Rabbi Knopf's Blog

Illumin8! Reflections 
The word "Hanukkah" means "dedication," which is about devoting someone or something for a particular purpose. For each of the holiday's eight nights, Rabbi Knopf and several congregants offer a reflection. We hope you'll use these ideas when lighting your candles each night. And, just maybe, you'll be inspired to dedicate yourself to a higher purpose this year.  Hanukkah Same'ah! Happy Hanukkah!

Night 3: It's all Greek to me...or is it?
By  Elisheva Hadar

     Twenty years ago, I was living in Jerusalem and taking classes in the Classics department at Hebrew University, hoping to get into a Ph.D. program. Around Hanukkah, the folks with whom I spent Shabbat accused me of consorting with the enemy. I rushed to defend the Greeks. It’s not as if Socrates and Sophocles were defiling the Temple and forbidding Jewish observance. They lived centuries earlier. The Torah was translated into Greek about a century before the events of Hanukkah, by miraculous means recounted in the Talmud (Megillah 9a). All translation may be betrayal, but even back then, it probably kept Jews engaged when the Hebrew of the Torah wasn’t what they spoke on the street. Also, the paragraph we add to the Amidah during Hanukkah speaks of the time when the wicked Greek kingdom stood against Israel. Would it need to specify wicked,  if there weren’t good Greeks? Studying Greek wasn’t leading me or anyone away from observance and Jewish identity. Classes didn’t meet on Shabbat or Yom Tov. The Classics Department Hanukkah party didn’t involve a bacon cheeseburger picnic at the Western Wall. I was and remain an unrepentant Jewish Hellenist. I didn’t end up in a Classics graduate program, but I still read ancient Greek for fun.
    This year, after Charlottesville, I began to wonder whether, in defending the Greeks, I am making excuses for oppressors. Am I doing the same as saying there are good people on both sides? What the Syrian Greeks did was murderous religious persecution and enforcement of Greek supremacy. To what extent is it acceptable to participate in and benefit from the culture of the oppressors? At what point does it become appeasement or complicity? I’m not intentionally oppressing anyone when I read ancient Greek, or when I do anything in my life as a relatively affluent white person in the United States, but it’s easy to see how I could be suspect.  It is imperative to speak out against injustice and fight oppression, but I want to make the case for my good intentions and gain empathy for my position.
    What are we to do? How do we know where the line is between trying to understand and condoning? Perhaps the answer lies in the miracle of Hanukkah - light in the darkness, and patience and trust that the light will last. With the technology we carry in our pockets today, it is easy to rush to judge, categorize, and record rather than see and experience what is going on. There is a tradition of not doing work while the Hanukkah candles are lit, of treating that time like a mini-Shabbat. Maybe we can take that moment when the lights shine and see, rather than do the work of judgment and recording.  The moment doesn’t last forever. There’s much to be done.  There isn’t always time for the benefit of the doubt, time to stop and shed light on a situation before putting a stop to evil.  When there is, we are wise to take it, and Hanukkah can be a reminder of that.

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