JERUSALEM, Israel — Amichai Chikli, Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, informed Breitbart News on Sunday that Jews around the globe ought to place their menorah lamps proudly outdoors their properties this Hanukkah vacation.
“On this Chanukah, particularly, put your chanukiyah (menorah) outside. Let the world see your chanukiyah. Spread the light.”
Hanukkah (alternatively, Chanukah) celebrates the victory of Jewish rebels in opposition to the ruling Syrian Greeks, who had tried to stamp out the observe of Judaism within the second century B.C. Tradition holds that when the Jewish fighters, the Maccabees, re-entered the Holy Temple, they found solely sufficient pure oil to mild the menorah or candelabra for one night time, however it lasted for eight nights. In commemoration of that miracle, Jews mild candles on a menorah for eight nights and place it in a window.
This yr, the pageant begins on the night of December 7, with the lighting of the primary candle, and lasts by December 15.
In intervals of persecution, it’s permissible to position the menorah within the inside of the home. But Chikli mentioned that the very best response to the worldwide wave of antisemitism was to take pride in being Jewish, and in supporting the state of Israel, regardless of the hate.
Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli, in his workplace in Jerusalem, Israel, November 19, 2023 (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
“The core of Judeo-Christian values as a whole, and Judaism specifically, is the idea … [that] truth is one. We may not posses it, but truth is one. And because truth is one, there is light and there is darkness. There is good and bad.” That, he mentioned, was at stake within the battle with Hamas, which “touches the magma” of the spiritual battle between the “green and red alliance” of radical Islam and Marxism on the one hand, and the free world and Judeo-Christian world, on the opposite.
The former was “godless,” he mentioned, regardless of the pretensions of Hamas, ISIS, and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Chikli identified that Arab international locations just like the United Arab Emirates had not adopted that path, and that Hamas had didn’t radicalize Arabs inside Israel, who had been really among the many victims of the October 7 assault.
But the hazard was that the West — and particularly the elite tutorial establishments that had been speculated to transmit its values — had forgotten the core values of reality and enlightenment. He famous the numerous Ivy League establishments — Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, to call just a few — that had as soon as cited Biblical notions of sunshine and reality of their mottos, however which had deserted these values.
“Critical Theory, intersectionality, relative truth … brought the world to [the] collapse of moral compass of western civilization.”
Chikli, 42, is the son of a French immigrant to Israel, whose family had fled persecution in Tunisia. He mirrored on the October 7 terror assault, and informed Breitbart News that he nonetheless felt safer in Israel, regardless of the continuing hazard of the battle, and the chance that it might develop past Gaza within the south to Lebanon within the north.
“I am ok with being unsafe, as long as I can hold a weapon and fight,” he mentioned.
Around the world, he mentioned, it was safer for Jews to hitch the struggle in opposition to antisemitism somewhat than making an attempt to cover from it.
He added: “To win, the most crucial element is to make sure we train the young generation to become proud Jews, to become proud Zionists — to believe in the core idea of Judaism, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ … And we can start in Chanukah, learning about the Maccabees, and their battles against the godless philosophy of their time.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the writer of the brand new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He can also be the writer of the current e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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