It’s Chrismukkah! It’s December 25th, a day that happens to be both Christmas Day and the first of eight days of Chanukah. Today, I’ve got the real pleasure of sharing the studio with my landsman, my hometown friend of 50 years, and the former host of WMNF’s Sunday Simcha, Rande Friedman.
Many of our WMNF volunteer programmers are home celebrating Christmas or solstice with their families, so to allow them to enjoy their holiday, today most of WMNF’s programming is going to be colonized by the Jews whose holiday doesn’t start until sundown tonight. There will still be plenty of Christmas music on WMNF throughout the day, but this morning, Rande and I thought we’d bring you a show focused on Chanukah, but not as some sort of affirmative action thing, but because Chanukah is really a holiday that celebrates a victory over tyranny, and if you’re a regular listener of MidPoint, you know how much we focus on the fight against tyranny. So, in keeping with the public affairs portion of the show, let me briefly give you the Chanukah story. See if you note any parallels to today.
The Story of Chanukah, or one of them, anyway…
In the 2nd century BCE—BCE standing for Before the Common Era, which Christians call BC or before Christ—there was a meteoric rise of a small Jewish family, the Maccabees. The name sounds Scottish but NO. The Maccabees were opposed to the tyranny of the Greek Seleucid Empire and its king, Antiochus, a man who saw himself as a God. Antiochus wanted to be known as Epiphanes, meaning “God-Manifest.” However, after witnessing his erratic and unpredictable behavior, a new name stuck, “Epumanes,”—“The Mad.” So, Mad King Antiochus came to Judea and tried to exterminate the religion of Judaism and its people as punishment for the Jews rebelling against the tyranny of the Greeks. Antiochus first marched to Jerusalem and he had 10,000 of the Jews deported. Countless others were killed before Antiochus committed the unpardonable sin of entering the Holy of Holies in the Temple, a place where only the highest priests could enter. Antiochus then sacked the city & robbed the Temple of all its gold and treasures and decreed that the rebellious Jews must now worship him like a God. Practicing Judaism was forbidden and punishable by death. But, instead of suppressing the Jews, he strengthened them. Instead of abandoning their faith, it was emboldened. They prayed and studied in secret and when the Greek soldiers came upon them, they disguised their meeting as gambling by betting on spinning tops instead of dice. Those tops are today’s Chanukah dreidels.
One Jew, Matthias and his five sons rebelled against this oppression and they led what would become known as the Maccabean revolt. The 3d son, Judah, led the rebellion, becoming known as Judah the Maccabee, Maccabee meaning “hammer.” Maccabee became the name taken on by all who joined the rebellion. The Maccabees were vastly outnumbered by the Greek army, so they conducted a guerilla war against their enemies. And, after 3 years of battles, Judah the Hammer and his forces captured Jerusalem and Judea from the Seleucids. The Maccabees set out to rededicate the Temple, lighting the lamps with the very small amount of oil that was left there as Judah sent out couriers to find more. That little bit of oil lasted for 8 days, which is the Miracle of Chanukah that we celebrate today… by lighting candles for 8 days, and by eating foods fried in oil, like latkes or potato pancakes, or sufganiyot which are fried jelly donuts, and we still bet with chocolate coins as we spin the dreidel and gamble on where it will land.
That, my friends, is the story of Chanukah. A holiday that commemorates a military victory over tyranny. A holiday that pops up every year on who-knows-what-date because the Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar and records dates differently from the Gregorian solar calendar that most everybody else uses. But, because the date almost always falls around Christmas, Chanukah has taken on some of the same trappings of Christmas, with presents and decor and traditional foods, all of which is weird in the historical context because you wouldn’t think of giving gifts on Armistice Day, or D-Day, but, here we are in the 21st century in the grips of predatory capitalism and rampant consumerism. Chag Sameach Chanukah! Or, Joyous Holiday of Chanukah!
Our Gifts to You
Many of us have been disappointed in the mainstream and legacy media lately. Some of us have canceled our subscriptions to The NYT, Washington Post, and even the Tampa Bay Times. Where can we get reliable news and analysis now? Well, I’ve got a Chanukah gift for MidPoint listeners. In addition to the WMNF Newsroom, here is a list of 8 independent sources of news and analysis for independent thinkers–one for every night of Chanukah! They are websites, or newsletters that come via email, Substacks, and even one that comes in your snail mail, and they cover the nation, Florida and the Tampa Bay region. Check them out!
First, for national and international news:
- The Guardian US. British independent journalism. Not owned by a billionaire or shareholders, but like WMNF, it is funded solely by readers
- Heather Cox Richarson’s Letters From an American. A daily recap of the day’s news with its context in U. S. history
- Judd Legum’s Popular Information. An independent accountability newsletter from a progressive perspective.
- Pro Publica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism to spur reforms by spotlighting wrongdoing
For Florida-centric news and analysis:
- Jason Garcia’s Seeking Rents Independent investigative journalism that examines the many ways that businesses influence public policy across Florida.
- Florida Phoenix A nonprofit news site that’s free of advertising and free to readers covering Florida state government and politics
For news of the Tampa Bay region:
- Creative Loafing Tampa Bay With the hollowing out of mainstream local journalism, Creative Loafing has become a leader in independent local news
- LaGaceta. The best $35/year you can spend for keeping up with Tampa political news and gossip. Find it in your snail mailbox every Friday.
If you have a favorite independent news or analysis site I may have missed, send us an email to [email protected].
Listen to the entire show from the MidPoint archives, the app, or our WMNF MidPoint podcast to hear Rande bring us some fun Chanukah music too.
Thanks to Jessica Green for running the board and getting us on the air each week, thanks to Barbara Fling for answering your calls, and most of all, thanks to all of our listeners for your support for MidPoint this year. I’ll be off next week for New Year’s Day, but we’ll be back next year with more ranting and raving about the news and public affairs with a local perspective, and with a definite pro-democracy, anti-fascist bent that we hope will leave you with righteous indignation and a hair-on-fire fever to fight tyranny and autocracy…before it’s too late.
Best wishes and Happy, Merry Chrismukkah!
Shelley
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