What Doug Emhoff’s Rewrite of Hanukkah Says about the Left’s Attitude toward Judaism

By Philip Klein

Wednesday, December 13, 2023

 

Doug Emhoff, the Jewish husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, was deservedly lampooned when he was forced to delete a social-media post that botched the story of Hanukkah. As embarrassing as it was, the mistake was quite revealing about the progressive attitude toward Judaism and modern Israel.

 

In what should have been an easy “Happy Hanukkah” post on X, Emhoff attached a photo of himself and Harris lighting a menorah with the following message:

 

In the Hanukkah story, the Jewish people were forced into hiding. No one thought they would survive or that the few drops of oil they had would last. But they survived and the oil kept burning. During those eight days in hiding, they recited their prayers and continued their traditions. That’s why Hanukkah means dedication. It was during those dark nights that the Maccabees dedicated themselves to maintaining hope and faith in the oil, each other, and their Judaism. In dark times, I think of that story.

 

But the actual story of Hanukkah is not about Jews hiding; it’s about Jews fighting back in the face of overwhelming odds against those who wanted to force them to assimilate. It also didn’t take just eight days but years for the Maccabees to win religious freedom.

 

The precursor to the story of Hanukkah begins around 150 years after the death of Alexander the Great, as the Greeks, led by Antiochus, attempted to spread their customs and culture throughout the world. At this time, a group of Jews were in favor of abandoning traditional Jewish religious practices, and they allied with Antiochus to root out Jewish religious customs, desecrate the sacred Second Temple with pagan symbols, and collect taxes for the state.

 

A priest named Mattathias, father of the five Maccabee children, refused to abandon Jewish religion and practices. Far from wanting to hide, he wanted to fight back instead, as described in the Books of the Maccabees. They tell the story of a group of Jews who were slaughtered in hiding, recounting that when Mattathias and his friends learned of it, they said:

 

“If we all do as our brethren have done and refuse to fight with the Gentiles for our lives and our ordinances, they will quickly destroy us from the earth.” So they made this decision that day: “Let us fight against every man who comes to attack us on the sabbath day; let us not all die as our brethren died in their hiding places.”

 

After Mattathias died, the revolt was taken over by his son, Judah. After several years of fighting with guerrilla tactics against a much stronger army, the Maccabees won back control of the Second Temple. They religiously purified it, removed pagan symbols, and in rededicating it they lit a menorah. This is where the familiar part of the Hanukkah story emerges, in which they thought they had only enough oil to last for one day, but it miraculously lasted for eight.

 

In Emhoff’s rewrite, Jews lit the menorah as they cowered in fear for eight days, and Hanukkah is reduced to a generic story about hope. This treats Jews as passive, with little control over their own fates. The actual story is about how Jews refused to abandon their religion and conform. They are active in taking control of their own fates. The story is about how they used military force to drive away a powerful enemy and win their freedom. They didn’t light the menorah in hiding, but in victory.

 

That Emhoff would make such a mistake is quite revealing.

 

Progressives are more comfortable with the idea of Jews as victims than as people who fight back. This is why they can speak in somber tones about the Holocaust while equivocating about — or outright opposing — efforts by the modern state of Israel to actually kill its enemies.

 

When Jews are victims, they are innocent and sympathetic. But fighting back involves the use of force and, leftists believe, unacceptable moral compromises. This is why, in the current conflict, we get the erratic messaging from the Biden administration that alternately says the U.S. has Israel’s back yet attempts to set restrictive rules of engagement in Gaza. It explains how officials can claim to support Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas while also claiming that their war effort needs simultaneously to be more careful and to wrap up more quickly.

 

The actual story of Hanukkah is one that glorifies Jews who fight rather than those who submit, and so it’s understandable that a leftist like Emhoff would have to distort its meaning to be able to commemorate it.