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Rabbinic Reflections - December 2018

When we light the Hanukkah menorah over the holiday’s eight nights, we do so in order to publicize the miracle that Hanukkah represents. But what is that miracle? We all know the account of the oil in the rededicated Temple in Jerusalem that burned for eight days instead of one, but since that account first shows up hundreds of years after the events themselves, in the Talmud, there must have been other reasons our ancestors lit their lights before that, other miracles that they were publicizing. What were they?

 

In the immediate aftermath of the revolt against the pagan Greeks, the victorious Maccabees and their supporters would have been justified in publicizing their miraculous military victory. The Syrian Greeks were the inheritors of the art of warfare, which had shortly before shattered many national armies and established Greece as an imperial power. The few Maccabees had defeated the many Greeks! But the light of the miracle of the Maccabees’ victory eventually dimmed; their power lasted only about a hundred years before imperial Rome came to control Israel.

 

Perhaps the miracle can be found in the immediate cause of the revolt, the desire to resist assimilation and hold onto Jewish traditions. Having swept out the pagans, the traditional Jewish Temple rites were reestablished. Religious freedom and Jewish distinctiveness had won! But the lights for traditional Judaism also dimmed; the Maccabees themselves soon assimilated, and the office of the High Priest fell so low that it was often awarded to the highest bidder.

 

So if the miracles that were celebrated and publicized in the immediate aftermath of the events of Hanukkah faded, what was it and what is it that we are publicizing? I would argue that the account of the oil and its miraculous burning, though late in coming, arrived just in time. As the military victory of the Maccabees receded in time and as their national and religious achievements eroded, the meaning of Hanukkah had to evolve. The account of the oil shifted the emphasis from human war to divine intervention, infusing Hanukkah with eternal meanings that the short-lived victories of the Maccabees could not match.

 

The reason that we continue to find the miracle of the oil compelling is that it symbolizes the values for which the Maccabees fought, without having to focus too much on the Maccabees themselves: Self-rule in the Jewish homeland; religious tradition; the ability of the few to stand up for themselves against the many. These are all worthy values that the light of Hanukkah continues to illuminate for us. We will continue to teach and live those values regardless of how their originators ended up, and despite the challenges that our own times bring. Hanukkah’s lights teach us that human events are as transitory as oil or candles, but that the values that animate those events burn as brightly as the lights that recall them.

 

Hanukkah same’akh.

 

Rabbi Jeff Pivo

 

Sun, September 14 2025 21 Elul 5785