Professor William Kolbrener is professor of English Literature at Bar Ilan University in Israel. He writes on Judaism and Jewish identity, and has written several books, among them, Open Minded Torah: Of Irony, Fundamentalism and Love and The Last Rabbi: Joseph Soloveitchik and Talmudic Tradition.
On Hanukkah, we proclaim our difference with special enthusiasm, refusing a ‘woke’ form of universalism which does not allow for Jewish distinctiveness.