Merry Christmas to all! Those of you who will manage to survive the shopping epidemic nothing else will subdue you! Those who won’t, don’t worry, you will be the blessed ones, because you will have realized that your potential as human beings isn’t unlimited and ambition could be another unfulfilled passion after all!

Hanukah has become, in New York at least, something like... the Jewish Christmas. Since this Christian Holiday has proved an equal opportunity shopping extravaganza, Jews and others have every right to claim their share in this madness and it’s completely understandable for them to have twisted an ancient tradition into reflecting modern day celebratory needs. Same thing happened with Christmas.

However, Hanukah has a story of its own and yes, it’s related to us, Greeks, in a unique way. Here’s what happened: a couple of hundred years before the birth of Christ Jews wanted to become …civilized, hip and the only way to achieve that was by emulating Greek culture, the predominant trend then. Besides, Judea and the surrounding areas were under the Hellenic yoke (Alexander the Great’s generals had carved up the huge empire among themselves) and no matter how civilized, a yoke is a yoke for the conquered (ask the Iraquis during the US occupation). So, the affluent and urban Jews of the time started to dress, speak, sing, dance, doing sports, going after men (and boys), smoke cigars and swig bourbon (they had those wonderful things then, in fact everything great was created by our ancestors, even Swedish meatballs!), read, write, recite poetry in public without the fear of being called lunatics, cook, even think like Greeks! The assimilation process had reached such extremes that not only Jewish traditions, but the language itself was threatened with extinction. In the Synagogues (a Greek word) Greek was now used and thinkers, philosophers (like Philo of Alexandria) had nothing to feel jealous about their original Greek counterparts. According to a rabbi, talking on the New York Public Radio, Jews had even invented a – painful must have been – operation in order to undo circumcision so that they wouldn’t feel inferior in the gymnasia where athletes were training nude! (Modern day Israelites too are emulating the …Greeks and they cheat on their taxes, wives, husbands, like to dine out for hours, take long vacations to the Aegean islands and tend to follow rules if and only if fit them to do so. Oh, and they listen to bad Greek music like maniacs! There is at least one radio station in Israel that plays 24/7 Greek music!)

Now, while urban and educated Jews were assimilating to Hellenism, on the mountains and the periphery another kind of Israelites lived, very traditional, very conservative, Tea Party kind of conservative, and although radio wasn’t invented yet, there were many Rush Limbaughs around. Those Jews who were called Maccabees (“hammers” in Hebrew) were somehow reminiscent of the Taliban, only the latter claim to be Muslim and hate Jews. The Maccabees, rightly from their point of view, would look at the assimilation of their urban brethren with fear because to them it looked as if Jewdaism was threatened with extinction in the best case scenario or with alteration in the worse. As with every fanatic or puritan, death is always preferable to living with your faith “spoiled”.

Adding insult to injury, a Greek king, I believe his name was Herod – unrelated to the one in the New Testament – ordered the Jewish religious practices halted and asked the priests for sacrifices to be done in the Temple. Then he placed some Greek statues there, a terrible thing to do since Jews hated idols, even if it would be Michael Douglas himself! As a result even urban Jews became pissed off and that signaled the Maccabees that they had enough and time for action had come. So, they attacked full force and they won, restoring their version of sanity in the Temple and going after the Hellenized Jews with particular zeal if not joy. Judas Maccabeus (you might have heard Handel’s masterpiece by the same name) was the Maccabees’ leader and my scholar instinct makes me thing that the Jewish people who wrote the four Gospels in Greek a couple of centuries later, might have had something against him when they unanimously named Judas the disciple who betrayed the Lord – who knew all along that He would be betrayed! But that’s a long shot and another story...

As you can see Maccabees were our adversaries then and are still today, albeit in …basketball! Not a few times the “Maccabee” basketball team has kicked our ass! Maccabees fought the Greeks and resisted their effort …to civilize them! (Which proves again that civilization can only be embraced, never imposed.)

Now, I don’t understand why all Greek diner and restaurant owners put menorahs every year during Hanukah! Even worse, they dare and I do it sometimes, wish our Jewish friends “Happy Hanukah”! Traitors!!!! Maccabees are enemies, hasta siempre! Period!

Just when I thought that I had everything figured out, I heard that the Church, our Greek Church, has elevated to sainthood the Maccabee leaders, including Judas Maccabeus, Handel’s favorite! Is this some kind of a joke or what? Why don’t we celebrate Hanukah then? Is there a Church conspiracy going on, in the logic of “those we can’t win we embrace anyway and we make them ours, as it happened with the Romans after they conquered the Greek city states”? Was it a Greek way to placate the Jewish fears, an unofficial mea culpa and “pardonez moi”, for the oppression of Herod, so that we can corrupt them again in the future? (Hmm, remember what I was telling you about modern day Israelites and their …Greek way to indulge themselves? Brilliant!) If that’s the case, I guess we ought to put menorahs in our restaurants and start wishing left and right “Happy Hanukah”. This way they will fall into the trap sooner rather than later and before they know it, they will become born again Greeks! Maccabbes may had defeated Greek culture then, but lets see if their modern day offspring can resist Greek …subculture!

P.S. When I visit my neighborhood’s big Korean supermarket it’s not because prices and quality of products are decent. The moment I step in and I hear the Korean pop music gushing from the loudspeakers, I somehow sense a reassuring feeling to envelope me as I gratefully realize that yes, there is worse than Greek pop music!

DEMETRIOS RHOMPOTIS