By the way, Happy Hanukkah, Jewish Friends

[Bootney Lee Farnsworth]

 

[Lysistrata]

DO NOT PLAY HERE, Your gun has no worth.

Just a coincidence one minute before I clicked on USMB, I was listening to Exodus and thinking back to the photos I've seen of naked Jewish women lined up for the gas chamber, trying to cover themselves, and boxes of wedding rings taken from their fingers. Think what their last moments on this earth were like. All that I can hope for is that these people rose up to heaven years before I was born, and that their fear is replaced by eternal peace. BTW: I'm not Jewish.

Do not ever use religion to promote violence or associate religion in any way with violence.

 

[Sunni Man]

Very interesting article written by a Jewish woman about the Hanukkah celebration in America. ...

"The story of Hanukkah doesn’t even appear in the Torah—the books of 1 and 2 Maccabees are in the Catholic Bible, not the Hebrew one. The saga is briefly described in the Talmud—a tale of armed Jewish rebellion against the Hellenistic King Antiochus IV, paired with a parable about miracle oil that kept the eternal flame of the Temple burning for eight nights when it should have only lasted for one. It is both theologically thin and celebratory of violent nationalism. For most of Jewish history, the holiday has been of little consequence. “Hanukkah is … a minor holiday that America has elevated into something much more,” said Josh Plaut, the head rabbi at the Reform Metropolitan Synagogue in New York City. “Jews have been part of that magnification of Hanukkah. It suits our purposes.”
So why, in America, has Hanukkah taken on outsized significance? Because it serves a particular purpose: an opportunity to negotiate the twin, competing pressures of ethnic tension and assimilation. As the Rowan University historian Dianne Ashton writes in her book, Hanukkah in America, “Hanukkah’s strongest American advocates seem to have been those who felt the complexities of American Jewish life most acutely.” It’s so simple, so conveniently vague, that it has been used by rabbis, advertisers, Zionists, Hebrew school teachers, and parents to promote everything from ethnic pride and nationalism to engagement in Jewish life and buying stuff.
No doubt, Hanukkah is an incredibly important part of the story of Jews in America. Why, then, is this holiday—the most public Jewish celebration in the United States—so silly?

How American Jews Ruined Hanukkah

Cultural critics often blame Christmas for the Festival of Lights’ commercialized kitsch. The real story is much more complicated.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[Votto]

"The story of Hanukkah doesn’t even appear in the Torah—the books of 1 and 2 Maccabees are in the Catholic Bible, not the Hebrew one. The saga is briefly described in the Talmud—a tale of armed Jewish rebellion against the Hellenistic King Antiochus IV, paired with a parable about miracle oil that kept the eternal flame of the Temple burning for eight nights when it should have only lasted for one. It is both theologically thin and celebratory of violent nationalism. For most of Jewish history, the holiday has been of little consequence. “Hanukkah is … a minor holiday that America has elevated into something much more,” said Josh Plaut, the head rabbi at the Reform Metropolitan Synagogue in New York City. “Jews have been part of that magnification of Hanukkah. It suits our purposes.”

How American Jews Ruined Hanukkah

Cultural critics often blame Christmas for the Festival of Lights’ commercialized kitsch. The real story is much more complicated.

www.theatlantic.com

Maybe, but it sure beats Quanza

I think many secular Jews find Hanukkah a tad bit more appealing. I mean celebrating an armed revolt against a despot beats celebrating a God that splits the Red Sea and doing legit miracles etc.

And let's face it, most are secular

 

[HaShev]

Very interesting article written by a Jewish woman about the Hanukkah celebration in America. ...

"The story of Hanukkah doesn’t even appear in the Torah—the books of 1 and 2 Maccabees are in the Catholic Bible, not the Hebrew one. The saga is briefly described in the Talmud—a tale of armed Jewish rebellion against the Hellenistic King Antiochus IV, paired with a parable about miracle oil that kept the eternal flame of the Temple burning for eight nights when it should have only lasted for one. It is both theologically thin and celebratory of violent nationalism. For most of Jewish history, the holiday has been of little consequence. “Hanukkah is … a minor holiday that America has elevated into something much more,” said Josh Plaut, the head rabbi at the Reform Metropolitan Synagogue in New York City. “Jews have been part of that magnification of Hanukkah. It suits our purposes.”
So why, in America, has Hanukkah taken on outsized significance? Because it serves a particular purpose: an opportunity to negotiate the twin, competing pressures of ethnic tension and assimilation. As the Rowan University historian Dianne Ashton writes in her book, Hanukkah in America, “Hanukkah’s strongest American advocates seem to have been those who felt the complexities of American Jewish life most acutely.” It’s so simple, so conveniently vague, that it has been used by rabbis, advertisers, Zionists, Hebrew school teachers, and parents to promote everything from ethnic pride and nationalism to engagement in Jewish life and buying stuff.
No doubt, Hanukkah is an incredibly important part of the story of Jews in America. Why, then, is this holiday—the most public Jewish celebration in the United States—so silly?

How American Jews Ruined Hanukkah

Cultural critics often blame Christmas for the Festival of Lights’ commercialized kitsch. The real story is much more complicated.

www.theatlantic.com

The Maccabees were heroes, but their lineage got tainted when John Hycanus became Hellenized himself and his nephew King Jannaeus Alexander hung Pharisees to torture crosses during the revolt (aprox 88bc). So a Pharisee (Hassidic) would perhaps be less likely to lift high the Macabees then others.

 

[justinacolmena]

DO NOT PLAY HERE, Your gun has no worth.

Kids play. You're selling something to adults.

naked Jewish women lined up for the gas chamber, trying to cover themselves, and boxes of wedding rings taken from their fingers.

1. The Communism of women with women was accounted, and justly so, as unfaithfulness to their husbands and brothers.
2. You can't flash expensive jewelry in that part of town without the guns to defend yourself from such armed and organized thieves and robbers.

 

[Lysistrata]

DO NOT PLAY HERE, Your gun has no worth.

Kids play. You're selling something to adults.

naked Jewish women lined up for the gas chamber, trying to cover themselves, and boxes of wedding rings taken from their fingers.

1. The Communism of women with women was accounted, and justly so, as unfaithfulness to their husbands and brothers.
2. You can't flash expensive jewelry in that part of town without the guns to defend yourself from such armed and organized thieves and robbers.

Good God! Explain anything of this. You are just disgusting. These people waited in line, naked, to be murdered. There isn't anything more disgusting in the human race. How they must have felt! What did they go through? The only thing that we can say on top of their ashes is that they have reached glory and peace for eternity.

Also, how does a woman be unfaithful to a husband or brothers, and how does a man be unfaithful to his wife or sisters? Where is there any evidence that these people standing naked in line to be murdered ever betrayed anyone? Someone must have put a ring on somebody's finger as a sign of being wedded to this person.

You must be unaware of the tradition among people of many faiths to give a ring to one's spouse during a wedding ceremony. It's a popular tradition in many cultures. When the funeral home people brought to me the gold band that my mother placed on my father's finger during their Catholic wedding ceremony in the 1940's, I slipped it right back on my father's finger, as a faithful husband and father, he earned to right to wear it for all eternity. That's right. He earned it, he swore to Stephanie that day and he delivered through all the years of happiness and hardships. No affairs of looking elsewhere. Just an honorable human being.

Do not dare to try to besmirch these fine people who stood in line to be murdered. Each one of these people being murdered might have been a mother. Maybe your mother.

 

[justinacolmena]

You must be unaware of the tradition among people of many faiths to give a ring to one's spouse during a wedding ceremony. It's a popular tradition in many cultures. When the funeral home people brought to me the gold band that my mother placed on my father's finger during their Catholic wedding ceremony in the 1940's, I slipped it right back on my father's finger, as a faithful husband and father

I am not necessarily objecting to the tradition, but all the same, it's a trinket of gold; a token of some value, maybe even considerable value, but in any case, the marriage should not be considered lost if a round metal token or symbol of it with a gemstone or something is lost or stolen -- some people renew their wedding vows in such circumstances.

The denial of gun rights is not part of the tradition, and to place a person on a prohibited list for gun ownership is already a felony act of promoting or compelling adultery or prostitution. Those who promote or compel an agenda of gun control are pimps, harlots, prostitutes, whores, fornicators and thieves, and they have no place to speak of lawful marriage or harmony between a man and a woman.

he earned to right to wear it for all eternity.

A man does not and canot «earn» the right to have sex with a particular woman or the right to wear a certain ring on his finger or to prohibit unmarried men from wearing similar rings. Women are -- to be honest, quite understandably -- fickle -- when a man thinks he has «earned» a bed-mate by works of the law without faith.

Bible Gateway passage: Matthew 6:19-21 - King James Version

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is...

www.biblegateway.com

Bible Gateway passage: Romans 7:2-3 - King James Version

For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead...

www.biblegateway.com