Hanukkah and Religous Tolerance

The Christmas season is an expression of ancient late year seasonal celebrations that in various cases also had religious aspects.  In fact, Hanukkah too appears to have some relation to late year Jewish harvest festivals as seen by one of the biblical references.  The reference there to an earlier festival that now has a new or additional meaning has shades of how a pagan holiday later developed into Christmas.  Hanukkah, which we are in the midst of, is not as central to Judaism as the birth of Jesus, but there is a possible overlap in that sense.

A basic message of the Hanukkah story (a familiar one -- see Passover, Purim and probably others) is a celebratory survival story of the Jews fighting back against those who wish to block their religious practices or very survival.  As I suggested in my earlier analysis, the background history was complicated.  In general, and a pagan king earlier was given the name "messiah" in recognition of the fact, there was a Persian and Greek respect for local religious practice.  In fact, part of the problem here were that certain traditionalists opposed Jews adapting Greek ways.  Temporal political disputes did from my understanding of things lead to some violation of basic policy here and this affected the Maccabees revolt.

Hanukkah can be seen as honoring religious liberty. Ironically, one Christmas display case involved a creche display and then another display that some Jews (there was a split of opinion) saw as an honorable way to recognize religious diversity.  The majority basically upheld the menorah as either the least non-religious way to honor the secular aspects of the holiday (four justices deemed both the creche and menorah as acceptable holiday symbols) or to promote religious diversity without advancing religion itself.  The opinion of the court noted a creche and a menorah alone might be problematic.  Thus, a cross -- as it was here -- need not be seen as necessary to provide "equal time" to a menorah standing alone.* 

The respect for religious liberty, even with respect to internal groups who might be deemed a threat, an "other" from dominant religious majorities, remains a concern. Today, it is the Muslims who are seen as threats, Trump's words reflecting a troubling zeitgeist, even if they are deemed too far for polite conversation even by Cheney et. al.  U.S. history has been unpleasantly consistent in being concerned with various groups, various races and ideologies (such as anarchists) included.  See further citations by me in remarks here, including blocking those with certain types of Mormon beliefs. As some flag, targeting certain religions raises Establishment Clause problems -- there might have been some general "plenary" control of aliens here, but where is there an "alien exception" to the First Amendment? Bringing in new members, so to speak, advances one religion over another too.  The same applies to other constitutional provisions.

Bad policy need not be unconstitutional but selective concern here for Muslims, not some neutral ground (contrary to the idea we are at way with "Islam," a religion of over 1.5 billion people, the groups should not be used to defame a broad faith any more than those who use "Christianity" to spread hate), to me does seem to be constitutionally problematic. Simply put, there is a dispute on the question. What else is new?  Appeals to history as usual only go so far, history including some bad things.  If history be our guide, the respect of religious differences is the one I would use.  Religion will be used by certain dangerous groups ("zealots" a term in the Bible) but misguided lashing back is far from productive.  Tolerance might be a bit miraculous, but such is the holiday.

---

* Listening to various religious display Supreme Court cases again, one thing that stands out is the argument the symbols here are "passive" and therefore acceptable unless (the apple is bit) they are very blatant like a gigantic permanent cross on the top of City Hall.  But, putting aside the question of degree there between a temporary creche and a permanent cross, the symbol rarely just sits there. There is some ceremony and reaction to it involving the government.  And, such a symbol has meaning to the community. Flying a flag has meaning too, it is not merely a "passive" symbol  one can just ignore.  Competing views here on just how to respect such symbols add to the often divided nature of these disputes.