There Is a Global Loss of Faith In the Lies. And Nature Abhors a Vacuum. So…

How Elite Institutions Lost Their Legitimacy

Arnold Kling talks to Martin Gurri about how social media has accelerated the erosion of public trust in elite institutions

Martin Gurri doesn’t like to make predictions. But if you were lucky enough to read his groundbreaking 2014 book, The Revolt of the Public, when it was first published, you’d have an excellent guide for understanding much of what subsequently happened in the United States and around the world. Gurri’s thesis—that information technology, particularly social media, has helped to dramatically widen the distance between ordinary people and elites—has proven invaluable in explaining not only the election of Donald Trump, but other recent populist events around the globe.

Arnold Kling was one of the first people to see the importance of Gurri’s book. He’s also written his own influential contribution to our understanding of recent social and political trends. In 2013’s The Three Languages of Politics, Kling shows how three different political tribes in the US—liberals, conservatives and libertarians—have been speaking past each other, rather than to each other, helping to increase political polarization.

On Jan. 31, Kling sat down with Gurri at the Mercatus Center to discuss the latter’s views on the push and pull between the public and elites, focusing on three institutions: the academy, journalism and politics.

Gurri, who is a visiting research fellow at the Mercatus Center, worked for many years as a media analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. He currently writes a monthly column for the Mercatus Center’s online magazine, The Bridge. Kling, who is a senior affiliated scholar at Mercatus, is a housing economist who has worked both at Freddie Mac and for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In addition to The Three Languages of Politics, Kling has authored a number of other volumes, including Specialization and Trade, and is a regular contributor to The Bridge.

This transcript, as well as the audio of the conversation between Kling and Gurri, has been slightly edited for clarity.

ARNOLD KLING: We have a bunch of things in common. Some of them quite random, but one of them is that each of us put an e-book out that we self-published, and each book was kind of ahead of its time. Mine was called The Three Languages of Politics, and I put it out in 2013, and it eventually got picked up by Cato and there’s now a print edition. And that talked about the psychology of political tribalism, and now everyone’s into that. I just noticed that Ezra Klein’s latest book is on that topic. I was on a panel a few weeks ago with Jonathan Rauch, and he spoke first and he said everything you need to say about political psychology, and I said, whoa, what am I going to say after that?

And Martin’s book, he put it out in 2014, right? It was The Revolt of the Public, and that’s about the restlessness of people worldwide. Now I think everyone has noticed that it’s happening in more than one country, these populist revolts. So we kind of have that in common. Anyway, Yuval’s book is about institutions and the decline in institutions. He starts out with every institution has seen this decline in trust, based on polling data. That there has been an information revolution. Am I right that you measured it somehow? At some year there was so much information available, and then in that year it basically doubled?

MARTIN GURRI: Some scholars said U Berkeley tried to measure the total amount of information in the world. This is the year 2003 or something. They came up with—and they measured it in various different ways, in bits—the fact that in the year 2001 information was produced at a volume that was double that of all previous history going back to the cave paintings and the beginning of culture. All right. 2002 doubled 2001. That has more or less been maintained. If you chart it, it looks like a stupendous wave. So you’ll hear me talking about an information tsunami. That’s only partly a metaphor. When you chart it out, it really kind of looks like this enormous wave of information that has crashed on the institutions and is not a revolution, but a turbulence, I would call it.

KLING: Two to the 10th is 1,024. I figured that out before I came here. So that means if there was this much information in 2000, there was 1,000 times in 2010 and a million times that today. I have a different water metaphor—a tsunami. Sort of imagine in 2000 information was the Mississippi River. You knew where it was coming from, you know where it’s going, stays at the same level. And now you’re in the middle of an Atlantic storm, waves coming from different directions, 30 feet high. You have these boats that were built for the Mississippi River, and they find themselves in this storm, and that’s kind of where we are. But that’s not the only aspect of it. I would say the distribution of who has the most information has changed, right?

GURRI: Right, this enormous upswing of information comes from below. Information always used to come from above. And our institutions—political institutions, businesses, the media—were used to a world in which their little cone of information was pretty much controlled by them. I mean, there was some leakage back and forth, but pretty much controlled by them. So they controlled the story that they wanted told. In this Atlantic storm that we’re in, or a tsunami, basically, that’s no longer possible.

And a lot of the legitimacy and almost all of the authority that these institutions had in the 20th century has been swept away. Basically, every error, every lie, every confusion, every silly statement, everything that you said today that wasn’t like what you said two years ago, the kinds of things that in the 20th century was kind of papered over because we tell the story the way that makes us look better, all of that is out there now. And it has completely eroded trust in our political institutions, including democracy.

KLING: So let’s start with journalism. When we were growing up, if it was me against the New York Times, the New York Times had reporters in the field, photographers in the field, wire service subscriptions, access to government officials, probably better access to academics. Now we can both look at Google and see kind of the same thing.

GURRI: Well, illustration: The New York Times in a very strange kind of… roll the drums, please… the winner is type of endorsement of the Democratic field, came up with two, somehow—[Elizabeth] Warren and [Amy] Klobuchar—and it was “yawn.” Nobody cared, right?

Joe Rogan, totally unaffiliated podcaster whose audience dwarfs not only the New York Times by many, many factors, but any newscaster on television, endorses Bernie Sanders, and it’s controversy for a week, right? It’s people yelling… That mattered. New York Times, nobody cared. It’s a changed world.

Continue reading…

From Discourse Magazine, here.

מי שאמר לשמן שידלק יאמר לחומץ שידלק

איתי עמרן בשיר חדש על רבי חנינא בן דוסא: “פעם אחת”

איתי עמרן שר את השיר הזה בביצוע ספונטני שהפך כה מהר לוויראלי ברשת – שהוא מיהר להקליט אותו ולהוציא אותו באופן רשמי. האזינו

מוזיקה יהודית | ד’ אלול התש”פ | 
אא

    מילות השיר:

    פעם אחת בערב שבת אל ביתו נכנס

    חנינא בן דוסא צדיק גדול ממש

    ראה את ביתו היחידה יושבת ובוכה

    איך אפשר להיות עצוב בשבת מנוחה

    מה קרה ביתי יקרה למה את לא שמחה

    אמרה הדלקתי חומץ במקום שמן ומה יהיה איתך

    איך תלמד ללא אורה וכל דברי תורה

    אמר לה תאמיני במי שהכל ברא

    מי שאמר לשמן שידלק יאמר לחומץ שידלק

    מה קרה בסוף הסיפור אף אחד לא ראה

    אמרו שיום אחד גדלה אותה השאלה

    איפה שהייתה אמרה לו אין עוד מלבדך

    כל חייה רק הלכה בשביל האמונה.

    מאתר הידברות, כאן.

    Eretz Yisroel Is a Real Place and People Really Live There (For Keeps)!

    Elisha Bruck, Ramat Beit Shemesh Gimmel

    I grew up in Boro Park and learned in local mosdos. I went to Chasam Sofer for high school, and for beis medrash I attended the Yeshiva of South Fallsburg where I learned by Rav Elya Ber Wachtfogel shlita. I then came to Eretz Yisroel to learn in the Mir yeshivah, where I was in Rav Asher Arieli shlita’s chaburah for a zman, and then in Rav Gershon Meltzer shlita’s daf chaburah.

    Growing up in Boro Park, I felt that I was living in the most Jewish environment possible. With round-the-clock minyanim, shteeblach on every corner, and no goy living within the radius of a good few blocks, nothing was missing. I recall buying my daled minim on erev Sukkos on 13th Avenue, and thinking that the only thing that can compare with this bustling encounter with Jews is Shalosh Regalim in the times of the Beis HaMikdash.

    My first deep encounter with the topic of Eretz Yisroel was when I was in tenth grade. One day on my way to yeshivah, I saw a huge poster with a picture of someone who looked like he was beaten up at a hafganah (protest) in Eretz Yisroel. The poster invited people to a hafganah taking place later that day in front of the Israeli consulate in Manhattan. That afternoon I found myself on the ‘F’ train with a few friends, heading to the city to join the hafganah. (Isn’t being mekadesh Shem Shomayim in Manhattan more important than English class…?!)

    We got off the train stop in Manhattan and walked the few blocks until we reached the protest. It was a very big macha’ah (protest), much larger than what we had expected, allegedly against police brutality – but it turned out to be a more general anti-Zionist protest. This got me thinking – which side do I really want to be shouting on? What are they really shouting about? Maybe there’s more to the topic than readily seen.

    The entire way home I was thinking, was the protest a good thing or not? What does it have to do with Eretz Yisroel?

    A short time later, my older brother came home from learning in Yeshivas Mir in Yerushalayim; I asked him about the subject. He referred me to seforim which dealt with the current significance of Eretz Yisroel – from Eim HaBanim Semeicha of Rav Yissachar Teichtal ztz”l, Hy”d, to Vayoel Moshe of the Satmar Rebbe ztz”l, and everything in between. I came to realize that yishuv Eretz Yisroel is not just a minhag or inyan. It is a real and relevant mitzvah which should be fulfilled if possible.

    The more I delved into the sugya, the more I realized that I wasn’t making any startling discoveries people never knew about; I learned that in every generation many Gedolim actually made the journey and settled in Eretz Yisroel, or at least attempted to.

    It was when I came to learn in the Mir and was exposed first hand to life here in Eretz Yisroel that I really decided that I wanted to live here. I saw how for many people, living here in Eretz Yisroel is a reality.

    Looking back, I recall thinking that if so many people have successfully moved here and made Eretz Yisroel their home, then it’s doable; living in Eretz Yisroel is something that could be done.

    When I would discuss this topic of living here in Eretz Yisroel with people back in America, they would tell me it just can’t be done. They would tell me that housing is unaffordable, mortgage rates are not good, you can’t get a good job here, the government makes it hard to live here, and other such assertions. When I would tell them that I see many Americans living in Eretz Yisroel, they would say, “Yes, you can live there for a year or so, but long term? It’s not practical; it just doesn’t work.”

    There seemed to be a bit of a disconnect or a misunderstanding, because all around me I was seeing people who were actually living here – going to work at jobs they had, sending kids to school, taking out mortgages and buying homes, and otherwise doing all the things people do.

    Of course, things here aren’t the same as in America – the language, the culture, housing, cars and many other things are unique to Eretz Yisroel. But life itself is pretty much the same – people get up in the morning, go to kollel or to work, drive cars, send kids to school, go shopping, and lead normal and productive lives.

    I definitely had my challenges integrating. Learning how others coped didn’t really help me, as everyone has their own unique set of challenges. But I did see how everyone managed in their own way and that over time things did tend to improve – I realized that I too could be successful here.

    It may take some time and effort to settle in – in fact, it definitely will – but it can be done. That’s the message I’ve been getting from the reality on the ground here, and that’s the message I want to pass on to you.

    B’Hatzlachah!

    On the Same List

    One thing that gave me chizuk and helped me pull through some challenging times is what Chazal say (Berachos 3) about Eretz Yisroel: Along with Torah and Olam Haba, it’s one of the three gifts HaShem has given us which are acquired through yissurim.

    In the realm of limud haTorah, when times got rough and the learning became challenging, I knew that I just had to persevere and go on learning. Although it might have been hard at the time, it was worth the price, and as time went on it got better and easier. Same with nisyonos. They can be hard, challenging and frustrating, but we know that that is the nature of nisyonos, and that Olam Haba doesn’t come without overcoming hardships. Eretz Yisroel is no different; it’s on the same list. It is acquired through yissurim, but, just as in the case of Torah and Olam Haba, it can be acquired with time and it is worth every bit of effort.

    This article is part of our Haaretz Hatovah series featuring Yidden living in, settling, and building up Eretz Yisroel. For more information please contact us at info@naavakodesh.org or visit naavakodesh.org/haaretz-hatovah

    Republished with permission from Yated Ne’eman.

    From Matzav, here.

    Gresham’s Law Is Not What They Say It Is

    What Is Money? Part 7: Gresham’s Law

    “Bad money drives out good money.” This aphorism has been known as Gresham’s Law for almost 500 years. Sir Thomas Gresham never said it exactly like this. The statement is wrong in its familiar form.

    Bad money does not drive out good money in a free market. The free market rewards producers of customer-satisfying products and services. Good money drives out bad money on a free market. The definition of bad money is money that the free market refuses to use. Gresham’s law, as stated, is incorrect. The opposite is true.

    A correct version of Gresham’s Law is this:

    “In an economy with a government-legislated fixed price between two currency units, the artificially overvalued currency drives out of circulation the artificially undervalued currency.”

    This does not have quite the same ring to it as the more familiar version.

    ONE MORE ROTTEN PRICE CONTROL

    Gresham’s Law is simply an application of the economic analysis of price controls to monetary units. There is nothing complicated about it.

    From the early days of the republic, the United States government legislated a price control between gold and silver. At the time the law was first passed, gold was worth 15 times as much as silver was. The ratio of 15 to 1 became law.

    In 1848, there was a huge gold discovery in California. For discussion’s sake, let us say that the price of gold in silver on the free market subsequently fell to 10 to 1. But the government’s law still holds. Banks are required to pay 15 ounces of silver to anyone who brings in an ounce of gold and asks for silver.

    Let us say that you were there. You get a bright idea. You go to the bank with two ounces of gold. You demand 30 ounces of silver. Then you take your 30 ounces of silver and buy three ounces of gold. Where? Across the border in Canada or Mexico. (OK, it was a long ride on horseback. Maybe there were banking trading ships just off San Francisco.) You then take your three ounces of gold to the bank and demand 45 ounces of silver. You repeat the procedure until the bank has no more silver to sell at the price of 15 to one.

    Of course, you would do this with ten times as much gold. Your competitors, currency speculators, would buy a thousand times as much gold. We call this “economies of scale.” Sorry, Charlie.

    The artificially overvalued currency (gold) remains in circulation. “One ounce of gold is worth 15 ounces of silver. The government says so.” The artificially undervalued currency (silver) disappears. “One ounce of gold is worth 10 ounces of silver. The free market says so.” So, people start buying 15 ounces of silver with an ounce of gold in the government-rigged market in order to buy an ounce and a half of gold with silver in the free market.

    Meanwhile, anyone in the know who receives a silver coin in exchange sets aside the coin. Silver coins go out of circulation. Mexico and Canada wind up with America’s silver coins. The U.S.A. winds up with gold coins.

    Trade between Canada and the U.S.A. then falls. So does trade with Mexico. The foreigners don’t want to accept gold from Americans at the fixed rate of 15 to one, since it is worth only 10 to one. Signs go up: “For sale to Americans: for silver only.” But Americans cannot get their hands on much silver; it has already been transferred to Canada and Mexico, or it is in coin hoards in Americans’ homes. So, Americans cannot buy goods from Canada and Mexico.

    Throughout American history, right up until gold was declared illegal in 1933, either gold coins or silver coins were driven out of circulation at any government-mandated price. The 15-to-one price was used for decades. This system was called bimetallism. It did not work. It was monometallism operationally.

    This is another case of the economics of price controls. The process is not limited to money. If the government says it is illegal to sell gasoline above $4.00 a gallon in order to avoid a fine for price gouging in a time of crisis, and the free market price is $5.00 a gallon, expect to spend lots of time in gas lines.

    This happened in Nashville and Atlanta in September of 2008. People could not buy gasoline. The pumps were dry. When a gasoline truck drove into town, it was soon followed by a line of cars, rather like a mother duck and her ducklings. Drivers did not know where the truck was heading. They followed it, so they could line up as soon as it unloaded its cargo.

    FLOATING EXCHANGE RATES

    Let us assume that Congress passes a new law. The exchange rate between gold and silver is no longer fixed by the government. People can buy and sell gold for whatever price they can get.

    Nobody is sure what the gold/silver ratio will be after the law is passed. But speculators expect gold’s price to fall toward ten ounces of silver — the free market’s price.

    As soon as speculators think that this new law will pass, they start selling gold — “Get rid of it; it’s overvalued” — and start buying silver. They know that gold will not be artificially overvalued much longer. Better to start buying silver in Canada and Mexico and hold it across the border until the law passes. It will not take long for the new ratio to be established. At that time, gold and silver coins will circulate side by side in the United States. The government does not set a price. There is neither overvaluation by law — fiat valuation — nor undervaluation. Supply and demand jointly establish the exchange rate, moment by moment. No problem. No glut of gold coins. No shortage of silver coins.

    If both gold and silver coins are called dollars, these dollars will buy varying quantities of goods and services, moment to moment. A gold dollar is not worth what a silver dollar is.

    Back in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a debate between those who advocated fixed exchange rates for the currency market — the Bretton Woods system — and those who advocated floating exchange rates. Milton Friedman was the best-known advocate of floating rates, meaning market-established rates. Friedman always had the advantage conceptually. He stood for free-market pricing. The fixed-rate people were in favor of price controls. They never used that language, however. Had they been forthright in this regard, they would have lost the debate much earlier in free-market circles.

    The debate ended after December 1973. That was a year and a half after Nixon took the country off the international gold-exchange standard, i.e., the Bretton Woods agreement. From late 1973 on, the dollar has floated. Defenders of the old fixed-rate system are few and far between.

    The fixed-rate system was a Keynesian-like imitation of the international gold standard. It began in 1922. Prior to World War I, when a nation’s currency was defined as a specific quantity and fineness of gold, and when the central bank or treasury redeemed gold on demand, there were fixed exchange rates between gold-backed currencies. The free market adjusted the rates. Because the exchange was in fact gold for gold, ounce for ounce, the currency exchange rates remained fixed. These rates were definitional. They were rates of exchange between quantities of gold.

    It is 1875. A British citizen walks into an American store in New York City. He sees something for sale for an ounce of gold. He hands the store owner four British gold sovereigns. He walks out with the item. Some critic might exclaim: “But the sovereigns have a dead king’s face on it. This face is not like the goddess of liberty, whose face is on a $20 gold piece.” “His money’s good in this store,” declares the owner.

    The money was good because it was gold. The pictures on the coins were irrelevant to the store owner. He did not honor any British king. He also did not worship a goddess. He just wanted the gold. Dollars. Pounds. Who cares? He wanted the gold.

    The modern gold-exchange standard (1922—1971) was a statist imitation of the gold coin standard. The rates of currency exchange were set by governments and their agencies. The currencies were no longer redeemable in gold after World War I broke out in 1914. The Bretton Woods system of 1944 extended this system. The results were predictable: foreign currency shortages, then announced devaluations by governments, which in turn forced operational revaluations of the other currencies in relation to the devalued currency.

    Price controls do not produce markets that balance supply and demand. Price controls are a government’s assault on free-market pricing. They create gluts (overvalued item) and shortages (undervalued item). This does not change merely because the items are called national currency units.

    The problem with floating exchange rates is not floating exchange rates. It is the lack of any fixed exchange rate between a nation’s currency and gold.

    The modern floating exchange rate system is comparable to floating exchanges between the currency units of two rival gangs of counterfeiters. By “comparable” I mean “identical.” There are still a few defenders of fixed exchange rates who decry floating exchanges between currencies because the system leads to monetary inflation. The problem is not the floating exchange rate system. The problem is the counterfeiting.

    Milton Friedman was not wrong for his defense of floating exchange rates and a system of free market currency speculation. He was wrong because he was a defender of government counterfeiting. He attacked the gold coin standard. So do his followers. He thought that a hypothetical system of automatic, fixed-rate monetary expansion was preferable to a gold standard. But there is only one way to get the central bank counterfeiters to pick a monetary expansion figure and stick to it. That way is called the full gold coin standard.

    GOLD, PAPER, AND THE GUN

    There were two gold standards: the gold coin standard and the gold exchange standard. To understand the two gold standard systems, think of paper money, gold coins, and a gun. The government holds the gun.

    In a gold coin standard, a bank issues paper money: banknotes. A banknote is a legal IOU. Each piece of paper promises to deliver an ounce of gold upon presentation of the paper. Think of the paper as pre-1933. The paper says $20. It promises one ounce of gold.

    The government holds the gun. It is pointed at the banker. “Fail to deliver an ounce of gold for each $20 warehouse receipt, and you go to jail.”

    This analysis also applies to checking deposits. But it is easier to imagine when we talk about bank notes. They are IOUs.

    In a free banking system, the government does not check to see if a bank has enough gold to meet all demands. In a 100% reserve system, it would. In a free banking system, rival banks and a bank’s depositors serve as the executioners. Ludwig von Mises favored free banking. Murray Rothbard favored 100% reserves.

    Step two: the issuing bank is the central bank. Does the government hold a gun on the central bankers? In theory, yes. In practice, it depends on how dependant the government is on loans from the central bank.

    After World War I broke out, every European government except the Swiss holstered its gun. The commercial banks were allowed not to redeem gold on demand.

    Then, within weeks, there was a new rule. The central banks demanded the gold held by commercial banks. Each government unholstered its gun. “Fork over the gold,” they said.

    In the gold exchange standard, central banks and governments held British and American debt certificates instead of gold. The British and the American governments promised to redeem their debts in gold on demand. The British went back on the gold standard in 1925, but at the pre-War rate of exchange. It had to shrink the money supply. This reversed the boom. Then they inflated. Gold began flowing out to the United States. The head of the Bank of England persuaded the head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Benjamin Strong, to inflate the dollar, in order to take pressure off the Bank of England’s gold outflow. The NY FED did as Strong asked. This inflation was the origin of the U.S. stock market bubble. The FED reversed course in 1929, the year after Strong’s death. That caused the crash.

    In 1931, Great Britain went off the domestic gold coin standard. It continued to redeem gold for other central banks. The U.S.A. followed this lead in 1933.

    Busby Berkeley unknowingly launched a fond farewell to the gold coin standard in “Gold Diggers of 1933.” That was the first and last time any movie chorus line was decked out in Liberty head $20 gold pieces. Ginger Rogers sang “We’re in the money!” (http://tinyurl.com/ylekr7e) That same year, Roosevelt pointed the gun at every American and every resident in the United States. “Turn in your gold.” The next year, the government hiked the dollar-gold exchange rate of gold to $35 per ounce. It let the Federal Reserve System issue currency against this gold.

    In 1971, Nixon took the nation off the gold-exchange standard. Not a shot was fired.

    Conclusion: civil government points its gun at private citizens. It does not point it at itself. Cleavon Little’s scene as the sheriff in “Blazing Saddles,” where he points his gun at his own head, threatening violence, was good for laughs. It was not good political theory.

    CONCLUSION

    Gresham’s Law, properly understood, is a real phenomenon. When a government threatens violence against currency traders for daring to make an exchange at a rate not mandated by the government, there will be a glut of the overpriced currency and a shortage of the underpriced currency in that jurisdiction. The result will be decreased trade across borders. There will be shortages of goods on both sides of the border. Most people’s wealth will decline as a direct result of reduced trade.

    Gresham’s Law for centuries was observed in action, but it was not analyzed in terms of the economics of price controls. This was true in the pre-Nixon era. The discussion of fixed exchange rates by those favoring fixed rates was never discussed in terms of the controls’ legal status as price controls, any more than a tariff is ever discussed by its proponents as a sales tax on imported goods and, necessarily, as an export restriction. The problem with people’s incomplete understanding of Gresham’s law is that they treat money as arising from government rather than from the free market. They imagine that there is a failure of the free market: “Bad money drives out good money.” There is no failure of the free market. There is a failure of a government-imposed price control. People see government as sovereign over money. It is not. Here is why bad money drives out good money: a bad law forces people into capital-defense mode.

    October 17, 2009

    From LRC, here.

    We Need a Second Maccabean Revolt…

    Down With Chanukah 1972

    Rabbi Meir Kahane Writings (5732-33) (1971-73)

    Written December 15, 1972

    If I were a Reform rabbi; if I were a leader of the Establishment whose money and prestige have succeeded in capturing for him the leadership and voice of American Jewry; if I were one of the members of the Israeli Government’s ruling group; if I were an enlightened sophisticated, modern Jewish intellectual, I would climb the barricades and join in battle against the most dangerous of all Jewish holidays – Chanukah.

    It is a measure of the total ignorance of the world Jewish community that there is no holiday that is more universally celebrated than the “Feast of Lights”, and it is an equal measure of the intellectual dishonesty and of Jewish leadership that it plays along with the lie.  For if ever there was a holiday that stands for everything that the mass of world Jewry and their leadership has rejected – it is this one.  If one would find an event that is truly rooted in everything that Jews of our times and their leaders have rejected and, indeed, attacked – it is this one.  If there is any holiday that is more “unJewish” in the sense of our modern beliefs and practices – I do not know of it.

    The Chanukah that has erupted unto the world Jewish scene in all its childishness, asininity, shallowness, ignorance and fraud – is not the Chanukah of reality.  The Chanukah that came into vogue because of Jewish parents – in their vapidness – needed something to counteract Christmas; that exploded in a show of “we-can-have-lights-just-as-our-goyish-neighbors” and in an effort to reward our spoiled children with eight gifts instead of the poor Christian one; the Chanukah that the Temple, under its captive rabbi, turned into a school pageant so that the beaming parents might think that the Religious School is really successful instead of the tragic joke and waste that it really is; the Chanukah that speaks of Jewish Patrick Henrys giving-me-liberty-or death and the pictures of Maccabees as great liberal saviors who fought so that the kibbutzim might continue to be free to preach their Marx and eat their ham, that the split-level dwellers of suburbia might be allowed to violate their Sabbath in perfect freedom and the Reform and Conservative Temples continue the fight for civil rights for Blacks, Puerto Ricans and Jane Fonda, is not remotely connected with reality.

    This is NOT the Chanukah of our ancestors, of the generations of Jews of Eastern Europe and Yemen and Morocco and the crusades and Spain and Babylon.  It is surely not the Chanukah for which the Maccabees themselves died.  Truly, could those whom we honor so munificently, return and see what Chanukah has become, they might very well begin a second Maccabean revolt.  For the life that we Jews lead today was the very cause, the REAL reason for the revolt of the Jews “in those days in our times.”

    What happened in that era more than 2000 years ago?  What led a handful of Jews to rise up in violence against the enemy?  And precisely who WAS the enemy?  What were they fighting FOR and who were they fighting AGAINST?

    For years, the people of Judea had been the vassals of Greece.  True independence as a state had been unknown for all those decades and, yet, the Jews did not rise up in revolt.  It was only when the Greek policy shifted from mere political control to one that attempted to suppress the Jewish religion that the revolt erupted in all its bloodiness.  It was not mere liberty that led to the Maccabean uprising that we so passionately applaud.  What we are really cheering is a brave group of Jews who fought and plunged Judea into a bloodbath for the right to observe the Sabbath, to follow the laws of kashruth, to obey the laws of the Torah.  IN A WORD EVERYTHING ABOUT CHANUKAH THAT WE COMMEMORATE AND TEACH OUR CHILDREN TO COMMEMORATE ARE THINGS WE CONSIDER TO BE OUTMODED, MEDIEVAL AND CHILDISH!

    At best, then, those who fought and died for Chanukah were naïve and obscurantist.  Had we lived in those days we would certainly not have done what they did for everyone knows that the laws of the Torah are not really Divine but only the products of evolution and men (do not the Reform, Reconstructionist and large parts of the Conservative movements write this daily?)  Surely we would not have fought for that which we violate every day of our lives!  No, at best Chanukah emerges as a needless holiday if not a foolish one.  Poor Hannah and her seven children; poor Mattathias and Judah; poor well meaning chaps all but hopelessly backward and utterly unnecessary sacrifices.

    But there is more.  Not only is Chanukah really a foolish and unnecessary holiday, it is also one that is dangerously fanatical and illiberal. The first act of rebellion, the first enemy who fell at the hands of the brave Jewish heroes whom our delightful children portray so cleverly in their Sunday and religious school pageants, was NOT a Greek.  He was a Jew.

    When the enemy sent its troops into the town of Modin to set up an idol and demand its worship, it was a Jew who decided to exercise his freedom of pagan worship and who approached the altar to worship Zeus (after all, what business was it of anyone what this fellow worshipped?)  And it was this Jew, this apostate, this religious traitor who was struck down by the brave, glorious, courageous (are these not the words all our Sunday schools use to describe him?) Mattathias, as he shouted: “Whoever is for G-d, follow me!”

    What have we here?  What kind of religious intolerance and bigotry?  What kind of a man is this for the anti-religious of Hashomer Hatzair, the graceful temples of suburbia, the sophisticated intellectuals, the liberal open-minded Jews and all the drones who have wearied us unto death with the concept of Judaism as a humanistic, open-minded, undogmatic, liberal, universalistic (if not Marxist) religion, to honor?  What kind of nationalism is this for David-Ben-Gurion (he who rejects the Galut and speaks of the proud, free Jew of ancient Judea and Israel)?

    And to crush us even more (we who know that Judaism is a faith of peace which deplores violence), what kind of Jews were those who reacted to oppression with FORCE?  Surely we who so properly have deplored Jewish violence as fascistic, immoral and (above all!) UN-JEWISH, stand in horror as we contemplate Jews who declined to picket the Syrian Greeks to death and who rejected quiet diplomacy for the sword, spear and arrow (had there been bombs in those days, who can tell what they might have done?) and “descended to the level of evil,” thus rejecting the ethical and moral concepts of Judaism.

    Is this the kind of a holiday we wish to propagate?  Are these the kinds of men we want our moral and humanistic children to honor?  Is this the kind of Judaism that we wish to observe and pass on to our children?

    Where shall we find the man of courage, the one voice, in the wilderness to cry out against Chanukah and the Judaism that it represents-the Judaism of our grandparents and ancestors?  Where shall we find the man of honesty and integrity to attack the Judaism of Medievalism and outdated foolishness; the Judaism of bigotry that strikes down Jews who refuse to observe the law; the Judaism of violence that calls for Jewish force and might against the enemy?  When shall we find the courage to proudly eat our Chinese food and violate our Sabbaths and reject all the separateness, nationalism and religious maximalism that Chanukah so ignobly represents?  …Down with Chanukah!  It is a regressive holiday that merely symbolizes the Judaism that always was; the Judaism that was handed down to us from Sinai; the Judaism that made our ancestors ready to give their lives for the L-rd; the Judaism that young people instinctively know is true and great and real.  Such Judaism is dangerous for us and our leaders.  We must do all in our power to bury it.

    From Barbara Ginsberg, here.