rebel….) The political system in Britain has allowed a tiny statistical majority to make a major change in the nation’s politics, which will take effect only two weeks after Chanukah this year, and in the USA we see similar phenomena. There are many messages we can find in the Chanukah celebration. Religion is not just for children. And Life is not just doughnuts.

Rabbi Dr. Walter Rothschild.