Reality-Style Hanukkah: A Lesson For Us All -- Tonight

David Brooks, in his perspective piece for the New York Times this week, offers an unflinching look at the historical realities of what is celebrated (beginning tonight) in countless communities around the globe, as Hanukkah. It is an excellent read -- and winds up, thus:

. . . .But there is no erasing the complex ironies of the events, the way progress, heroism and brutality weave through all sides. The Maccabees heroically preserved the Jewish faith. But there is no honest way to tell their story as a self-congratulatory morality tale. The lesson of Hanukkah is that even the struggles that saved a people are dappled with tragic irony, complexity and unattractive choices. . . .

At the risk of trivializing Mr. Brooks' sublime message -- and this, the collective high season of various ponderable faiths -- I'll note that almost all of his object lesson (in no small part because he has so gracefully-articulated it) applies with great force to life, today -- tonight: to the current debate over US health care reform, to the efforts to reform the financial-regulatory system, and to the debate over Afganistan/Iraq disengagement, and timelines for the same. Do light an oil lamp, and take heed -- go read it all.

Well-done, Mr. Brooks!