It’s Beginning To Feel A Lot Like Chanukah

THE FAILED AMERICAN MELTING POT EXPERIMENT

The story of Chanukah has nothing to do with gifts. It’s the story of the Jewish nation in the land of Israel living at the hands of Macedonian rulers. But unlike other abusers of the Jews, these rulers just wanted the Jews to assimilate. To blend in. To become part of the majority. This essay uses the backdrop of the Chanukah story as a guide for us not using the idea of us all melting into one type to achieve national success Author Jeffrey Kass advocates instead we appreciate and celebrate our own and others’ differences rather than melt them away.

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Since elementary school, we were taught that America was one big melting pot. All one big happy family, with lots of parts, melting into one unit to create the American ideal.

​​It sounded so nice until law school when my classmate Mark, a white kid from Marietta, Ohio, asked me with a straight face why Jews had to be different.

“Why can’t you just be like everyone else?”

The not so funny thing is Mark meant it innocently. He genuinely wanted to know why people like me — Jews — couldn’t just be, think and act like the Marks of…

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