Ma Hamatzav? (Was' Up?)

Truthfully, I hate what’s been done to Hanukkah. It’s been usurped by Christmas – meaning Americanized, materialized, demoralized! Hanukkah is really a universal event – the first recorded war over religious persecution where the persecuted won. That whole 8 day thing with the oil – total mishagas. The rabbis decided (some 300 years later) that they didn’t want us celebrating a military victory and they wanted more God in the story. The real miracle was that a rag tag bunch of Jews said ‘enough’ and ‘we’re not going to assimilate.’ They used gorilla warfare (maybe the first time in history?) and won. The Temple was still destroyed, but they maintained their right to be Jews. That’s good enough for me.

Sarah Silverman’s Give the Jew Girl Toys