The latest episode in the Serbian Patriarchate's shameful career of ecumenism consisted of Patriarch Irenej's participating in a Hanukkah celebration at a Belgrade synagogue. These acts of apostasy occur so often now that everyone is used to them; the response of the rank and file members of the official church is “Who cares?” With that fatal “Who cares?” comes the loss of grace and consequent death of the soul through indifference to the Truth of Christ, which is precisely the purpose of the “hierarch's” action.
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What is Hanukkah, and why is it the “anti-Christmas”? This feast of the rabbinic religion celebrates a supposed miracle whose earliest direct reference is to be found not in the Old Testament Books of the Maccabees, as some suppose, but in the anti-Christian Talmud, (Gemara, Tractate Shabbat 21). According to the rabbis, when Judas Maccabeus ordered the Temple re-consecrated after the expulsion of the Hellenistic Seleucid rulers who had profaned it, enough oil was found in the Temple to burn for one day only. Miraculously, however, the oil burned for eight days. Thus the form of the Hannukah candlestick, the menorah, which holds eight lamps, in addition to a ninth from which the eight are lit.
In 2nd Maccabees I:18ff, the miracle associated with the re-dedication of the Temple is not a multiplication of oil but a fire kindled miraculously upon sacrifices which had been purposely doused with water (recalling Elias's miracle upon Mt. Carmel in III Kings 18). The most characteristic ritual of Hanukkah, therefore (and that which Patriarch Irenej performed), is based not on the Old Testament but on the Talmud. To participate in this ritual is to acknowledge the authority of the Talmud, whether someone consciously intends to or not.
This is obviously an act of apostasy. Furthermore, Patriarch Irenej's apostasy is not an isolated fall. In the decades since World War II, the international Zionist lobby, backed by the inexhaustible wealth of international finance, has waged a relentless campaign to force the formerly Christian nations of Europe and North America to remove Christian symbols from the public square at the season of the Nativity and replace them with the menorah. The Zionists have exploited Hanukkah, a heretofore minor Jewish holiday which happened to fall shortly before Christmas, to proclaim their dominance of the formerly Christian nations, prostrate at the feet of all-conquering international finance and the Jewish-dominated media. Patriarch Irenej is merely bringing up the rear of a long and motley parade of apostate Christian civic and religious leaders who have publicly demonstrated their allegiance to fallen Christendom's new masters, by worshiping the Talmudic god in the ritual of the new “Anti-Christmas.”
It is past time for serious Orthodox to recognize that such leaders are no longer Christian in any meaningful sense of the word. Fr. Steven Allen
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