Recent Maccabees

My personal heroes have always been examples of courage against great odds.The season of Hanukkah always amplifies this theme for me with its focus on the victorious rebellion against the greatest power on earth started by a retirement-age old man with almost no resources in a backwater town of no consequence.Certainly for me as a Messianic Jew, the example of our  Messiah, Yeshua of Nazareth, during the 1st century is the most extreme example imaginable of a person committed to truth giving himself entirely to the demands of truth – even to what Lincoln later called "the last full measure of devotion" – one's own life. This Yeshua did on behalf of people who needed what He had to give, and could never, ever have achieved on their own. Messiah helped the helpless.So did a French Jewish writer by the name of Emile Zola.I recently read an article by a law professor in the South. It was about Zola - one of many of my personal heroes. Zola's choice to put his own and his entire family's well-being in danger to stand up for the rights of one wrongfully oppressed man being destroyed by the abuse of power in the highest echelons of the French government resulted in what is considered by many the greatest newspaper article of all time.Zola's masterpiece was entitled, "J'Accuse" (I Accuse). In it, he publicly stated that the honor of the entire nation was being desecrated by a group of high governmental officials who, while having power, lacked integrity. These men were willing to harm and destroy innocent people to cover up for wrongdoings by one of their close-associates.  Zola put into print their names and deeds, and did so knowing full well he was going to incur their wrath and endure their retaliations. Thomas Jefferson said a century before Zola: "We must not be afraid to follow the truth, wherever it leads." Zola lived out this precept as a shining and recent example of the kind of courage we celebrate at Hanukkah.I post Georgia law professor Donald Wilkes' summary of Zola's efforts in the Dreyfus Affair here, and invite you to go to the URL and read it. Sometimes ancient stories like those of the Maccabees or Yeshua the Messiah can seem distant and hard to apply to our present lives. We can feel relieved of intense feelings of obligation to the standards they raise because of that distance. Not so with Emile Zola, who lived so very recently.Below the article link, I have posted an afterword in which I point out what I believe is a fact of interest to all who hold the Two Testament faith and Jewish perpetuity dear. http://www.lawsch.uga.edu/academics/profiles/dwilkes_more/his9_jaccuse.htmlWhat Dreyfus in his suffering and Zola in his championing could not have realized was that embedded in their struggle was the moment the rebirth of the State of Israel was ignited. These two Jewish men, one by refusing to knuckle under to high governmental pressure to make a false confession of guilt, and one by standing up against that government with no resources but what he knew to be true and his own pen - these two inspired a third, entirely disinterested and assimilated young Jewish man from Vienna by the name of Theodore Herzl. Young Herzl came to understand the Jewish cause needed him, and his deeds, and his pen. The year after Herzl witnessed the Dreyfus Trial - Herzl's "Der Judenstaat" (The Jewish State) was published. The modern Zionist movement was born.Three "small" Jewish men - and one injustice done by mighty officials to an insignificant middle rank military man: about which the wronged parties refused to remain silent, and about which they understood the honor and moral health of the entire nation hung in the balance. The right reaction to this moral moment changed the world. Literally, changed the world.This kind of clarity and this kind of courage have always been the greatest inspiration to me.As Hanukkah draws near, and the example of Mattithias and the HaShemim of Modi'in again calls to us, I am again inspired by Zola's more recent example.We sing at this time, "In every age a hero or sage comes to our aid." I do not want my shul to be a group that celebrates courage it does not have, and throws parties for dead heroes with integrity they do not share.I want my shul to be a hatchery for heroes. I want our community life to inspire others to stand where stands should and must be taken, and follow the truth wherever it leads.I want to share my remaining years with people who actually believe and practice those precepts. I want to devote all that remains of my strength and my time to encouraging people actually to live those ideals, not merely talk about them. The world in general, and the Messianic Jewish movement in specific, are in genuinely dire need of them. It is one thing to build up turf - it is quite another to build up righteousness. Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, "One may smile and smile and be a villain." Similarly, one may pray and sing and have long "devotions" – and still be an evildoer or a coward. Scripture teaches us both wind up in the same poorly air-conditioned location for eternity - no matter how long their "devotions" or prayer times may be.Spirituality is not measured for eternity in how much quasi-religious activity we ape, so much as how much truth we follow and courage we show when the chips are truly down. This is why the Matt. 25 portrait of eternity shows "believers" saying all the right things and quoting their "religious resumes" being dragged into Hell, while people who do not even recognize the Messiah nor appear even to know his Name are being brought into heaven. Their deeds across time have showed what they truly believe ... not what allegedly "religious" behaviors they mimic.As I said above, stories like the Maccabees, so ancient in origin, can seem distant - and their models hard to apply. That is why this Hanukkah, I preached to my shul by sharing Zola's story. Zola is a modern Mattityahu of Modi'in. A man who raised a rebellion against an unrighteous government, and brought down a wrongful, fascistic abusive power by simple courage and clear statements of truth from which he could not be separated by bullying, political maneuvering, or terrible hardship. All this for a man he did not know, and who had no "political" value to him at all. Even so in antiquity, Mattityahu gave up his "retirement," died a soldier, and bequeathed his sons and friends a battle against the largest power on earth. Both Mattityahu and Zola died before their days of victory arrived - and both men's courageous stance resulted in victory for their followers.Emil Zola lived so recently that we have his photograph - and those of the innocent man he saved and the young genius he inspired.We have, accurately in Zola's own words, the reason he risked all to save an innocent man he did not know: "The action I am taking is no more than a radical measure to hasten the explosion of truth and justice. I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul. Let them dare, then, to bring me before a court of law and let the enquiry take place in broad daylight!" — Émile Zola, "J'accuse!" 1898I pray my synagogue becomes a hatchery for heroes. May it be Heaven's will that a future Zola is found to have been in some measure inspired or enabled by what our congregation in Manhattan has done. One Zola changed a nation. A community-full would forever change the landscape of  the entire religious world. "Y'hi ratzon." May it be Heaven's will for our age as well.Hag Sameakh.22 December 2008 © Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen