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Friday, December 10, 1965
THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
Page NMmi
Hanukah
of the Future
(A Seven Arts Feature)
What is the next Hanukah to
be about, if there were a next
Hanukah, a second one like this
one, but about a historic event
we still do not know because it
is now still in the future?
What if there were to be such
a Hanukah? What then would its
substance be? About what would
^Jranuhah
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it center? Dare we imagine?
But before we leap into the
future let us in part, if we can,
straighten the past, and figure out
what the old Hanukah was about,
first. Let’s see, what was it
about?
Yes. It was about desecration
and purification. The invading
Greeks desecrated the Temple
and the light that burned eight
days was the key to the retrieval
of the Temple and its consequent
purification from the Greek de
filement.
But what exactly do we mean
here? What Greek defilement?
Did the Greeks smear the walls
with filth? No. Then what did
they do? They besmeared the
Jewish mentality with insidious
inroads, inroads of alien philos
ophy and religion. The physical
desecration circumvolved about a
certain physical structure, a stone
and golden temple, at the center
of Jerusalem. But there was too
the desecration of the temple of
the mind. But where was the
besmirchment that event in fact
bespoke, the besmirchment of the
inner temple? For had not that
besmirchment taken place, how
could the other have followed?
Let us to the point then. The
Greek besmirchment consisted in
this — that God could not be
known, that consequently maybe
there was a God and maybe there
was not, and whereas there was
or was not, all that could be
known was the mechanism, psy
chological and esoteric, of the
workings of the human mind. The
besmirchment by the Greeks con
sisted therefore also in the asser
tion that God as a subject of
human inquiry was of secondary
order since God at best was a
contrivance of the human imag
ination.
It was this sophisticated eclec
ticism that the Greeks sought to
seed under the foundations of
the Hebraic gnosis. It was a se
ductive sophistication to be sure.
So much more elegant, they
thought, than the Hebrew load.
Whereas the Jew said God is,”
the Greeks said maybe. Whereas
the Jew said “We know Him
through the Torah,” the Greek
said “the Torah is like Homer,
a series of legends.” Whereas the
Jew said “His Torah is sweet,”
the Greek said only the tastebuds
on the tongue can distinguish
sweetness. Whereas the Jew said
“therefore be ye holy," the Greek
said “be a person.”
To the degree that Israel,
knowing what it knew, succumb
ed to the airy, elegant materialism
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of the Greeks and to their argu
ment that the only proper study
for man is man himself (as dis
tinguished from the continual
study of God), to that same de
gree, that degree of succumbing,
was the Temple in Jerusalem des
ecrated.
We celebrate Hanukah to com
memorate how little in fact that
succumbing was succumbed to.
We celebrate Hanukah in honor
of the purification rite that was
able to cleanse out the besmirch
ment of that succumbing—known
in certain circles as the Greco-
defilement.
But what of the Hanukah of
the future? What new tests of
alien thought will Israel be put
through? What new challenge is
yet to come and whence? Will it
come from space? Will creatures
of an alien planet descend like
Moses did from Sinai carrying
new tablets of law? Or will it
come from a new unitarianism
that would bind all religions into
one, as will some day be ecumen
ically proposed by the Christian,
Buddhist, Hindu and Mohamme
dan faiths? Or will the test this
time come through Israel itself?
Whatever it is, or whatever it
comes from, that new test will
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constitute the new Hanukah. ecration attempts of the future
lappy Hanukah, when it is will be as happily conquered as
sai this year, should mean then they were in the past,
happy anticipations that the des- Amen.
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\'u'/ forIIANUKAH
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