Jewish Voice for Peace's Chanukah Judaism sounds...Christian

Chanukah is as Zionist a holiday as one can imagine. 

It celebrates a military victory of Jews against people who were trying to take over their homeland. It celebrates a victory of the few over the many. It celebrates the purification of the holiest Jewish site, the Temple in Jerusalem. It celebrates a miracle of the oil, showing God's involvement in the Jewish story.

It goes against everything the anti-Zionist, secular, socialist, "Jewish" Voice for Peace stands for.

But JVP's entire raison d'etre is to pretend that their brand of anti-Zionist Jew-hatred is actually a part of Judaism itself. So Chanukah is a challenge to them.

They must redefine the holiday itself. And, in so doing, they must redefine Judaism itself as well.

Here's what their Hanukkah page says:

Come celebrate Hanukkah this year building a radical, loving, anti-Zionist Jewish movement for liberation.

Who was liberated in the original Chanukah again? Oh yes,  the people whose descendants JVP wants to exile!

Hanukkah means rededication.

Actually, it means "dedication."  

This Hanukkah Against Apartheid, we rededicate our resolve to be bold and win against all that is life-taking and land-grabbing.

Oh? They are against Hamas, who just murdered a Jew? No, of course not. 

It is said, the Temple was cleaned, sanctified, and rededicated after the Maacabees [sic] won the fight. Here, in diaspora, we can recognize the “Temple” as what we are building together: Judaism beyond Zionism. The Temple is where we practice our treasured values of justice, freedom, and equality; it is this practice that sanctifies the Temple.

JVP's' Temple has been replaced with a new, symbolic "Temple." 

Sounds somewhat familiar.... 

Oh, yes, it sounds like Christian supersessionism! In various flavors of Christianity, the Jewish Temple has been replaced with the Christian people - or with Jesus himself, just like the Jewish people have been replaced with Christians. 

Jewish Voice for Peace cannot stomach an actual Temple being central to Judaism. They take a page from Christianity and replace the Temple that is a central component of Judaism with whatever they consider important - in the process, saying that real Judaism is obsolete and their replacement theology is the real thing.

Similarly, JVP cannot subscribe to real Judaism, because in real Judaism the Temple and Jerusalem as central - and they don't want Jews to have any attachment to those. So they replace them. 

You can call it a replacement theology.

"Jewish" Voice for Peace cannot possibly accept real Judaism. So it has to make up its own religion of anti-Zionism and calls it Judaism. And if that religion borrows some concepts from Christianity, well, why not? That religion was a success!

And then JVP writes something that sounds truly Christian:

Scroll down for JVP and friends’ virtual Hanukkah offerings.

Jews simply don't use the word "offerings" today. 

Christians do it all the time.

There is nothing Jewish about "Jewish Voice for Peace." Their concept of and knowledge of Judaism is not Jewish at all.

I didn't think about this when I made this cartoon, but, wow, it is really true.

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