Let's make Chanukah more meaningful by making it all about global warming

When we last met Rabbi Arthur Waskow, he was explaining the wisdom of CAIR's refusal to condemn Hamas and Hizbullah. Here he explains how to throw away that boring business with Maccabees and oil and light and make the holiday all about "global scorching" (It can't be called "warming" because that sounds "so pleasant, so comforting"). No, this isn't a joke:

There are three levels of wisdom through which Chanukah invites us to address the planetary dangers of the global climate crisis -- what some of us call "global scorching" because "warming" seems so pleasant, so comforting.

We can encode these three teachings into actions we take to heal the Earth each of the eight days.

1. The Talmud's legend that for the Maccabees to rededicate the Temple desecrated by the Seleucid Empire, it took only one day’s oil to meet eight days' needs: a reminder that if we have the courage to change our lifestyles to conserve energy, it will sustain us.

2. The vision of the Prophet Zechariah, whose visionary passages are read on Shabbat Chanukah, that the Temple Menorah was itself a living being, uniting the world of "nature" and "humanity" -- for it was not only fashioned by human hands in the shape of a Tree of Light, as Torah teaches, but was flanked by two olive trees that fed olive oil directly into it. What better symbol of how intertwined we are with the wounded earth that sustains us?

3. The memory that a community of "the powerless" led by people as determined as the Maccabees can overcome a great empire, giving us courage to face our modern corporate empires of Oil and Coal when they defile our most sacred Temple: Earth itself. [...]

I'll spare you the eight-day program.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Tags: Chanukah, Judaism, nonsense