To the editor: I hardly ever agree with contributing author Josh Hammer’s op-eds. That stated, I agree with him about cultural assimilation (“The true lesson of the Hanukkah story,” Dec. 19).
The USA is a tradition of immigrants bringing vestiges of their cultural origins with them as they reinvent themselves. No person already within the U.S. ought to attempt to make them cease celebrating these origins, utilizing their first languages or waving their homeland flags. They’ve an ideal proper to take care of their tradition.
After all, dwelling of their new properties would require that they study concerning the traditions, language and flag that have been created by those that got here earlier than. And they’re going to study, to higher and lesser levels, as they really feel the necessity. These trying to bleach the tradition out of immigrants at this time are the up to date model of the Seleucid Empire Hammer speaks of, which tried to drive the Jews to assimilate within the Hanukkah story.
This vacation, because the op-ed factors out, is an ideal reminder for us all to rejoice the particular variety of the U.S. and to look at how all of our variations make us stronger collectively.
David Gene Echt, Torrance
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To the editor: Hammer says, “The Maccabees had nationwide and civilizational delight, and it was due to that delight that they fought so valiantly and refused to bend the knee to Hellenistic assimilation.”
The analogue of that assertion to our present occasions and malaise couldn’t be clearer. Do we have now the nationwide and civilizational delight to battle again in opposition to the destruction of our constitutional democracy, or are we now so weak and disinterested that we are going to undergo our personal demise?
It’s the query of the yr. Thanks, Hammer, for posing it so clearly.
William Noble, Santa Monica
