By Larry Domnitch, Special to JTNews
What are Jews celebrating on Hanukkah?
Is it about the wars the victory of the few over the many? The amazing Maccabean victories over Greek armies were battles in a drawn-out conflict that would last for decades after the Hanukkah saga. There would be future defeats as well.
Perhaps Jews are celebrating their freedom from oppressive rule. Yet freedom was only temporary, as the Jews would eventually face persecution under Antiochuss successor.
Maybe it was the rededication of the Temple of Jerusalem that Jews celebrate. However, the Temple was eventually destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E.
In the days of antiquity, following the conquest of the world by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.E., each nation had accepted each others deities and morals as prescribed by the universal creed of the day, Hellenism. However, the Jews clung tenaciously to their Torah and were the exception to the universal global trend. Their unique practices were largely tolerated for the next 150 years, until Antiochus Epiphanes IV became emperor.
Antiochus, with the encouragement of Jewish adherents to Hellenism, embarked upon a policy of forcing that universal ideology upon the Jews. Jewish rites were prohibited and idolatry practices were mandated. Those in violation were severely punished.
If the Jews simply acquiesced, and abandoned their heritage, they could have spared themselves much suffering. Most, however, chose a different path: that of defiance. Some ran and hid in the hills, others in the corners of their homes, and they continued to keep their traditions.
The Talmud mentions some who defied authority. Channah and her sons, who with their mothers support refused to bow to the emperor, resulting in their own deaths. The elderly sage Elazar who, in front of a large audience, refused to partake of a food that merely resembled pig, and as a result was executed. His parting words were, I will leave an example of strength to die willingly with courage for the perfect and holy Torah.
This was not the response that Antiochus had expected.
Resistance to religious persecution is central to the theme of Hanukkah. When Roman armies first entered Jerusalem in 63 B.C.E., Jews were ready to die rather than participate in a pagan rite when ordered to do so by the Roman general Pompey. A precedent was set for future generations of Jews who would look to the example of those Jews.
Ten years later, when the Roman Emperor Caligula demanded that Jews act as all peoples and worship his image, Jews again were ready to defy the emperor, regardless of the consequences.
Over 150 years later, when the Roman emperor Hadrian sought to turn Jerusalem into a pagan colony, again the Jews resisted. But this time they organized a full-scale revolt under the leadership of Simon Bar Kochba against the mighty Roman Empire.
During Christian rule for over 1,500 years, Jews endured all forms of persecution from blood libel accusations, to inquisitions, to massacres. As during the times of the Maccabees, they resisted but could have been spared the endless suffering if they capitulated to Christian demands.
In Islamic countries over the centuries, Jews chose to live humiliated as an underclass of Dhimmis, often persecuted, but willingly accepted their predicament rather then submit to conversion.
The examples are far too numerous to count. Two thousand years of history is replete with sacrifice and martyrdom.
The notion of self-sacrifice has been glorified in Jewish history. Rabbi Akivas defiance of the Roman Emperor Hadrians bans against Torah study and his martyrdom is one example. During the era of inquisitional rule the author of the Code of Jewish Law, Rabbi Joseph Karo spoke of martyrdom as the most sanctified of acts.
Under Czar Nicholas I of Russia, when tens of thousands of young Jewish recruits in the czars army faced enormous pressure, including torture, to accept baptism, their brave resistance prompted the Lubuvicher rebbe of the time, the Tzemach Tzedek, to compare their suffering to that of the Jews under the rule of Antiochus. The Tzemach Tzedek considered these boys known as Cantonists to be the greatest heroes among the Jews.
Yet why rejoice if so much of Hanukkah and its legacy are linked to suffering and persecution? Perhaps Hanukkah should be a gloomy and depressing holiday? What is celebrated is the fact that the sacrifices by so many during the time of the Maccabees and over the millennia as well, were not in vain. By acknowledging their sacrifices and that there are things worth sacrificing for, we are celebrating life, and the endurance of the Jews as a people.
There are special messages to glean from Hanukkah in our own times.
Within the confines of free and open societies, Hanukkah is also a most appropriate time to ask what being a Jew means and how we can use the freedom we are blessed with to perpetuate that eternal legacy.
Larry Domnitch is the author of The Cantonists: The Jewish Childrens Army of the Tsar, recently released by Devora Publishing.