The fascinating contrast between President Obama’s and Sen. Cruz’s Hanukkah (Chanukah) greetings

David Bernstein writes in the Washington Post's Volokh Conspiracy about the contrast in the ways Ted Cruz and Barack Obama wrote about today being the first day of Chanukah:

Obama’s Hanukkah is universalist, about a “struggle for justice.” There is no mention of God. Cruz’s Chanukah (note the less common, but more traditional spelling) is about the Jewish people, with God’s help, winning the right to worship against an oppressive dictatorship.

...The lesson from Obama’s Hanukkah is that Americans should advocate for “the fundamental dignity of every human being.” Jews as such are incidental to the holiday, as is religious freedom. Cruz’s Chanukah lesson is that Jews must be protected from their modern enemies.

...Obama’s Hanukkah teaches the sort of vague, and vaguely agnostic, and universalistic Sunday school platitudes one might find in theologically liberal congregations around the country, that we should “be the engine of the miracles we seek.” And he doesn’t even identify which “people” the Maccabees sought to free from oppression. Cruz’s Chanukah is both a specifically Jewish celebration and a “testament to God’s providence,” to which Cruz, evoking Ronald Reagan, also attributes the wonders of the United States.

Read more here.