Family and friends will come in combination to have a good time, percentage presents and devour conventional meals because the eight-day Jewish competition of Hanukkah starts on Dec. 14, 2025.
Hanukkah commemorates the rededication of the 2d Temple in Jerusalem, the middle of historic Judean worship, in 164 B.C.E. It were defiled by means of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes and was once recaptured by means of Judean forces. Judean tradition were remodeled by means of Greek affect for hundreds of years, however Antiochus tried to quash Judean non secular forte altogether. This resulted in a rebel by means of the Hasmonean circle of relatives, recognized additionally because the Maccabees. They established a dynasty that lasted till the conquest by means of Rome in 63 B.C.E.
The tale is preserved within the Books of the Maccabees, written right through the second one and primary centuries B.C.E. Some Christians believe the texts a part of the Bible, regardless that Jews nowadays don’t. The primary rabbis operating 2,000 years in the past left it out of the Jewish Bible.
As a pupil of recent Jewish faith and politics, I’ve all the time been occupied with the techniques through which fashionable Jews select and make a choice from the neatly of custom to build a type of Jewishness they really feel is original.
Hanukkah serves as a first-rate instance of this procedure.
What does the vacation have a good time?
The eight-day vacation has two conventional parts. At the one hand, its liturgy offers due to God for the army victory. This displays the unique pre-rabbinic core of the vacation, which was once declared by means of the brand new Hasmonean dynasty to have a good time its triumph.
The main ritual of the vacation, then again, is the lights of the Hanukkah menorah. It celebrates the legend of a unmarried flask of natural oil discovered within the Temple that was once enough for simply sooner or later, however miraculously burned for 8.
A caricature illustrating Judas Maccabeus’ orders to clergymen to cleanse the temple sanctuary.
Sepia Occasions/Common Photographs Staff by the use of Getty Photographs
The earliest model of this tale seems within the Talmud – the principle choice of rabbinic rules and observation – some 500 years after the tale befell. The founders of Rabbinic Judaism – the Judaism of the previous 2,000 years – have been it seems that uncomfortable with its army message and reshaped the vacation to offer it new that means.
Within the phrases of historian Malka Simkovich, “Instead of glorying military prowess, the holiday instead glorifies the unconditional and miraculous divine light that Jews can depend on, even in the gloomiest of darkness.” This displays Rabbinic Judaism’s tendency to reread biblical and different texts about land and tool as metaphors for non secular enlargement and religion.
Although standard nowadays, Hanukkah is historically a minor vacation on which paintings is authorized. Through the years, it evolved right into a birthday party emphasizing circle of relatives and youngsters, video games and presents and particular meals.
Modernity brings new meanings
Within the nineteenth century, this shared that means of the vacation modified. In The usa and portions of Europe, Jews skilled emancipation and financial mobilization and sought techniques to combine into their native nationwide communities.
Then got here Zionism, the Jewish nationalist motion born within the Eighties in Europe, that outlined Jews as a contemporary country moderately than only a faith. It was hoping sooner or later to determine a house in Palestine, the website of the traditional Israelite kingdoms. They used Jewish traditions, particularly pre-rabbinic biblical traditions about Jews dwelling in that land, to end up the validity in their worldview.
Zionists briefly followed Hanukkah as their maximum vital vacation. They did this for various causes, however maximum vital was once its simple reformulation into an earthly nationalist competition.
Zionism remakes Hanukkah
Hanukkah was once no longer simply repackaged by means of Zionists in Europe; it was once completely remodeled from a slightly minor vacation into the central annual birthday party of the motion.
Additionally, whilst the miracle of the oil outlined conventional celebrations, it was once in particular the army victory that outlined Zionist ones. For the fledgling nationalist motion, the traditional tale gave a historic instance of Jewish heroes who effectively fought to expel international invaders from their native land.
They exemplified the “new Jew,” the “Jew of muscle” that their leaders promoted, by contrast to the Eu stereotype of Jews as susceptible or bookish.
The function of God or even the Temple was once restricted; the tale was once refocused at the country and its army combat for freedom and independence. Hanukkah introduced guns, heroes and victories, writes historian Francois Guesnet: “It was an occasion to confront the glorious past with the needs of the contemporary national re-awakening.”
On the similar time, Zionist Hanukkah celebrations additionally attached the motion to Jewish non secular observance, thereby interesting to conventional teams with out alienating its secular core. In the end, Hanukkah was once a conventional Jewish birthday party, and because paintings is permitted, they weren’t violating any ritual rules with their occasions.
Orthodox leaders didn’t purchase it.
In Sanz, for instance – a town nowadays in Poland – the Zionists’ first Hanukkah birthday party in 1900 raised a typhoon of protest by means of native Hasidic leaders. They accused the Zionists of desanctifying the vacation and defiling the Hanukkah miracle. They even complained that the Zionists defiled the Megastar of David by means of the usage of it of their signage and directed that the logo be torn off the Holy Ark within the synagogue.
Through the years, the Zionists’ model of Hanukkah in large part gained, particularly in Israel. Zionists introduced those values into the brand new Jewish state that they succeeded in growing in 1948. Nevertheless it has additionally been embraced by means of many Jews within the diaspora.
Different meanings persist
The rabbinic custom has no longer disappeared. There are nonetheless ultra-Orthodox Jews who reject the Zionist go back to pre-rabbinic traditions of the E-book of Maccabees, for instance. There also are many liberal Jews, particularly younger Jews, who reject the infusion of Zionism into their Jewish id.
Those numbers have grown in recent times because of Israel’s movements within the Gaza Strip and the West Financial institution.
The E-book of Maccabees describes the struggle towards Antiochus being preceded by means of a struggle towards Jews who sided with him. Because of this, it has grow to be virtually an annual custom for Jews to accuse every different of representing that traitorous team and to assert that one’s personal camp represents the real Jews.
An ultra-Orthodox Jewish guy and lady mild candles on the second one night time of Hanukkah, within the Mea Shearim group of Jerusalem, on Dec. 13, 2017.
Menahem Kahana/AFP by the use of Getty Photographs
Some Jews will write editorials and social media posts about how Hanukkah “proves” that Zionism is the original interpretation of Jewish custom. Some even query why non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Jews hassle lights candles. Their combatants reply with articles about Hanukkah’s historical past as a rabbinic vacation and the way it has been reinterpreted because the get started of the Zionist motion.
Every argues that their very own interpretation is the right kind one.
If truth be told, Judaism is repeatedly being made and remade. Is Hanukkah’s “real” that means the Zionist go back to pre-rabbinic assets? Or is it the rabbinic spiritualization of the vacation and its metaphor of bringing mild into darkness? There is not any transparent resolution.
In different phrases, each side have assets to fortify their interpretation. Zionists can draw at the army imagery featured within the First E-book of Maccabees and different assets. For individuals who desire the vacation as introduced by means of the rabbis who based Rabbinic Judaism 2,000 years in the past, there may be an equivalent wealth of subject matter, together with within the prayers recited in synagogues.
The rabbis assigned a unique studying from the later biblical books for every Sabbath and vacation. Their selection for the Sabbath of Hanukkah – Zechariah 2:14-4:7 – is revealing: “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel, saying: ‘Not by military might and not by physical power, but by My spirit,’ says the Lord of Hosts.”
