You’d Think After 5786 Years They Would Give Up

There were armed guards. There was enhanced police protection. Guards and police scanning the rooftops in search of snipers. Scanning the crowd of families looking for terrorists.

I wasn’t in a war zone. I was at a public Hanukkah celebration in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The day after a terrorist attack at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia. Before I left, I told Jim that I’d leave the celebration at the first sign of trouble. We both knew that I meant I’d leave when the first bullet struck.

People have been trying to wipe out the Jews for 5786 years. We are still here.

Hanukkah is the celebration of a tiny band of warriors defeating a huge army. A celebration when we threw them out of our temple, cleaned out their gods, and consecrated the temple. When we took back what is ours. The Torah. The right to study Torah. The right to pray. The right to be Jewish. There’s an eternal light in temples that must never be extinguished. Today, that light is electric. Then, the light was oil. But there was only enough oil for one day. Some went off in search of the proper oil. It took them eight days to get the oil and come back to the temple. That one day’s worth of oil lasted eight days.

Hanukkah is when I remember we are still here. We have never been defeated. We survived the Spanish Inquisition. We survived the Holocaust. We survived Hamas and Hezbollah. We survived being shut out of neighborhoods and jobs. My great-great-grandparents lived by the rule of never doing anything in public that would cause someone to think they were Jewish. They lived in secret because they lived beyond the Pale of Settlement. We’ve had setbacks, but we are still here. We have a homeland. Even in the middle of a war, Israel is still the only place on the planet where it’s safe to be a Jew. We are a mighty, tiny group. 0.2% of the world’s population. Since the beginning, we have had to fight for our right to exist.

When was the last time you went to a Christmas party and there were armed guards, extra police scanning the crowd looking for terrorists. Scanning the rooftops looking for snipers. Trying to stop trouble before the first bullet flew.