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What Miracle?

12/02/2015 05:55:00 AM

Dec2


Hanukkah, the eight day holiday of lights, is the simplest and most complicated of holidays all at once.

On the most basic level the traditional practice is to light a hannukiah (or menorah) at sundown on each of the eight nights of the holiday. This year, the holiday begins this Sunday, December 6, and the details about all of our celebrations, incuding Illumin8, the Beacon Bicycle Menorah, can be found here.
 
The hanukkiah is placed in a window or some other public place so that the miracle can be publicized (which miracle? We'll get back to that). If you're looking for resources for celebrating Hannukah at home, this might help.
 
Often, folks spin a dreidel and eat foods fried in oil. Of course, people exchange gifts, large and small with their loved ones as well. For reasons that have far more to do with its coincidental occurrence with Christmas, it also has a huge pop-culture footprint - check out for instance, Adam Sandler's newly reissued Hannukah Song  or that amazon sells Channukah Gingerbread houses. (this should not be a thing, but I'm afraid it is)
 
On a historical level, the holiday celebrates the military victory of the ancient Jews over the Syrian Greeks. The Greek empire had one central idea: the creation of an advanced universal culture. Traditional Jewish culture had its own central idea: the idea of one true God. 
 
Jewish reformers wanted to merge these two ideas, so they assimilated parts of Greek culture into their own, taking Greek names like Jason, exercising in the gymnasium and prospering within Greek institutions. But not all Jews assimilated. Some resisted quietly, practicing and learning Torah in secret, while others fled to the hills and waged their own form of cultural resistance, which the Greeks were happy to ignore.

After a few years though, the Syrian Green spirit of toleration mysteriously ended. The Syrian Greek king, Antiochus IV, defiled the Jewish Temple and banned Jewish practice under penalty of death. Mattathias, the head of a Jewish priestly family and his five sons, led by Judah Maccabee, led an insurgent revolt against the regime. They fought against both the Greeks occupiers and the Jewish reformers with equal ferocity. Ultimately, and perhaps miraculously, the small group of rebels did defeat the Empire.

So we return to the question -- What's the miracle? In some ways, the miracle was the victory of this tiny band of guerillas insurgents against the Greek empire. But the later rabbinic tradition, which formed Judaism as we know it, focused not on the political miracle, but on a spiritual one, which interestingly, nobody had previously heard of - when the Macacabees regained control of the Temple they cleaned and purified it, but there was only enough oil to light the ritual menorah for one night. The military victory fades into the background and we are focused on that little cruse of oil that miracle of miracles, lasted eight days, hence eight days of Hannukah. 
 
So, take your pick - the military or the spiritual, spin a dreidel, eat a latke and bring the light into the darkness.
Wed, July 16 2025 20 Tammuz 5785