What is Chanukah?

“A great miracle happened for me on Chanukah.”

“What about me, Shmuel? Wasn’t I also a part of the miracle?”

“That’s how it is, Ignatz, my friend: a miracle for me, but not for you.”

“That’s always the way with you Jews from the old House of Study: you impose your Judaism on us, the practitioners of a contemporary Judaism, as if Judaism belongs to you and you hold the monopoly on it.”

“What you just said, Ignatz, has nothing to do with the story that I began to tell you and is really not relevant. You are now a welcome guest, invited to play cards and to eat the Chanukah feast with the rest of our esteemed friends. Nevertheless, since you have begun arguing with me and, as the others have not yet arrived, I will not hold back.

“It’s true that all kinds of Jews, whether Orthodox or enlightened, new as well as old, are Jews. I, for example, who from my youth have grown up in God’s tent—in the study rooms of traditional teachers and in yeshivas—I am a Jew. And you too, who from your youth grew up in their secular schools, are a Jew. But there is a great difference between you and me. I, and all those like me whose Torah is in their innards and whose Judaism is in their very bones, detect a special flavor in the words and practices of Judaism, whether we understand them or not. This is true even when we stray and deny God’s existence, God forbid. Neither you,...