Lighting candles not much bigger than those on a birthday cake, eating jelly donuts and cheese, frying latkes, spinning a top – is that all there is to the holiday that’s fundamentally about Jewish identity?
Chanukah, the
“Festival of Lights,” is a relative latecomer on the Jewish calendrical
scene; it does not appear anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. The holiday
commemorates and celebrates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem
after its recapture from the Syrian Greeks in approximately 164 BCE.
Although Maccabees I and II, books outside the biblical canon, depict
the military victory of the Maccabees (the heroic characters of the
Chanukah story) over their oppressors, the ancient rabbis instead
emphasized the well-known story of the miracle of the oil with its
message of faith, represented in the practice of lighting the Chanukah
menorah, or chanukiah.
As legend has
it, when the Maccabees and their followers regained access to the
Temple and repurified it for ritual use (since it had been serving as a
pagan shrine, complete with pig sacrifices and a statue of Zeus), there
was only enough oil available to keep the Eternal Light, the Ner Tamid, burning for one day. The single cruse miraculously lasted for eight days – the time needed to prepare more.
Was the
miracle that the oil lasted as long as it did, or that the Maccabees
believed, against all odds, that it might? Or is the miracle the fact
that the Maccabees, without distancing themselves completely from their
surrounding culture, were – unlike some of their Jewish brothers and
sisters – able to resist the temptation of assimilation and the forces
of cultural imperialism, asserting the values of Jewish living? By
lighting the chanukiah for eight nights and displaying the lit candles (adding one each night), we are doing what the rabbis called pirsum ha-nes, giving public testimony to the fullness of the Chanukah miracles of faith, perseverance, and the unexpected.
More casual – and caloric – practices also remind us of the miracle of the oil: foods fried in oil, like potato pancakes (latkes in Yiddish, levivot in Hebrew) and jelly donuts (sufganiyot
in Hebrew) are popular Chanukah treats. Among European Jews, it was
customary to give children nuts and raisins, as well as small amounts
of money, to be used in playing a game* with the spinning dreidl. The letters on it stand for the Hebrew words nes gadol hayah sham, a great miracle happened there. In
From the
standpoint of the Jewish calendar, Chanukah is a minor holiday. It
doesn’t derive from the Torah and doesn’t have any of the restrictions
on work and everyday activity applied on the major festivals, the High
Holy days, and Shabbat. Neither does it have any of the special
mealtime blessings. But because of its persistent themes of fighting
against assimilation and preserving Jewish identity (along with its
perhaps-not-entirely-coincidental proximity to the vernal equinox and
Christmas, in
Chanukah’s
eight-day-long observance invites us to mark each night of
candlelighting with different angles on a given theme, invigorating
this familiar observance with renewed meaning. For example, one new
ritual – in imitation of the Sukkot custom of inviting honored “guests”
from our ancient past into the Sukkah – has us focus on different
little-known Jewish women in history on each night of Chanukah. Another
explores the theme of inner healing light – a nice counterpoint to the
outward-oriented light we share with the world as part of our
celebrations.
In the Book of
Judith (also part of the extra-biblical collection known as the
Apocrypha), Judith – another “little-known” female – defeats a tyrant
king by plying him with salty cheese, getting him drunk on the wine
which slakes his thirst, and cutting off his head while he sleeps.
While this story does not take place in Greek Palestine, it may have
originated in that context, and in any case has long been understood by
Jewish tradition in the context of the Maccabean revolt.
Some Sephardic women traditionally gather on the seventh night of Chanukah in celebration of Chag HaBanot,
“the Daughters’ Festival,” to tell Judith's story, eat cheese dishes,
sing, dance, and receive special blessings. Ashkenazi Jews also have a
tradition of telling her story during Chanukah. A wine-and-cheese party
is a fitting way to gather with other women during Chanukah, to learn
about Jewish women’s heroism and to offer blessings both to each other
and in honor of the women in your lives.
* This gambling game descends from a German game in which letters stood for ganz (all), halb (half), shtell ein (put in) and nichts (nothing).
Rabbi Susan Fendrick
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