Here Comes Chanukah!

Here comes Chanukah, Festival of Lights! This year, it starts at sunset tomorrow (Sunday, December 2, 2018), although it ALWAYS starts at sunset at the beginning of the 25th of the Hebrew month of Kislev. That in itself tells you that Chanukah is not a religious or ancient agrarian holiday, since those all start with the new moon (1st of a month) or full moon (14th or 15th of a month), or else are counted from other holidays (such as Shavuot). The events that are commemorated by Chanukah happened so recently that the story does not even appear in the Hebrew Bible, although it’s discussed in the Talmud.

We’ll go back a little further. After the death of Alexander the Great (323 BCE), his empire was divided among his generals. One of these was Seleucus, from whom the Seleucid Empire derived its name. He and his successors expanded their part of the original empire by conquering territory both to the east and the west, eventually reaching Syria, Lebanon, part of Turkey, and the northern half of Israel (giving them highly useful access to the Mediterranean). The Hellenistic culture that was brought along with this conquest was very attractive to some of the Jewish people living in Israel. Exposure to Greek culture, philosophy, and athletics greatly influenced Jewish literature. Although Jews tended not to indulge in the worship of Greek gods, some of the ideas about an afterlife, immortality of the soul, and other concepts that were not indigenous to Judaism did enter into the beliefs of many.

The Maccabees, a group of brothers, led a force to fight off the Syrian Greeks and reclaim the Temple in Jerusalem, which had been desecrated with pagan sacrifices and symbols. The real fight was actually a civil war between the traditionalist Jews and the Hellenized Jews, with the Syrian Greeks lesser in importance. The traditionalists won the day and the Temple was restored and rededicated on the 25th of Kislev in 165 BCE. They celebrated the first Chanukah starting on that day, although they had been regarding it as a celebration of the holiday of Sukkot, the fall harvest festival which is 8 days long but had been delayed because of the fighting. That’s why Chanukah was 8 days long; it was actually begun as a celebration of Sukkot that had been put on hold.

The Books of Maccabees (again, not even in the Tanach) talk about the military victory that had been won. The rabbis’ subsequent discussions about the holiday as preserved in the Talmud reflect that they did not want to be celebrating a bloody military battle and victory, so they came up with the miracle of the oil lasting 8 days. But that’s not in the original story, appears only a few hundred years after the event, and is not the original reason that the holiday is 8 days long.

So this is a historical rather than religious holiday. It would be rather insignificant compared to our other holidays, except that it appears in the United States in contrast to Christmas and has been magnified into something major accordingly. When I was a child, I would get 18 shiny new pennies from my Hebrew school, and I would get things like knee socks and hair bows from my family. The presents were just tokens (how much are you going to spend if a child has to open up presents for 8 nights, after all?), but that too has changed in our highly commercialized modern culture.

I can’t help but think about this holiday through the lens of today. Fighting bitterly against people because of clashing beliefs and practices is something that hasn’t changed but makes no more sense in this world than it did over 2000 years ago – less sense, in fact, since we are supposed to be so much more “civilized” nowadays. I also think about which side of the battle I would have been on. I certainly would have been interested in the philosophical ideas and art and other contributions that the Greeks had made to the world and would likely have been on the losing side back then. Interesting to speculate, but how I wish there were no losing sides!

Lighting candles at this season is a custom that has even deeper roots, dating back to the pagan observance of the Saturnalia during the days of the year that have the most darkness, which does predate the historical events of Chanukah. The darkness was taking over and there was a fear that the sun might not return again, so lights were kindled everywhere to induce the sun to return. So as we light our candles and shatter the night all around us, may we also bring light to the dark corners of the earth where mankind’s worst enemy is other human beings – “other” being the operative word.