Hanukkah: Five things to know
Did you know there is no correct way to spell “Hanukkah”? Check out these five facts about the festival of lights.
On streets where Jews live around the world, there is a display in windows or on doorsteps that is at once familiar and glorious. It is the Hanukkah menorah, celebrating a holiday that began at sundown Thursday. The root of the word "menorah" is "shine" — and menorahs do this for all to see.
Everything about the Hanukkah menorah is interesting, meaningful and instructive.
First, a brief historical overview. In 167 B.C., King Antiochus IV — the most powerful ruler in the Middle East — conquered Jerusalem. Allied with Jews who had been charmed by Greek ideas and turned against their faith, Antiochus commanded idol worship and the profaning of the Sabbath and feasts. The king also ordered an altar to Zeus erected in the holy Jewish Temple, banned circumcision, and required pigs and other non-kosher animals to be sacrificed on the altar of the Temple.
A year later, a tiny Jewish force from Modi’in (near Jerusalem) decided to revolt. The stakes could not have been higher.
If this group of Jews had lost their battle — as by every objective analysis they should have — Judaism, Jews and Jewish ideas, along with every other group and system in the Bible, would have been wiped out. This includes the idea of monotheism — which is the root of universal morality, inalienable rights, human equality and the concept that all interpersonal conduct is of the utmost importance.
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The small Jewish group — later known as the Maccabees — achieved a stunning military victory several years later and recaptured and rededicated the Temple. In the process of cleaning the Temple, the Jews found a small amount of oil that was expected to light the Temple for a day. It did so for eight days.
We celebrate the rededication of the Temple on Hanukkah and commemorate it with the eight-candled menorah. We place the menorah on our doorstep or in the window in accordance with the ancient instruction to "advertise the miracle."
Two questions immediately arise.
First, why "advertise the miracle?” When we celebrate the miracle of the Exodus from Egypt on Passover, we do so in the privacy of our homes. We eat apples and honey on Rosh Hashana, we wear costumes on Purim, and we light candles to welcome every Shabbat. None of these carry anything like a command to broadly showcase what we are doing.
By "advertising the miracle," we are making several statements simultaneously. We are asserting the pride and joy that we have in being Jewish.
The Greeks were neither the first nor the last people to seek to extinguish Judaism. The result of these attempts? The lights we are lighting, celebrating and sharing tell the story. A miracle — from God's enabling us to breathe to liberating us from Egypt, and the countless others that define and enrich our lives — is something that should be appreciated, understood and shared with others.
Even more fundamentally: What is the miracle? The conventional thinking is that the miracle is that the oil, which was intended to last for one day, lasted for eight. But every Jew had a mother or grandmother who could make a little oil last for a long time.
Extending the use of a vial of oil does not seem on par with the great biblical miracles we celebrate — from God's liberating us from Egypt to giving us the Torah at Mount Sinai. Moreover, the lasting oil was not even mentioned in the early celebrations of Hanukkah.
Another possibility is the celebration of the military victory over the Greeks. However, Jews do not celebrate military victories. The modern state of Israel has had military victories as unlikely and miraculous as those of the Maccabees — and yet there are no celebrations or memorials like those in almost every other country.
Israel's founding father David Ben-Gurion said: "Not with stones and trees will we inculcate the memory of the heroes, but with feelings of admiration and pride that will prevail in the heart of the nation together."
So, what is the miracle? There are several possibilities, each of which can be true.
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One miracle is that we are still considering what the miracle is. Almost all ancient events are, of course, long lost to history. The ability to continually derive new truths and profound meaning from this event, in conjunction with fellow seekers from diverse places and different backgrounds, is a miracle —and, as with the acknowledgment of all miracles, a cause for gratitude.
And there is another miracle that would have been just as apparent to the Maccabees.
Imagine if a couple of Maccabees emerged in contemporary New York, Melbourne or Jerusalem. They would surely say: All of the other ancient peoples of the Bible — from the Hittites to the Jebusites to the ancient Egyptians — they are long gone. We kept Judaism going against long odds. But the odds against the survival of Judaism, given all that has happened since, just kept getting longer. For your children, so joyously and confidently, lighting a menorah now —- that is the miracle!
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And how might we reply to them? We might tell the Maccabees the story of Hugo Gryn. Gryn was a teenager in Auschwitz when his father took their tiny ration of margarine and used it to make Hanukkah candles. Hugo asked his father why he was doing so, given that they were starving. His father explained: “We have learned that we can live three days without water. We can live three weeks without food. But we cannot live three minutes without hope.”
This lesson from the Maccabees — to always see that the world, with our effort, can be improved no matter what the challenges — has been the source of Jewish hope. It is this lesson we relearn each Hanukkah, teach our children anew as they light each candle and proclaim to all those who see our advertising the miracle.
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