Chabad Menorah turf wars: Calling the local galach...

Previously Chanukah was about celebrating the victory of the war of the Chashmonaim against the Hellenists. These days Chanukah seems to celebrate turf wars in Chabadland - at least in our CBD. See here and here.

Now another seemingly ridiculous battle by 2 Chabad rabbis which took place in some unheard of township somewhere in New York state has been brought to our attention. And suggestions are being made that they get the local galach to make peace. Fair dinkum! See the penultimate paragraph of the second article.

Back-to-back menorah lightings in Millbrook
By CHRISTINE BATES - Staff Reporter
December, 17, 2009

MILLBROOK — Two menorah lightings happened in front of the Thorne Building in the village as two rabbis held back-to-back celebratory events on the second day of Hanukkah, Saturday, Dec. 12.


First to arrive in front of the Thorne building was Rabbi Yakov Borenstein from Chabad of the Mid-Hudson Valley. According to Hindy Borenstein, the rabbi’s wife, he was able to secure permission from the village at the last minute to begin a celebration at 6:30 p.m.

Borenstein said that for the 6:30 ceremony Curtis Roth of Millbrook stood on a ladder and lit two candles on a portable 9-foot aluminum menorah; Borenstein then offered a message of bringing light to the world. About 30 area residents joined in the celebration, which included Hanukkah songs, music and traditional holiday food. By 7:20 p.m. the menorah had been packed up, and cars were pulling away from the curb.

A new crowd of about 30 people formed on the sidewalk for the second menorah lighting at 7:30 p.m.

Sheldon and Adele Lobel, Millbrook residents, said they noticed a sign at the library advertising the 7:30 p.m. event and were excited for Millbrook’s first evening of public menorah lightings.

Charlotte Mann said she had heard there would also be a menorah made out of canned food that would be donated to a food pantry.
The crowd was a bit restless in the cold when Rabbi Hanoch Hecht, also known as the “Six-Minute Rabbi,” of the Rhinebeck Jewish Center, pulled up some time after 7:30 with his family and set up a large, rustic, wooden menorah. Hecht had received official permission from the village several weeks before, and the event had been widely publicized, including in The Millerton News.

Hecht lit the central candle, and then two more candles, one for each night of Hanukkah. He stood to the side of the lighted candles and spoke about placing a menorah “by the window, adding one candle every night to overcome darkness in a step-by step-process.”
His words were followed by Hanukkah songs, warm latkes made by Tzivie, the rabbi’s wife, and sufganiot, powdered sugar jelly doughnuts.

And then we get this from the Chabad Info site (which admittedly isn't considered "mainstream" Lubavitch).

Here we were grumbling about having footballers at the Menorah lightings while at the same time our brethren over there are getting galochim to do the honors! (What say, next year we invite the Greek Orthodox Archbishop to light the Shamash?)

Shliach Hosts Chanukah Party in Church

A priest was welcomed to light the Shamash at a Chanukah gathering organized by Rhinebeck Jewish Center's spiritual leader Rabbi Hanoch Hecht, before the party moved indoors, to the local church. On his site, the rabbi claims to be a fighter of cults and missionaries.

 The public lighting of a menorah in front of the Thorne Building to commemorate Hanukkah occurred in Millbrook for the first time last year, twice on the same night.

This year Rabbi Yacov Borenstein, after lighting the first candle on Wednesday night atop the Walkway Over the Hudson, brought his towering menorah to Millbrook on Thursday, Dec. 2, the second night of Hanukkah, to remain in place until Dec. 9.

The observance of Hanukkah with hot cider, latkes and jelly doughnuts is becoming part of the Millbrook holiday season. Town of Washington Supervisor Florence Prisco, Millbrook’s Deputy Mayor Stan Morse, Paula Redmond from the Millbrook Business Association and Doug Fisher, minister of Grace Episcopal Church, participated. Prisco and Morse greeted the gathering, and Prisco helped to light the second candle with a blow torch as Curtis Ross stood on the ladder to reach the light.

“It’s a safe ladder,” said the rabbi. “I have good insurance.”

All of the candles were then switched on so people could read the words to Hanukkah songs.

In the cold evening air, Borenstein and his wife, Hindy, talked about the meaning of the Jewish holiday. “A little light dispels the darkness and makes the world a better place,” said the rabbi. “It’s not asking much.”

He recounted the story of the Maccabees, who were outnumbered and surrounded by Greek soldiers, and the miracle of the lamp oil, which lasted for eight days.

Following the ceremony, the leftover food and tables were packed up, and the rabbi drove off in his car with a small menorah with three glowing lights attached to its roof.

On Sunday night, Dec. 5, Rabbi Hanoch Hecht from the Rhinebeck Chabad conducted another Hanukkah celebration in front of the Thorne Building, attended by a large number of Millbrook residents.

The Rev. Fisher lit the central candle, known as the shamash or helper candle, and Rabbi Hecht lighted five more for the fifth night of Hanukkah. After a brief prayer and dancing, the group quickly adjourned to the warmth of the parish house of Grace Episcopal Church across the street for hot coffee, latkes and donuts.

The rabbi distributed Hanukkah gelt, chocolate wrapped to look like large gold coins, and Fisher welcomed everyone. The last time the church had an event bringing religions together was in 2002 after 911, when a rabbi spoke at the church and Muslims, Jews and Christians got together at the parish house.

The Millbrook organizers of the event, Steve Peter, Adele and Sheldon Lobel and Joan Blankstein, were very happy that the evening had brought the entire community together.

Lobel suggested that perhaps Fisher could get the two rabbis together before the event next year to have just one Hanukkah lighting. They have already purchased the menorah.

“We want to do good things,” said Lobel.

Rabbi Dovid Rubinfeld does it again!

Maoz Tsur - as you have never heard (or seen) it before.

The rabbi's Rosh Hashono musical messsage had over 103,000 views.
How many will this one get?

Down With Chanukah !!! By Rabbi Meir Kahane

Rabbi Meir Kahane:

Down With Chanukah !!!

If I were a Reform rabbi; if I were a leader of the establishment whose money and prestige have succeeded in capturing for himself the leadership and voice of American Jewry; if I were one of the members of the Israeli Government's ruling group; if I were an enlightened sophisticated, modern Jewish intellectual, I would climb the barricades and join in battle against that most dangerous of all Jewish holidays - Hanukah.

It is a measure of the total ignorance of the world Jewish community that there is no holiday that is more universally celebrated than the "Feast of Lights," and it is an equal measure of the intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy of Jewish leadership that it plays along with the lie.

For if ever there was a holiday that stands for everything that the masses of world Jewry and their leadership has rejected - it is this one. If one would find an event that is truly rooted in everything that Jews of our times and their leaders have rejected and, indeed, attacked - it is this one. If there is any holiday that is more "un-Jewish" in the sense of our modern beliefs and practices - I do not know of it.

The Hanukah that has erupted unto the world Jewish scene in all its childishness, asininity, shallowness, ignorance and fraud is not the Hanukah of reality. The Hanukah that came into vogue because Jewish parents - in their vapidness needed something to counteract Christmas; that exploded in a show of "we-have-lights-just-as-our- goyisha-neighbors" and in an effort to reward our spoiled children with eight gifts instead of the poor Christian one; the Hanukah that the Temple, under its captive Rabbi, turned into a school pageant so that the beaming parents might think that the Religious School is really successful instead of the tragic joke and waste that it really is; the Hanukah that speaks of Jewish Patrick Henrys giving-me- liberty-or-death and that pictures the Maccabees as great liberal saviors who fought so that the kibbutzim might continue to be free to preach their Marx and eat their ham, that the split-level dwellers of suburbia might be allowed to violate their Sabbath in perfect freedom and the Reform and Conservative Temples continue to fight for civil rights for Blacks, Puerto Ricans and Jane Fonda, is not remotely connected with reality.

This is not the Hanukah of our ancestors, of the generations of Jews of Eastern Europe and Yemen and Morocco and Spain and Babylon.

It is surely not the Hanukah for which the Maccabees themselves died. Truly, could those whom we honor so munificently, return and see what Hanukah has become, they might very well begin a second Maccabean revolt.

For the life that we Jews lead today was the very cause, the real reason, for the revolt of the Jews "in those days in our times."

What happened in that era more than 2000 years ago? What led a handful of Jews to rise up in violence against the enemy? And precisely who was the enemy? What were they fighting for and who were they fighting against?

For years the people of Judea had been the vassals of Greece. True independence as a state had been unknown for all those decades and, yet, the Jews did not rise in revolt. It was only when the Greek policy shifted from mere political control to one that attempted to suppress the Jewish religion that the revolt erupted in all its bloodiness. It was not mere liberty that led to the Maccabean uprising that we so passionately applaud. What we are really cheering is a brave group of Jews who fought and plunged Judea into a bloodbath for the right to observe the Sabbath, to follow the laws of kashrut, to obey the laws of the Torah. In a world where everything about Hanukah that we commemorate, and teach our children to commemorate, are things we consider to be outmoded, medieval and childish!

At best, then, those who fought and died for Hanukah were naive and obscurantist. Had we lived in those days we would certainly not have done what they did, for everyone knows that the laws of the Torah are not really Divine but only the products of evolution and men (do not the Reform, Reconstructionist, and large parts of the Conservative movements write this daily?) Surely we would not have fought for that which we violate every day of our lives.

No, at best Hanukah emerges as a needless holiday if not a foolish one. Poor Hannah and her seven children; poor Mattathias and Judah; poor well meaning chaps all - but hopelessly backward and utterly unnecessary sacrifices.

But there is more. Not only is Hanukah 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? What kind of nationalism is this for Shimon Peres (he who rejects the 'Galut' and speaks of the proud, free Jew of ancient Judea and Israel)?

And to crush us even more (we who know that Judaism is a faith of peace which deplores violence), what kind of Jews were these who reacted to oppression with force? Surely we who so properly have deplored Jewish violence as fascistic, immoral and (above all) un- Jewish, stand in horror as we contemplate Jews who declined to picket the Syrian Greeks to death and who rejected quiet diplomacy for the sword, spear and arrow (had there been bombs in those days, who can tell what they might have done?) and "descended to the level of 'evil'" thus rejecting the ethical and moral concepts of Judaism.

Is this the kind of a holiday we wish to propagate? Are these the kinds of men we want our moral and humanistic children to honor? Is this the kind of Judaism that we wish to observe and pass on to our children? Where shall we find the man of courage, the lone voice in the wilderness to cry out against Hanukah and the Judaism that it represents - the Judaism of our grandparents and ancestors?

Where shall we find the man of honesty and integrity to attack the Judaism of medievalism and outdated foolishness; the Judaism of bigotry that strikes down Jews who refuse to observe the Law; the Judaism of violence that calls for Jewish force and might against the enemy? When shall we find the courage to proudly eat our Chinese food and violate our Sabbaths and reject all the separateness, nationalism and religious maximalism that Hanukah so ignobly represents?

Down with Hanukah! It is a regressive holiday that merely symbolizes the Judaism that always was; the Judaism that was handed down to us from Sinai; the Judaism that made our ancestors ready to give their lives for the L-rd; the Judaism that young people instinctively know is true and great and real. Such a Judaism is dangerous for us and our leaders. We must do all in our power to bury it.

Boston Globe columnist explains Chanuka

The triumph of Chanukah
by Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe

BECAUSE CHANUKAH usually occurs in December, it is sometimes thought of as the "Jewish Christmas." It isn't, of course. And yet it is fair to say that the reason for Chanukah's popularity -- especially in America, where it is the most widely observed Jewish holiday after Passover and Yom Kippur -- is precisely its proximity to Christmas.
Chanukah used to be regarded as a minor half-holiday, cheerful but low-key. It has become something bigger and brighter in response to Christmas, which transforms each December into a brilliant winter festival of parties, decorations, and music. Attracted by the joy of the season, not wanting their children to feel left out of all the merriment and gift-giving, American Jews in the 20th century began to make much more of Chanukah than their grandparents ever had. Today Chanukah is well established as part of the annual "holiday season," complete with parties, decorations, and music of its own. Its enhanced status is a tribute both to the assimilating tug of America's majority culture and to the remarkable openness of that culture to Jewish customs and belief.
Ironically, Chanukah was established to commemorate the very opposite of cultural assimilation. It dates back nearly 22 centuries, to the successful Jewish revolt against Antiochus IV, one of the line of Syrian-Greek monarchs who ruled the northern branch of Alexander the Great's collapsed empire. Alexander had been respectful of the Jews' monotheistic religion, but Antiochus was determined to impose Hellenism, with its pagan gods and its cult of the body, throughout his domains. When he met resistance in Judea, he made Judaism illegal.
Sabbath observance, circumcision, and the study of Torah were banned on pain of death. A statue of Zeus was installed in the Temple in Jerusalem, and swine were sacrificed before it. Some Jews embraced the new order and willingly abandoned the God and faith of their ancestors. Those who wouldn't were cruelly punished. Ancient writings tell the story of Hannah and her seven sons, who were captured by Antiochus's troops and commanded to bow to an idol. One by one, each boy refused -- and was tortured to death before his mother's eyes.
The fight to reclaim Jewish religious autonomy began in 167 BCE. In the town of Modi'in, an elderly priest named Mattathias refused a Syrian order to sacrifice to an idol. When an apostate Jew stepped forward to comply, Mattathias killed the man and tore down the altar. Then he and his five sons took to the hills and launched a guerrilla war against the armies of the empire.
When Mattathias died, his third son, Judah Maccabee, took command. He and his band of fighters were impossibly outnumbered, yet they won one miraculous victory after another. In 164 BCE, they recaptured the desecrated Temple, which they cleansed and purified and rededicated to God. On the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev, the menorah -- the candelabra symbolizing the divine presence -- was rekindled. For eight days, throngs of Jews celebrated the Temple's restoration. "All the people prostrated themselves," records the book of Maccabees, "worshipping and praising Heaven that their cause had prospered."
In truth, though, their cause hadn't prospered -- not yet. The fighting went on for years. It was not until 142 BCE -- more than two decades later -- that the Jews finally regained control of their land. Geopolitically, that was the moment of real triumph.
But Chanukah isn't about political power. It isn't about military victory. It isn't even about freedom of worship, notwithstanding the fact that the revolt of the Maccabees marks the first time in history that a people rose up to fight religious persecution.
What Chanukah commemorates at heart is the Jewish yearning for God, for the concentrated holiness of the Temple and its service. The defeat of the Syrian-Greeks was a wonder, but the spiritual climax of the Maccabees' rebellion occurred when the menorah was rekindled and God's presence among His people could be felt once again.
Chanukah is the only Jewish holiday not found in the Hebrew Bible and the only one rooted in a military campaign. And yet its focus is almost entirely spiritual, not physical. For example, there is no feast associated with Chanukah, the way there is with Passover and Purim, the two other Jewish festivals of deliverance. Its religious observance is concentrated on flame, nothing more. And the menorah's lights may only be gazed at; it is forbidden to use them for any physical purpose -- not even to read by.
The lack of a physical side to Chanukah is unusual but appropriate. For the Maccabees' war against the Hellenists was ultimately a war against a worldview that elevated the physical above all, that venerated beauty, not holiness; the body, not the soul. The Jews fought to preserve a different view of the world -- one with God, not man, at its center.
Had they failed, Judaism would have died. Because they triumphed, the Jewish religion survived. And from it, two centuries later, Christianity was born.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)

A T-Shirt for sale in Jerusalem

Apt for Chanukah.