If they were alive to see it today, the Maccabees would hate the way American Jews celebrate Chanukah. For the Hasmoneans (the dynasty the Maccabees founded), the central conflict of their time was the struggle between Jewish tradition and Greek Hellenism, which sought to impose its way of life. To see the 21st-century imagination of Chanukah as a Hallmark holiday, full of decorated “bushes” and gift giving and Christmas parallels, would boil their blood. After all, what Target sells as authentic Chanukah is, in fact, an attempt to reframe Judaism in the light of a more agreeable, more digestible form of “other” within American culture, often including matzah and New Year’s cards for reasons that defy any authentic explanation.
In her own way, writer Sarah Hurwitz confronts these ideas of assimilation and cultural imposition in her latest book, As A Jew: Reclaiming Our Story From Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us. Her previous book, Here All Along, was a detailed exploration of her recommitment to Judaism in the wake of a challenging life transition in her 30s; it focused on how the Judaism she had been given failed to reveal the true grandeur of her heritage. After falling back in love with the tradition of her people, Hurwitz now focuses on how the public narrative about Judaism further obscures and decontextualizes what it means to bring this ancient faith into our daily lives. As Hurwitz puts it, “I soon realized that there was nothing freely chosen about my former Jewish identity. It was, in many ways, the product of two thousand years of antisemitism and two hundred years of efforts by Jews to erase parts of ourselves and our tradition in the hopes of being accepted and safe. My Jewish identity back then was not empowering. It was humiliating.” The result is a detailed exploration of what it means to return to the roots of tradition and better understand the Judaism our ancestors crafted, rather than the one history has forced us to adopt to get along with those around us.
In one slim volume, Hurwitz is able to accomplish more insight into Judaism for the average reader than any rabbi could ever articulate; she comes from a place of having seen Judaism at its least accessible and demanding to navigate to a place where it can be its most beautiful, most authentic self. Rather than sounding like a preacher pushing their individual agenda, Hurwitz writes with the kind of fury that can only come from feeling robbed of one’s own ability to parse their identity, and the parallel conviction of taking ownership of what Judaism can be.
One passage in particular articulates the profundity of what Judaism can be if we allow it to work its magic within its own context. Hurwitz describes her interaction with an Orthodox rabbi who also reinvested as an adult. She writes, “One day, he told me that before he became observant, he was often bored. Once he engaged deeply with Judaism, however, he found that there was always something new to learn, always another level deeper he could go. ‘When I found Judaism,’ he said, ‘I was never bored again.’” At a time when our attention is constantly being pulled in a thousand directions, Hurwitz is able to use this story and so many others to articulate the life-fulfilling impact of investing in Jewish learning and practice, and the power of being able to say that, however you experience the world, there is a way that Judaism can make it more impactful, more substantive. Put another way, if the Judaism you’ve experienced so far hasn’t impacted you as you hoped, there are plenty more ways to engage that will almost certainly fit your needs better, if only you are willing to continue to look.
Austin Zoot is the Rabbi Educator at Valley Temple in Wyoming, Ohio.
