I begin by wishing those of our
readers who celebrate Christmas a joyous and blessed holiday. As we approach
the beginning of a new year, I hope that for all of us 2025 will be a time of
health, of happiness and of fulfillment and that the new year might witness a
lessening of the violence, conflict, and divisiveness, the gratuitous malice,
and the callousness and greed that have marred our past and have been so
destructive to the well-being and flourishing of our communities.
The dates of Jewish holidays,
because they are determined according to a lunar calendar, fluctuate over a
three-plus week span within the civil year. This year Chanukah occurs the
latest it ever does on the civil calendar. The first candle will be lit on the
evening of Christmas day, and the weeklong holiday ends at sunset on Jan. 2. To
me, it is a happy coincidence to be celebrating this year at the same time as my
non-Jewish neighbors and friends.
Chanukah’s roots go back to a
successful rebellion waged by the Jews against the Hellenistic monarch
Antiochus IV during the years 167 to 164 BCE. The king, who ruled over an
empire based in Syria and which included the land of Israel, sought to ban the
practice of the Jewish faith and, for the purpose of unifying his realm, to
compel the Jews to adopt and assimilate to Greek religion and culture. A
coalition of Jewish pietists and patriots resisted Antiochus’s decree and
recaptured the Temple in Jerusalem which had been occupied and defiled by the
king’s forces. The Jews cleansed the Temple, reinstituted Jewish worship, and
rekindled the Menorah, the seven-branch lampstand that was to be lit each
evening to illuminate the Temple’s innermost and holiest precincts.
The Hasmonean dynasty (descendants
of the Maccabee family that had led the rebellion against Antiochus) ultimately
succeeded in driving the Syrians from the land and establishing an independent
Jewish kingdom that lasted until the commencement of Roman rule in 63 BCE. Fast
forwarding several centuries, Jews chafed under the rule of Rome and rebelled
against their imperial masters twice. Both revolts were crushed, the Temple in
Jerusalem was destroyed, and, although a Jewish presence was always maintained
in the land, a large number of Jews were dispersed throughout the Mediterranean
and Middle Eastern world.
Under such circumstances, the sages
who fashioned the rabbinic tradition chose to highlight a different story, not
the military prowess of the Maccabees but rather a miracle they associated with
the rekindling of the Menorah. When the Jews re-entered the Temple, the rabbis
said, they found only enough ritually acceptable oil for the Menorah to provide
light for one night. Miraculously, however, the light from that small cruse of
oil lasted for eight nights, sufficient time to obtain a new supply of oil.
Chanukah is sometimes referred to
as the Festival of Lights. It is also a time when we acknowledge and celebrate
miracles. When we kindle the Chanukah candles each night of the holiday, one of
the blessings we recite offers thanks for the miracles God performed for our
ancestors “in those days and at this time of year.”
Whenever I have thought of that
small jar whose light endured against all expectations, it seems to me to be a
metaphor for resilience, for our human capacity to survive, to endure and to
flourish even when our resources seem to be depleted. As a Jew, the oil that
lasted for eight nights speaks to me of a much greater miracle – the miracle of
Jewish survival and endurance over the centuries and millennia. A people that
has endured harsh persecution, expulsions, discrimination, vilification,
pogroms and Holocaust is still alive, still attached to its spiritual heritage,
still creative, and still possessed of a strong sense of its identity.
The lights we kindle at home each
night during Chanukah are increased one by one every evening, beginning with
one candle on the first night, two on the second, and so on until on the eighth
and last night, we are lighting eight candles. This would seem
counterintuitive: the flames from that small cruse of oil were likely getting
weaker as the nights went by, so that we should probably be decreasing the
number of lights. Jewish tradition chose, however, to increase the number of
lights to symbolize that each subsequent night that the light lasted was a
greater and greater miracle. For me, the practice of increasing the number of
lights is also a powerful reminder of the mission of people of faith and goodwill
– to increase the light in the world, the light of knowledge, the light of
truth, the light of conscience, and the light of spirituality, that links us to
the creator and source of light.
Rabbi Barry Marks is rabbi emeritus of Temple Israel in Springfield.
This article appears in Remembering 2024.
