There's More Than One Way to Understand Hanukkah

Hanukkah is around the corner.  Though the holiday recalls events that happened thousands of years ago, Hanukkah feels incredibly relevant to the issues with which we struggle today.  What does it mean to be a Jew today?  How do my actions reflect my Jewish identity?  How do I maintain a Jewish identity as I interact with the outside world?  What are our communities’ boundaries?  Our tradition has things to say about Jewish identity; about knowing who you are, about showing this identity as we interact with the broader culture..  I offer two different perspective on the Hanukkah story which shed a bit of light (no pun intended) on the questions above.  (You can find a synopsis of the story at the end of this missive).

Perspective 1:  God Is With Us, Now Let’s Eat!

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, in the city of Jerusalem, the bad Greeks controlled the Jewish Temple.  But after a miraculous victory, the good Jewish Maccabees took it back.  But when they went inside to relight the golden menorah, instead they found only enough oil for one night.  That the menorah stayed alit while new oil was brought was a sure sign that the that God dwelled with the Jews.  Simple narrative of good over evil, with the lesson that by staying true to our Jewish identity, we will be victorious, and God is with us.   They tried to wipe us out, they failed, now let’s eat~!  This is the Hallmark movie/Sunday School version of the holiday.  There is not much here that challenges us as Jews of modernity to consider what it personally means to be Jewish today.

Perspective 2:  Jewish Civil War

When read with a focus on why the Maccabees revolted against the Greeks, Hanukkah is a tale of more traditional Jews rebelling against the Greek aligned Jews who oversaw the Temple sacrifices. These Jews had acculturated into Greek society, were not descendants of Aaron’s priestly line, and were willing to adapt their religious practice to the times and Greek society. The story is really one of Jewish civil war over what it meant to be Jewish.

Where do we as Jews of the 21st century fit into the story?

Hanukkah isn’t just a celebration of the past.  It is meant to illuminate our present, and so, I ask you, where do we fit into this story?  Are we the zealous Maccabees fighting to protect Jewish law and traditional Temple life, or are we part of the Jewish population trying to balance involvement in the broader culture with Jewish tradition? 

Struggles with Jewish identity are nothing new.  Am I a Jewish American or an American Jew?  How do we take the best of the majority culture and blend it with Jewish life while maintaining an authentic and meaningful Jewish identity?  Look at the hanukkiot that you have in your homes.  Today we have Hanukkah menorahs shaped like trees, like the wailing wall… my kids even had a menorasaurus shaped like a dinosaur, and I have one that looks like a bicycle.  

As we think about the message of Hanukkah and where we fit within the spectrum of Jewish identity and practice, from zealousness to Hellenism, from rigidity to acculturation to assimilation, let us be inspired by Ephraim and Menasseh, the sons of Joseph, who knew who they were, even as they were raised in Egypt as part of the elite. Joseph has risen to become Pharoah’s second in command and became fully integrated into Egyptian culture.  He was given an Egyptian name and married the daughter of Poti-phera, a priest of On.   Together they had two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim who grew up in Egypt, but were raised to know they were Jewish and to value that identity.  Today we when we bless our children on Shabbat evening, we bless them in the name of Ephraim and Manasseh, that our children too will remain faithful to Jewish ideas and values.

May the lights of the Hanukkah menorah warm your homes and remind you of who you are, that we stand proud and strong as a people, and may these lights guide our way as we go forward beyond the boundaries of our Jewish community. 

Rabbi Jamie

Synopsis of the Story

Found in the Book of Maccabees, the Hanukkah story begins in 168 BCE when the ruler of the Syrian kingdom, Antiochus Epiphanes IV, stepped up his campaign to quash Judaism, so that all subjects in his vast empire — which included the Land of Israel — would share the same culture and worship the same gods.  He marched into Jerusalem, vandalized the Temple, erected an idol on the altar, and desecrated its holiness. Decreeing that studying Torah, observing the Sabbath, and circumcising Jewish boys were punishable by death, he sent Syrian overseers and soldiers to villages throughout Judea to enforce the edicts and force Jews to engage in idol worship.  When the Syrian soldiers reached Modi’in near Jerusalem, they demanded that the local leader, Mattathias the Kohein, the priest, be an example to his people by sacrificing a pig on a portable pagan altar. Mattathias refused and killed not only the Jew who stepped forward to do the Syrian’s bidding, but also the king’s representative.  With the rallying cry “Whoever is for God, follow me!” Mattathias and his five sons fled to the hills of the Judean wilderness.  Joined others like them the Maccabees, as they came to be known, fought a guerrilla war against the well-trained, well-equipped Syrian army. In three years, the Maccabees cleared the way back to the Temple Mount, which they reclaimed. They cleaned the Temple and three held a dedication (hanukkah) of the Temple with proper sacrifice, rekindling of the golden menorah, and eight days of celebration and praise to God.

Later, in the centuries following the destruction of the 2nd Temple, the rabbis of the Talmud recast the Hanukkah story to match the image of small group of zealous Jews, ready to martyr themselves. They emphasized God's intervention on behalf of the Jews who'd been forced by the Greek Syrian King, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, to publicly to violate Jewish law.