Happy Not Lunatic Day

(Note: the following OpEd was going to appear in the New York Times this week, but was inexplicably pulled at the last moment. Or maybe explicably, I don’t really know. So do me a favor and share the fuck out of it.)

Happy Not Lunatic Day

by Shalom Auslander

Given the state of the world, I could use a good holiday. Something happy, something festive, something with candles and presents and jelly doughnuts. Something like Chanukah, which celebrates the victory of the ragtag Maccabees over the Seleucid Empire in 175 BCE. Unfortunately, the celebration of Chanukah is a celebration of zealotry, and frankly, given the state of the world, I’ve about had it with zealots. 

175 BCE was a zealot-y time. Zealotry was all the rage. The Maccabees were a group of Jewish religious zealots who decided that the rest of the Jews weren’t religious enough. So they raided the Jewish Temple, took over the priesthood and forced everyone to follow their rules:

“So they joined their forces, and smote sinful men in their anger, and wicked men in their wrath … then Mattathias and his friends went round about, and pulled down the altars, and what children soever they found within the coast of Israel uncircumcised, those they circumcised valiantly.”

That’s just Chapter Two of the Book of Maccabees, folks.

There’s twenty-nine more.

The Maccabees weren’t the only zealots, of course. Antiochus IV, the leader of the Seleucid Empire, was a zealot for Zeus, so he raided the Jewish Temple, murdered the priests, sacrificed pigs to Zeus and forbade them from getting circumcised. The Maccabees fought back, retook the Jewish Temple, and forced the Jews to get circumcised. The whole thing was very penis-y. Keep reading and you’ll find that the zealous Maccabees gave rise to the zealous Hasmoneans, who forcibly converted people to Judaism (penises again) and whose reign eventually ended in a bloody civil war. You can lead a horse to water, it seems, but you can’t make him have a bris.

Sadly, we live in a zealot-y time ourselves.  

Zealots like Hamas, who swear to kill all Jews (don’t get too comfy, Christians, they’re coming for you, too).

Zealots like Israeli Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who declares there are no innocent Palestinians.

Zealots like Bezalel Smotrich, who calls himself a “proud homophobe.”

Zealots like Ayatollah Khamenei, who really, really hates women’s hair. 

And so as much as I could use a good holiday, I struggle to celebrate one that celebrates zealotry. It sickens to imagine some thousand years from now a holiday celebrating the great King Netanyahu who did slay the Palestinians, and also while he was at it, democracy. Or children in some dark future, lighting candles to honor the noble Iranian mullahs who did beat women to death for letting their hair blow in the wind, or the glorious Hamas forefathers who did rape women and murder babies (I shudder to imagine what that celebration might look like).

“Prepare the slaughter for the blaspheming foe,” we sing after we light the Chanukah candles. “The enemy, his name you obliterated and hung his progeny on the gallows.”

Then, doughnuts.

This might anger some, I know, but the Torah sages agree with me. The Books of Maccabees were never included in the Jewish Bible, in part because the sages disapproved of the behavior celebrated within them. As Vered Noam, professor of Talmud at Tel Aviv University, points out in Shifting Images of Hasmoneans, even references to Judah Maccabee by name were removed to avoid hero-worship of the Hasmoneans that followed him. 

You know who admired the Maccabees? The Crusaders.

“Come, O Christ,” wrote Gilo of Paris, “grant now the divine gift often granted to your Maccabees, that one may trounce thousands upon thousands.”

So enough with the trouncing. Enough with the zealots. 

Where is the holiday that praises the rational, the moderate, the reasonable, the sane?

When is Not Lunatic Day?

When is Playing With a Full Deck Day?

Let’s at last have a holiday that honors balance, that praises judiciousness, that celebrates genuine wisdom. “Blessed are you,” we will sing after lighting candles, “who doth find consensus, who bloweth up not everyone, who forceth not his ways upon others. Praise unto You, All Reasonable, may your equanimity endure forever.”

Then, doughnuts.