What the Dec. 13 Associated Press “explainer” in the Gazette forgot, or left out or felt it worth only a one line mention, about Hanukkah:
The holiday is about the victory of a small force of determined people, led by Judah Maccabee, ‘radicals’ who challenged the forces of the Syrian-Greek empire of the autocratic tyrant Antiochus for religious freedom, and through guerilla war and relentless courage, defeated the army, reclaiming and rededicating the Temple in Jerusalem and the right to worship, and speak, as they themselves chose. Hanukkah celebrates perhaps the first No Kings day.
It is about the hope that we can share as U.S. Americans that now in our darkest political age we can throw off the would-be tyranny of the present administration, and keep the flames of U.S. American freedoms burning brightly: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
Matt Levin
Hatfield