The article Bah, Hanukkah was written by Christopher Hitchens. In this article he basically slams the holiday of Chanukkah, which isn't much of a surprise as he has written a book called "God is not Great- How religion poisons everything." This anti-religious stance also makes him very much in favour of the War on Iraq although he is a social liberal. Any ways let's get back to the article.
Hitchens starts by saying that Chanukkah is, "to celebrate not the ignition of a light but the imposition of theocratic darkness." He says that the Seleucid empire had taken a hold in Israel and had started to wean people away from practicing Judaism. He of course doesn't mention that most Jews were being brutally forced to go through these changes, and couldn't practice Judaism if he wanted to. He then falsely says that the name Alexander is a Jewish name because Hellenism was so popular amongst the Jews. He says instead of celebrating the highly advanced Greeks, we celebrate the no good Maccabees who were just trying to spoil this enlightenment. He then says that maybe the Hellenists were a bit brutal, but the Jews also did terrible stuff amongst themselves after and during the war. He then said if we had just submitted to the Greeks, Christianity and Islam would have never been created, and we have brought all of our suffering onto ourselves because of this. I guess he prefers people practicing polytheism over monotheism. He then if the miracle happened it just shows that G-d loves extremists and religious thuggery.
He then goes on to talk about how dumb Christmas is, because it just takes pagan practices and puts them into the holiday. Of course some of these customs probably came from the beloved Greeks who he so widely lauds. The rest of this article continues in this manner, and he says when we look into the flames of the Menorah we should be saddened, as this is the first case of extremism winning over modernity.
Basically this article is very mean spirited and it is made even worse due to the lose facts that he uses. If you make up facts and talk in such a nasty tone you can either make your point very well or just disgust the reader. I'm going to go with the latter feeling
Here's the article
http://www.slate.com/id/2179045/
You can read my other blog from Tuesday if you want
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2 comments:
Though I doubt I will ever be able to agree with something Christopher Hitchens says, I am in no way outraged from the article. I can agree with some, though not all, of the things he writes in this article. I personally would too choose the Greek enlightened spirit over religion any day. The difference is I do not feel the need to bash other people's views. I know that my views are my own and that people can have conflicting agreements and that there is nothing wrong with that. Hitchens is in my mind, an average mind with a big mouth who loves attention. There is nothing that extraordinary, nor original, about what he says, it’s just a sensitive subject for many people.
I'm enjoying the dialogue Hitchens has provoked. Very revealing- and in a good way.
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