Happy Sunday, Friends and Neighbors!
Tonight starts Hanukkah, That eight-day festival of potato pancakes, jelly donuts, and chocolate gelt, which not only coincides with Christmas, but this year it envelopes it like bookends, thus providing for a little extra warm-and-fuzzy caring-and-sharing feelings.
For those of you all interested in the ecclesiastical, and apocryphal, origin story of this holiday, it commemorates the expulsion of the Seleucid Empire from Jerusalem by the Maccabees, also known as the Hasmoneans, and the restoration of the Second Temple. For those of us with an ear for history, it documents yet another set of rulers of Jerusalem that came, went, and were replaced yet again.
Most importantly, it was about the imposition of values on ancient Judea by force. Was Hellenism a bad thing? Of course not! It involved philosophy, athleticism, argumentation, democracy, all things that the Western world as we know it is based upon.
Buuuut, those Seleucids, they went about it the wrong way. Not only were they ruled by an emperor who expected to get the same level of deference as the plethora of deities on Mount Olympus, but also expected to abrogate, negate, nullify, and repeal anything about Judaism that previously existed. The Maccabees were not willing to permit that, and they were successful in preventing that.
Nowadays, in our divisive society, while we may have become somewhat calmer with the passage of time, there is still that Seleucid way of thinking. This notion that our way is so right, so beneficial, and so helpful, that everyone should be doing it.
Well, I have good news: We have every right to that way. And there's nothing wrong with becoming convinced that it truly is the right way.
And the bad news? We do not have the right to demand that everyone think our way, no matter how foolish they may seem for not doing so.
How about even worse news? We have no control over the way other people think, act, or behave. For good reason, too.
Other people have difference perspectives, different upbringings, and different needs. They have their own personalities, their own attitudes, and their own way of dealing with the world around them. Some of them will seem stupid, some of them will seem obnoxious, and some of them will be undesirable.
Let Them Have Their Thing. Just like you don't need their approval to be you, they don't need your approval to be them.
Let's focus a little more on our own values and actions, like the Maccabees, and not other people's ways, like the Seleucids. If we're not happy with other people's ways, and there are no reasons to permit them, then maybe let's stop interacting with them. It might be a harsh measure, but it's a lot smarter than demanding that they behave more to our liking because we know everything and they don't.
DO NOT ABSORB. REPEL.
