A Hanukkah for 'Oct. 8 Jews'

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The Maccabees’ victory makes Hanukkah less about the battle against hostile outsiders and more about an internal conflict between Jewish tradition and “enlightenment.” Hanukkah represents a reckoning between the allure of assimilated universalism and the fight to preserve Jewish particularism.

This dilemma is raging today. Modern ideals — manifested in matters such as secularism, cosmopolitanism and transnational human rights — are often seen in the United States as the pinnacle of moral progress. For much of the past century, these ideals were embraced by American Jews, many of whom were eager to secularize. One small but timely, telling example: Many of the most popular Christmas songs — “White Christmas,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Silver Bells” — were written by Jews (Irving Berlin; Johnny Marks; Ray Evans and Jay Livingston).

This assimilation, this desire to disappear into America’s melting pot, did not work. Jews learned that lesson beginning on Oct. 8 last year. On the day after the worst attack against Jews since the Holocaust — and long before the Israel Defense Forces began their response in Gaza — some protesters, in U.S. cities and elsewhere, began rallying in the streets not for Israel, and not just for Palestinians, but specifically for the terrorists who had slaughtered and abducted Jewish civilians.

For many American Jews, Oct. 8 — rather than Oct. 7 — was the wake-up call. The day after Hamas’s devastating attack, Jews looked around expecting support and, instead, found themselves more alone than they could have imagined. Many alliances, nurtured through decades of civil rights activism, philanthropy to non-Jewish causes (not least universities) and coalition-building, turned out to be a mirage. Statements from many supposed friends were equivocal at best. For Jews who had placed their faith in assimilation or allyship as a shield against antisemitism, the disillusionment was profound.

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