Zealotry: A Religious Stance?
D'var Torah for Chanukah
By Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Executive Director of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America
Over the past few months, I have been saddened and horrified by the violent Price Tag attacks, in which Israeli settlers have set fire to mosques, vandalized the home of a leader in the Israeli peace movement, uprooted Palestinian olive trees, and even attacked an Israeli army base.
Many of those who engage in such behavior justify their actions in religious terms. These attacks, they say, are the "price tag" for letting go of parts of the biblical land of Israel.
Religious zealotry is not a new phenomenon. On Chanukah, we celebrate the Maccabees' bravery in defending Judaism against Hellenization. But we tend to gloss over many of the Maccabees' actions, which extended even to killing Jews who did not toe the line on religious observance.
We are not the first generation to cringe when reading about Jews who murdered other Jews for the sake of religious principle. More than 1500 years ago, the rabbis of the Talmud sought to minimize the historical prominence of the Maccabees and their descendants, the Hasmonean empire. Famously, these rabbis transformed Chanukah from a celebration of a military victory into the commemoration of a divine miracle in which a small pot of oil burned for eight days. More subtly, the rabbis also projected themselves back in time, imagining the Hasmonean leaders deferring to rabbinic authority.
As the composers of the Jewish legal tradition, the rabbis could very well have tried to delete the Maccabees and the Hasmoneans from history. Instead, the rabbis leave the Chanukah story in the history books—along with a warning that worship of God does not demand violent zealotry. Lest future generations think that God demands violence, the rabbis remind us that violence has been part of Judaism in the past—and that religious leaders have acted to neutralize it.
In one Talmudic story, the rabbis warn that anyone who claims to come from the Hasmonean line is not telling the truth. In context, this comment indicates the rabbis' suspicions about the genealogy of some supposed Hasmoneans. More broadly, though, we can read this statement as a caution against religious zealotry. That is: anyone who claims that God demands violent acts in the name of religion merits suspicion. In the end, the Chanukah we celebrate is one that focuses on bringing divine light into the world, and not one that glorifies religious violence.
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