Letters to the Editor: The Hanukkah story reminds us to celebrate cultural diversity

To the editor: I rarely agree with contributing writer Josh Hammer’s op-eds. That said, I agree with him about cultural assimilation (“The real lesson of the Hanukkah story,” Dec. 19).

The United States is a culture of immigrants bringing vestiges of their cultural origins with them as they reinvent themselves. Nobody already in the U.S. should try to make them stop celebrating those origins, using their first languages or waving their homeland flags. They have a perfect right to maintain their culture.

Of course, living in their new homes will require that they learn about the traditions, language and flag that were created by those who came before. And they will learn, to greater and lesser degrees, as they feel the need. Those attempting to bleach the culture out of immigrants today are the contemporary version of the Seleucid Empire Hammer speaks of, which attempted to force the Jews to assimilate in the Hanukkah story.

This holiday, as the op-ed points out, is a perfect reminder for us all to celebrate the special diversity of the U.S. and to observe how all of our differences make us stronger together.

David Gene Echt, Torrance

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To the editor: Hammer says, “The Maccabees had national and civilizational pride, and it was because of that pride that they fought so valiantly and refused to bend the knee to Hellenistic assimilation.”

The analogue of that statement to our current times and malaise couldn’t be clearer. Do we have the national and civilizational pride to fight back against the destruction of our constitutional democracy, or are we now so weak and disinterested that we will submit to our own demise?

It is the question of the year. Thank you, Hammer, for posing it so clearly.

William Noble, Santa Monica