Have A Hellenistic Green Chanukah - The Environmentalist War on Judaism
There's a pattern to be left's takeover of religion, it usually begins by writing G-d out of the equation and replacing him with paens to social activism. Environmentally motivated warnings about resource consumption, animal welfare and global warming are the next wave of liberal social activism and religion is ground zero for their targeted subversion.
Examples include the recent movie Evan Almighty which coordinated with liberal churches in America and the UK to promote an ecology centered vision of Noah and the flood and now inspired by Jimmy Carter turning off the White House Christmas Tree, comes the Green Chanukah which is to be celebrated by lighting one Chanukah candle less.
The Greek Chanukah, oh I'm sorry Green Chanukah, the confusion is natural since Chanukah is the story of how secular Hellenistic values took over the Temple and parts of the Jewish people. The Green Chanukah is about secular environmentalist political activism taking over a religious holiday and subverting its message.
Environmentalism serves as its own theology, coming packaged with a vision of a careless and arrogant humanity consuming the planet and its resources and having to learn to put nature first. The Greeks put their faith in Science, in being able to take apart the world and understand its natural laws. Under those laws, a greater army will defeat a weaker one and oil can only burn for a limited time.
Chanukah is the demonstration that in the end it is G-d who rules the world and who determines the outcome of events as great as the winners of battles and as small as how long a flash of oil can burn. Chanukah is not about the conservation of resources, it is about the recognition that all resources ultimately come from G-d.
Judaism does not believe in the God of Natural Law who is bounded by his own creations but in a G-d for whom natural law is a procedure and not a limitation. Environmentalism and a Greek Chanukah is about guilt and fear, about teaching children that the food they eat, the cars their parents drive and the heat that keeps them warm at night are crimes against nature and the starving people of the world.
In place of sacrifices to G-d, environmentalism enacts sacrifices to nature, "giving up things" to somehow make the world better. The candle taken away from Chanukah is a sacrifice as well, a sacrifice to the green, to the supremacy of nature, a fundamentally pagan act. Where Chanukah sanctified the light of the flame, Green Chanukah, like some sort of Bizarro version of Chanukah, seeks to extinguish it. A true Hellenistic take on Chanukah.
It is no surprise then that Green Chanukah comes from Non-Rabbi Arthur Waskow, a left wing activist with a long history of trying to pass off political activism, like the Freedom Seder, as religious ritual. Far left wing, Anti-America and Anti-Israel and associated with the Jewish Renewal movement which is code for aging hippies meditating, smoking pot and calling it religious enlightenment, Waskow is the perfect foil for the environmental movement's war on Judaism.
From Hechsher Tzedek to EcoKashrus to Green Chanukah, the environmental movement seeks to subvert Judaism and replace it with environmentalist dogma. Some elements of Judaism like Kosher are openly attacked while others like Chanukah are reinterpreted with the end result being something that uses Jewish terms but has no more connection to Judaism than Messianic Judaism does.
Chanukah is about the celebration of G-d in our lives and the power of faith to change the world. Green Chanukah is about a Godless vision of a world on the edge of destruction that can only be saved through ritual sacrifices of electricity and consumption that have absolutely no meaning on a global scale but serve to entangle those practicing them in the environmentalist belief system.
Happy Chanukah, the old blue and white kind.