To the editor:
The Jewish winter holiday of Hanukkah — “Chanukah” ― celebrates the 164 BC triumph of Israel’s Jewish rebels (called the “Maccabees”) against the foreign Greco/Syrian tyrant, Antiochus.
“Chanukah” means “renewal/dedication.” The holiday’s name refers to the cleansing of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem that the overthrown King Antiochus had defiled during his program to forcibly replace Judaism with Hellenist ideology.
My Hebrew school teacher in the mid-1950s explained Chanukah to us kids by comparing Antiochus with Communist Russia. He said that both Communist Russia and Nazi Germany wanted to be rid of Jews.
He said the Nazis wanted to get rid of Jews by attacking their bodies and killing them off, whereas the Communists wanted to destroy them by attacking their Jewish souls by starving them spiritually, blocking their Jewish education, Jewish observances, and brainwashing them into being so totally assimilated and absorbed into Communist culture that every trace of their Jewish existence would finally be washed away.
The Chanukah story and holiday observance tells of the discovery of a small bottle of a day’s supply of ritually-pure olive oil suitable for lighting the holy Temple Menorah (Temple’s ritual candelabra) and how that little bit of oil miraculously stretched into fuelling the Menorah light to burn for eight days.
This Chanukah miracle followed the decisive Maccabean triumph. Even before the miracle of the oil, Israel had just won her freedom from foreign rule, freedom to resume Jewish religious Temple services and freedom to openly practice all their Jewish religious observances.
The miracle of the oil lasting eight days is a little anticlimactic. Wouldn’t there be enough reason to celebrate Chanukah if that bit of oil didn’t stretch to eight days?
Despite their newly-won independence, many Macabeans may have had mixed feelings about the war against Antiochus. Was all the hiding and living in caves like animals, all of the destruction, death and bloodshed, worth it?
Did the triumph prove the Jewish way is better than the Hellenist way or did it merely prove that Jews were the victors this time same as the Hellenists were victors in past times?
Did winning prove the Maccabees were right?
Jews see the “miracle of the oil “ as a sign of divine intervention attesting that the Maccabees fought the “good fight” and that — despite all the hardships endured for this cause — this triumph was worth fighting for.
I remember (not verbatim) Lyndon Johnson’s television prayer during the unpopular Vietnam War: “This is a difficult time. I don’t pray for the strength to carry out the right decision. I pray for the guidance and wisdom to know what the right decision is. Once you know what the right decision is, the strength to follow it comes easy.” When I look at Chanukah candles glowing in the night, I think of the Chanukah miracle of the enduring light and I feel like singing the lines I sang to the American flag back when I was in primary school: “Stand beside her and guide her through the night with the light from above.”
Hersh Goldman
Swampscott
