By Amy Hirshberg Lederman, Special to JTNews
We could have been in Poland or Russia more than a hundred years ago, such were the images and sounds surrounding us. But it was only a few years ago and we were in Jerusalem. A brisk wind blew across our faces as we walked though the crowded streets of Mea Shearim, an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood overflowing with people, noise and religious fervor. Israeli soldiers guarded the entrance to the street, protecting those who lived, prayed and worked there.
We arrived at dusk, just in time to watch the amazing transition from earthly darkness to spiritual light. Fathers, mothers, grandparents, uncles and rows of children stood in full view of kitchen and dining room windows, each person lighting candles on their own hanukkiah (menorah), as is the custom in Ashkenazi families. The street lit up like the Milky Way, hundreds of candles sparkling overhead. My family marveled at the sight.
“It’s like the street is one big birthday cake!” my 10-year-old daughter squealed with delight. Her remark hit me as deeply insightful because Hanukkah, in its truest sense, is a celebration of the re-birth of the Jewish might and spirit.
The story of Hanukkah that I learned as a child is well-known and is often cited as the archetypal example of Jewish resistance against assimilation. In 167 B.C.E., the Syrian King Antiochus desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem with pagan gods and impure animals and attempted to obliterate Jewish rituals like circumcision and Shabbat. Mattathias the High Priest, father of Judah the Maccabee, refused to succumb to Antiochus’ rule and led his five sons and a band of ragtag Jewish farmers into the caves of the Judean desert with the rallying cry of “Whoever is for God, follow me!”
For three years, this small band of Jews fought in fierce guerilla warfare against the well-equipped, well-trained Syrian army. On the 25th of Kislev, the Maccabees succeeded in restoring the sanctity of the Holy Temple and rededicated it to God. We learn from the letters on the dreidel that “A Great Miracle Happened There” when a miniscule amount of oil lasted for eight days until more could be found to keep the Temple’s sacred menorah lit.
But there is a story within this story that is not as well known. For while Hanukkah is the only important festival in the Jewish calendar not mentioned anywhere in the Hebrew Bible, it is also one of the few festivals for which definitive historical records exist.
Within 25 years of the rededication of the Holy Temple, the First Book of Maccabees was written. It chronicled the actual events from eyewitness accounts and historical records of the period. The book depicts the Maccabees’ accomplishments in religious and nationalistic terms.
They fought for God so that they could carry out His plan for a just world. It is a story of might and power, of the rebirth of Jewish ritual and observance through the physical efforts of the Jewish people.
But here’s where an interesting bit of historical revisionism occurs. Approximately 400 years later, when the Talmudic rabbis described the holiday of Hanukkah, they never mentioned the valiant struggle or even the word Maccabee. Rather, they emphasized God’s saving spirit and highlighted the story about the single cruse of oil miraculously burning for eight days. Why?
The rabbis were no dummies. Their interpretation was both diplomatic and politically savvy. By the time they wrote the Talmud, the Hasmonean dynasty (direct descendants of the Maccabees) had been discredited as a group of corrupt Jewish rulers. The rabbis didn’t want to associate Hanukkah with a victory that led to the rise of a degenerate Jewish dynasty.
They also feared raising a red flag in the face of the Roman empire by emphasizing how the Jews overcame oppressive foreign rule. So they shifted the significance of Hanukkah from the physical to the spiritual by emphasizing the spirit of the holiday with the miracle of the oil.
This dual interpretation of Hanukkah represents the two essential approaches to the survival of Judaism and the Jewish people — the physical and the spiritual. It also helps us understand the wisdom of our sages when they counseled: “Pray as if everything depends upon God, but act as if everything depends upon you.”