How Hanukkah came to America

Photo by Robert Zunikoff on Unsplash

The Conversation

December 25, 2024

Hanukkah may be the best known Jewish holiday in the United States. But despite its popularity in the U.S., Hanukkah is ranked one of Judaism’s minor festivals, and nowhere else does it garner such attention. The holiday is mostly a domestic celebration, although special holiday prayers also expand synagogue worship.

So how did Hanukkah attain its special place in America?

Hanukkah’s back story

The word “Hanukkah” means dedication. It commemorates the rededicating of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem in 165 B.C. when Jews – led by a band of brothers called the Maccabees – tossed out statues of Hellenic gods that had been placed there by King Antiochus IV when he conquered Judea. Antiochus aimed to plant Hellenic culture throughout his kingdom, and that included worshipping its gods.

Legend has it that during the dedication, as people prepared to light the Temple’s large oil lamps to signify the presence of God, only a tiny bit of holy oil could be found. Yet, that little bit of oil remained alight for eight days until more could be prepared. Thus, each Hanukkah evening, for eight nights, Jews light a candle, adding an additional one as the holiday progresses throughout the festival.

Hanukkah’s American story

Today, America is home to almost 7 million Jews. But Jews did not always find it easy to be Jewish in America. Until the late 19th century, America’s Jewish population was very small and grew to only as many as 250,000 in 1880. The basic goods of Jewish religious life – such as kosher meat and candles, Torah scrolls, and Jewish calendars – were often hard to find.

In those early days, major Jewish religious events took special planning and effort, and minor festivals like Hanukkah often slipped by unnoticed.

My own study of American Jewish history has recently focused on Hanukkah’s development.

It began with a simple holiday hymn written in 1840 by Penina Moise, a Jewish Sunday school teacher in Charleston, South Carolina. Her evangelical Christian neighbors worked hard to bring the local Jews into the Christian fold. They urged Jews to agree that only by becoming Christian could they attain God’s love and ultimately reach Heaven.

Moise, a famed poet, saw the holiday celebrating dedication to Judaism as an occasion to inspire Jewish dedication despite Christian challenges. Her congregation, Beth Elohim, publicized the hymn by including it in their hymnbook.

This English language hymn expressed a feeling common to many American Jews living as a tiny minority. “Great Arbiter of human fate whose glory ne'er decays,” Moise began the hymn, “To Thee alone we dedicate the song and soul of praise.”

It became a favorite among American Jews and could be heard in congregations around the country for another century.

Shortly after the Civil War, Cincinnati Rabbi Max Lilienthal learned about special Christmas events for children held in some local churches. To adapt them for children in his own congregation, he created a Hanukkah assembly where the holiday’s story was told, blessings and hymns were sung, candles were lighted and sweets were distributed to the children.

His friend, Rabbi Isaac M. Wise, created a similar event for his own congregation. Wise and Lilienthal edited national Jewish magazines where they publicized these innovative Hanukkah assemblies, encouraging other congregations to establish their own.

Lilienthal and Wise also aimed to reform Judaism, streamlining it and emphasizing the rabbi’s role as teacher. Because they felt their changes would help Judaism survive in the modern age, they called themselves “Modern Maccabees.” Through their efforts, special Hanukkah events for children became standard in American synagogues.

20th-century expansion

By 1900, industrial America produced the abundance of goods exchanged each Dec. 25. Christmas’ domestic celebrations and gifts to children provided a shared religious experience to American Christians otherwise separated by denominational divisions. As a home celebration, it sidestepped the theological and institutional loyalties voiced in churches.

For the 2.3 million Jewish immigrants who entered the U.S. between 1881 and 1924, providing their children with gifts in December proved they were becoming American and obtaining a better life.

But by giving those gifts at Hanukkah, instead of adopting Christmas, they also expressed their own ideals of American religious freedom, as well as their own dedication to Judaism

. 

A Hanukkah religious service and party in 1940. Center for Jewish History, NYC

After World War II, many Jews relocated from urban centers. Suburban Jewish children often comprised small minorities in public schools and found themselves coerced to participate in Christmas assemblies. Teachers, administrators and peers often pressured them to sing Christian hymns and assert statements of Christian faith.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, as Jewish parents argued for their children’s right to freedom from religious coercion, they also embellished Hanukkah. Suburban synagogues expanded their Hanukkah programming.

As I detail in my book, Jewish families embellished domestic Hanukkah celebrations with decorations, nightly gifts and holiday parties to enhance Hanukkah’s impact. In suburbia, Hanukkah’s theme of dedication to Judaism shone with special meaning. Rabbinical associations, national Jewish clubs and advertisers of Hanukkah goods carried the ideas for expanded Hanukkah festivities nationwide.

In the 21st century, Hanukkah accomplishes many tasks. Amid Christmas, it reminds Jews of Jewish dedication. Its domestic celebration enhances Jewish family life. In its similarity to Christmas domestic gift-giving, Hanukkah makes Judaism attractive to children and – according to my college students – relatable to Jews’ Christian neighbors. In many interfaith families, this shared festivity furthers domestic tranquility.

In America, this minor festival has attained major significance.

Dianne Ashton, Professor of Religion, Rowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In Israel and occupied territories, Christmas and Hanukkah converge in sober celebrations

JERUSALEM (RNS) — Gaza’s tiny Christian community prayed with Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, who received permission from Israel to visit the parish of the Holy Family in the embattled enclave.

Christian, Muslim and Jewish decorations are displayed in Haifa, Israel, Dec. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Michele Chabin
December 24, 2024

JERUSALEM — Last year, Israelis marked Hanukkah and Christmas mostly quietly in their homes, synagogues, churches — and bomb shelters. Some 200,000 were displaced due to rocket fire from Gaza and Lebanon.

This holiday season, Israelis of all faiths are breathing a little easier, despite the country’s still-uncertain security, continuing displacement and the 100 hostages who remain captive by Hamas. The near absence of rocket fire from Gaza and Lebanon has meant that people are more open to congregating in public to light community Christmas trees, shop at outdoor holiday markets or attend a Hanukkah children’s festival.

In contrast to last year, Holy Land patriarchs and church leaders are again encouraging local Christians to publicly celebrate Christmas, provided they are “sensitive to the severe afflictions that millions in our region continue to endure.”

Although the decision to downplay Christmas last year was made “with good intentions,” the Christian leaders said in a November statement, “many around the world nevertheless misinterpreted this call to signify a ‘Cancellation of Christmas’ in the Holy Land — the very place of our Lord’s Holy Nativity.” Because of this, “our unique witness to the Christmas message of light emerging out of darkness (John 1:9) was diminished not only around the world, but also among our own people.”

Finding joy when Palestinians and Israelis are still dying in war “is extremely difficult,” acknowledged Maryam Khoury, a Christian from northern Israel who was visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, believed to have been built over Jesus’ tomb, in Jerusalem. “But we can rejoice in Christ’s message of hope and love and provide hope and love to others.”

Rabbi Seth Farber, who leads the Kehilat Netivot synagogue in Ra’anana, said the onset of Hanukkah is especially bittersweet this year. “On one hand our community is feeling more optimistic,” he said. There are fewer air sirens, fewer military death notices and fewer local funerals. “On the other hand, the widows are still widows, the bereaved parents are still bereaved, and the children are still orphans.”

Although Hanukkah is a time of light and a celebration of heroism, “it is not possible to forget about the hostages and the nightmare they are living through,” Farber added. Recently, his synagogue celebrated the completion of a Torah scroll written in the memory of a young synagogue member killed on Oct. 7, 2023. “But we are not yet ready to have a Hanukkah celebration. The war and its aftermath are ever present in our prayers, and we continue to pray for the soldiers with an extra prayer every morning.”

Still, Hanukkah, like the other wartime holidays this year, must go on.

The synagogue will be holding an outdoor candle lighting each night of Hanukkah, with photos of the hostages placed near the menorah. “Hanukkah is about celebrating the miracle and publicizing it, but at present, alongside remembering the great moments of the past, we need to acknowledge the challenges of the present,” Farber said.

Hedva Fox, an educator, said she is striving to find positives this Hanukkah. “It seems that most of our history is made up of a dichotomy of both hope and despair — celebration and mourning. It’s okay to do both, to remember that you can celebrate and have hope for the future even if you also carry pain in your heart.

The plight of Palestinians in Gaza, coupled with the almost complete absence of Christian pilgrims and subsequent loss of income, has added to the grim mood in Bethlehem. For the second year in a row, the municipality decided to forgo outdoor Christmas decorations, festivals and festivities, including the annual Christmas tree lighting and open-air Christmas market.

“For us, Bethlehem is part of the Palestinian heritage, and as a result of what’s going on in Gaza, and Israel’s continuous attacks, we Christians will concentrate on Christian prayers and prayers for peace,” Anton Salman, mayor of the small West Bank city, told the National Catholic Register. “Of course, each person can celebrate Christmas in their way. But for the city itself, due to the situation, there will be no festivals or decorations. We want to show the world that Bethlehem and the Palestinian people are still suffering.”

Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the top Catholic clergyman in the Holy Land, center, arrives at the Church of the Nativity, traditionally believed to be the birthplace of Jesus, on Christmas Eve in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, Dec. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

In Gaza, the tiny Christian community was overjoyed this week to pray with Latin (Catholic) Patriarch of Jerusalem Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, who received permission from Israel to visit the parish of the Holy Family in the embattled enclave.

Before the war, about 1,000 Christians lived in Gaza. Since then, the community has dwindled as hundreds of members have received permission to emigrate. More than 20 have been killed during the war, according to the patriarchate. Their homes damaged or destroyed, the remaining Christians have taken refuge at two church compounds.

During the Mass, Pizzaballa, dressed in white vestments, presided over a confirmation ceremony for several of the community’s children.

In his homily, the patriarch praised the congregation’s fortitude and faith. “You are the light of our church. We are proud of you, not because of anything in particular, but because you have remained what you are: Christians with Jesus.

“Just as all the people of the world, not only Christians, are with you, so too you can give something to the world that looks at you, bringing the light of Christ to everyone with your example,” Pizzaballa said.

Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah? For some interfaith families, it’s both

(RNS) — Two Texas families share how they navigate honoring different religious heritages during the holiday season.

(Images courtesy of Pixabay/Creative Commons)
Marissa Greene
December 24, 2024

FORT WORTH, Texas (RNS) — When Ethan Klos, who was raised Jewish, and his wife, Ricki, a Christian, were ready to start a family, the Texas couple consulted a rabbi and a pastor about which religion to raise their kids in.

“Pick one,” the rabbi told the couple. “It doesn’t matter to me which one you pick.”

“So naturally,” recalled Ricki Klos, “that’s not what we did.”

The couple decided to raise their family in the Christian and Jewish faiths, alternating Sunday schools between temple and church.

Ethan and Ricki Klos represent the 17% of Americans whose spouse has a different religious affiliation than themselves, according to a 2024 Public Religion Research Institute study. This year, their commitments may be tested, as the first night of Hanukkah and Christmas Day will converge for the first time since 2005.

The Klos family has found different ways to honor both religious heritages in their Fort Worth home, where a collection of menorahs rests on a table and Star of David ornaments hang on the Christmas tree. “We’ll have Hanukkah decorations up all over the house, just as much as Christmas,” Ricki said.

The family will participate in the lighting of the candles and say prayers for Hanukkah. They will also read the Christmas story from the Bible, Ricki Klos said.

Interfaith couple Eric and Lauren Wessinger, who also live in Fort Worth, decided to raise their children, now teenagers, as Jews, celebrating Hanukkah as a religious holiday and Christmas as more of a cultural one, Lauren Wessinger said.

It was the best answer for both Eric, who grew up with a Jewish mother and a Christian father, and Lauren, who was raised without a specific faith but said her spirituality has been inspired by her mother, a convert to Tibetan Buddhism.

The family will light the menorah and attend Hanukkah holiday parties as well as have a Christmas tree at home.

The Wessingers said the holiday season can be a time to clear the air on misconceptions about what it means to observe both Christmas and Hanukkah — the notion, for instance, that their kids get twice the number of gifts for observing both holidays.

Being an interfaith family has also given Lauren Wessinger the opportunity to share about her family’s practices to curious friends or congregants, she said. “What I love is when people want to talk about it and ask what our traditions are, and they’re genuinely interested in families who do it differently,” Lauren said.

The Wessingers have also adopted mindfulness practices as a way to honor Lauren’s mother’s Buddhist faith and set intentions for the new year, by making vision boards or journaling.

“Even though we are doing Judaism more than anything, I still very much share the practice of mindfulness with the kids and the philosophies of Buddhism with them in the way that I lead our family and approach challenges and help them see difficulty through that lens,” Lauren Wessinger said.

Though they celebrate each holiday distinctly, the Wessingers cherish the shared days most of all. “It’s about being together in family time and the relationship piece of it,” her husband said. “Everyone’s always off for Christmas, so it’s just a good time to be together as a family, regardless of what your faith is.”

And though raising an interfaith family has not always been easy, Ricki Klos said, “I feel good that they’ve been exposed to two faiths, and they know two faiths very, very well. I don’t regret anything.”

Christmas and the first night of Hanukkah will realign again in 2035 and then in 2054, according to the Jewish calendar website Hebcal.

This article was produced as part of the RNS/Interfaith America Religion Journalism Fellowship.

APPROPRIATE OUR KULTURE , PLEASE

Op-Ed: Everything is different this year, so why not add a ninth night to Hanukkah?

The ninth candle on the menorah is the shamash, or “helper” candle.

 In 2020, this candle deserves its own night to shine.
(Los Angeles Times)
By ERICA S. PERL
DEC. 10, 2020

Hanukkah, like so many other holidays, is poised to look a little different this year.

Usually my synagogue in Washington, D.C., invites congregants to bring their menorahs into the sanctuary for a huge communal candle-lighting. This festive fire hazard is not exactly made for Zoom. Meanwhile, the invitation for my neighbors’ annual latke fest has not arrived, which is no surprise. While inviting friends over to spin dreidels, sing songs and commiserate about this dumpster fire of a year is tempting, it also screams “superspreader.”

It’s understandable but more than a little depressing. It makes me want to rip December off the calendar. Enough, already! Forget Hanukkah — bring on 2021.

Instead, I have a counterintuitive proposal: This year, we should start a new tradition and extend Hanukkah from eight nights to nine. The reason? To honor the helpers.

There is a direct connection between Hanukkah and helping. A Hanukkah menorah, also known as a hanukkiah, has nine branches. Eight are for the candles representing the nights of the holiday, which celebrates the rededication of the Second Temple after it was defiled by King Antiochus’ soldiers and the miracle in the temple of a small amount of lamp oil burning for eight days when it should have lasted only one.

The ninth branch is reserved for a special candle, the shamash, or “helper.” The shamash is used to light the other candles: one on the first night and an additional one each subsequent evening until all nine burn on the eighth and final night.

But think about it: The shamash is so busy giving its light to others that it never gets its own night to shine. And isn’t 2020 the perfect year to start an annual Hanukkah tradition of honoring the people who, like the shamash, give of themselves to help others?

I can think of lots of those people this year, starting with the friends who delivered toilet paper (and tofu, of all things) when I couldn’t find these items in any store. The hospital staff who cared for my mom when she needed emergency surgery. The teachers who juggled and pivoted to keep my kids connected and learning. The online fitness instructors, doctors, nurses, therapists and DJs. (D-Nice’s Club Quarantine got me through the month of April.) The journalists, who kept reporting, no matter how many dragons they had to slay in the process. The mail carriers, delivery people, grocery store clerks, trash collectors and so many others who, without fanfare, helped in ways great and small.





LIFESTYLE
Eight crazy nights: Local Hanukkah activities you can enjoy from afar this year
Dec. 2, 2020

The best part is, it’s easy to do — if you’re Jewish, you probably finish the holiday with extra candles you can use. And if you’re not Jewish, this is a celebration that everyone can take part in. First, make a list of the helpers in your life, and invite friends and family members to do the same. Then, on the ninth night of Hanukkah (in 2020, it will be Dec. 18), light the shamash (or any candle as an honorary shamash, if you don’t have a menorah) in honor of the helpers on your list, and let them know.

You can go big — throw a virtual Shamash Night party! — or go small, sending cards, texts or emails. Either way, you are likely to make your honorees feel acknowledged and appreciated, which means you’re helping them, too.

Like the shamash, individual people have the power to brighten the lives of those around them. That’s why Hanukkah, especially in the year 2020, is the perfect time for all of us to show appreciation for those who help us, help others and help heal the world.

And if it means eating jelly donuts and potato pancakes for one more night — well, it’s been a rough year, so who’s going to argue with that?

Erica S. Perl is an author of books for children and young adults. The most recent is “The Ninth Night of Hanukkah.”

Hanukkah Is About Resistance. Let’s Resist This COVID Spike Through Mutual Aid.

Volunteers from a nonprofit organization provide food supplies to people who line up ahead of Thanksgiving amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City on November 20, 2020.TAYFUN COSKUN / ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES

BY Brant Rosen, Truthout December 10, 2020

With Hanukkah now upon us, the internet is abuzz with articles offering guidance on how to celebrate the holiday in the age of COVID-19. While most of them focus on practical issues such as socially distanced Hanukkah parties and Zoom candle lightings, I’ve been thinking a great deal on what the story of Hanukkah might have to offer to all of us as we gear up for a winter like none we’ve ever experienced in our lifetimes.

Hanukkah, of course, is based upon the story of the Maccabees, the small group of Jews who successfully liberated themselves from the oppressive reign of the Seleucid Empire in 167 BCE. The legacy of this story, however, is a complex one because the Jewish struggle against religious persecution took place within the context of a bloody and destructive Jewish civil war. In contemporary times, the meaning of Hanukkah has become even more complicated given its proximity to Christmas, subjecting it to the uniquely American religion of unmitigated commercialism.

Beyond all these complications, I’d argue that the essence of Hanukkah is the theme of resistance. At its core, the Hanukkah story commemorates the victorious resistance of the people over the power and might of empire. On a deeper level, we might say that the festival celebrates the spiritual strength of our resistance to an often harsh and unyielding world.

In this regard, it is significant that Hanukkah takes place in the winter. Apropos of the season, the festival prescribes resistance to an increasingly colder and darker world by lighting increasing numbers of candles during this eight-night festival. Those of us who celebrate this holiday are instructed to place our menorahs in our windows as an act of “spiritual defiance,” directing the light outward into the night where it may clearly be seen by the outside world.

There have indeed been moments in Jewish history in which lighting the menorah was literally an act of resistance. One powerful example can be seen offered in a single image: the famous photograph taken in 1932 Germany showing a menorah on the window sill of a Jewish home, with a Nazi flag clearly visible across the street. Another well-known moment of Hanukkah resistance occurred in 1993 when, after a brick was thrown through the window of a Jewish home in Billings, Montana, scores of citizens showed their solidarity with the Jewish community by taping paper menorahs in their windows. More recently, on the Hanukkah after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, one local Jewish leader commented that the menorah is “not just something that we display in our homes for ourselves … but something we light so that passersby can see. For us, this year that feels like an act of resistance.”

In 2020, we find Hanukkah arriving amid a winter that medical experts are calling “the darkest days of the pandemic” and “COVID hell.” In a recent interview, Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said, “the next three to four months are going to be, by far, the darkest of the pandemic.” Another expert has predicted that more lives will be lost in December than the U.S. saw in March and April combined.

With such an unprecedented and terrifying winter bearing down upon us, I’d suggest that the ideal of Hanukkah resistance is more powerfully relevant than ever. This resistance, of course, presents us with profound challenges. After living with the pandemic for the better part of a year, so many throughout the U.S. are succumbing to “COVID fatigue” — following months of social isolation and anxiety, increasing numbers of people are becoming less vigilant about the pandemic practice of masking and social distancing, even as infection rates spike precipitously.

With the darkest days of the pandemic ahead of us — even as we agitate for rent cancellation, eviction resistance and universal health care — we have another form of resistance at our disposal: We can resist government inaction/abandonment of its citizens by participating in the grassroots, self-organized networks of support known as mutual aid.

While these community-based efforts are not new, they have proliferated widely since the onset of the pandemic. As Jia Tolentino pointed out in a New Yorker article last May:

[Mutual aid] is not a new term, or a new idea, but it has generally existed outside the mainstream. Informal child-care collectives, transgender support groups, and other ad-hoc organizations operate without the top-down leadership or philanthropic funding that most charities depend on. Since COVID, however, mutual aid initiatives seemed to be everywhere.

The concept of mutual aid was coined in 1902 by the Russian anarchist/scientist/economist/philosopher, Peter Kropotkin, who argued that mutual aid could be traced to the “earliest beginnings of evolution.” Kropotkin posited that solidary provided the human species with the best chance of survival, particularly given the emergence of private property and the rise of the State:

It is not love and not even sympathy upon which Society is based in mankind. It is the conscience — be it only at the stage of an instinct — of human solidarity. It is the unconscious recognition of the force that is borrowed by each man from the practice of mutual aid; of the close dependence of every one’s happiness upon the happiness of all; and of the sense of justice, or equity which brings the individual to consider the rights of every other individual as equal to his own. Upon this broad and necessary foundation, the still higher moral feelings are developed.

Some of the most well-known examples of mutual aid in U.S. history, in fact, were the survival programs created by the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the community-based initiatives organized by the Puerto Rican Young Lords Party in the 1960s and ’70s. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover himself grasped the radical power of these mutual aid projects. In a now infamous internal memo, he wrote that the Black Panther breakfast programs represented “the best and most influential activity going for the BPP, and is as such, the greatest threat to efforts by authorities.”The true miracle of resistance occurs when we show up for one another.

Another important aspect of mutual aid is the understanding that disenfranchised people cannot ultimately depend on state institutions to save them. According to Puerto Rican scholar Isa Rodríguez, “‘Solo el pueblo salva al pueblo’ — ‘Only the people save the people,’ became a rallying cry for Puerto Ricans following the devastation of Hurricane Maria in 2017 as multiple organizations — mostly based on grassroots groups that existed prior to the hurricane — quickly organized to channel aid.”

The community-based solidarity of mutual aid is also fundamentally different from the approach of private humanitarian charities in which the needy are “saved” through the beneficence of those of greater means. And it must not be viewed through the lens of “crisis response.” Mutual aid, rather, is rooted in long-term alliances between people engaged in a common struggle. As historian/writer, Elizabeth Catte has observed:


Mutual aid can be a form of resistance, but the practice itself requires discipline. We can’t do it because it helps us sugarcoat our trauma, or because it lets us say we have claimed goodness in a world where it is often lacking. Mutual aid is incompatible with charity and should offer no pleasure to the well-resourced person or do-gooder who hopes to find worthy recipients of their kindness, because the practice of mutual aid is intended to destroy categories of worth.

Since mutual aid is rooted in the ideal of solidarity, the first step for anyone interested is to cultivate genuine and accountable relationships within their own local communities. This will be undeniably challenging in a time of pandemic, when our mutual safety literally depends upon socially distancing from one another.

Mutual aid projects, however, are adapting to meet these challenges through creative use of commercial internet platforms, online databases and toolkits. Additionally, mutual aid projects in the age of COVID insist on strict adherence to public health protocols.

In the words of anarchist organizer Cindy Milstein: “While ‘social’ aka ‘physical’ distancing, hand washing, and mask wearing are necessary tools to help stop the spread of this virus, they will only be effective if it’s grounded in an ethics and practice of social solidarity and collective care.”

The most famous Hanukkah story says that when the Maccabees entered the Temple to relight the menorah, they only found enough oil to last for one day. Miraculously, however, the menorah burned for eight days. At the core of this seemingly simple parable are profound lessons about the power of sustainability and resilience. We know from history that popular movements of resistance have the ability to succeed even against the most daunting of foes.

The prospect of the coming winter — and the new year ahead — are undeniably daunting. Amid it all lie fundamental questions: Where will we find the strength to meet these challenges? How will we keep the fire of our commitment to each other from burning out? Who can we depend upon to see us through the coming season and beyond?

The resistance embodied by mutual aid provides us with a compelling answer — in the end, we have each other. As Dean Spade, who recently published a book titled Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next), so aptly puts it, “what happens when people get together to support one another is that people realize that there’s more of us than there is of them.”

True resistance can never occur as long as we expect an external human force to somehow show up to save us. In the end, the true miracle of resistance occurs when we show up for one another.

Spiritual Politics

The (real) Hanukkah story and why it still matters

(RNS) — Old debates continue.

People visit a giant Hanukkah menorah during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, in Tel Aviv, Nov. 28, 2021. Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight-day commemoration of the Jewish uprising in the second century B.C. against the Greek-Syrian kingdom, which had tried to put statues of Greek gods in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

Mark Silk

December 24, 2024

(RNS) — Listen up, boys and girls.

Once upon a time, there were a lot of Jews living in the Land of Israel. Some of them were up to date with world culture, which is to say they read Greek lit, went to the gym and weren’t all that religious. Others were, well, fundamentalists. The two groups were pretty polarized. After a while, their harsh culture war became a civil war.

As it happened, the Land of Israel in those days was controlled by the king of Syria, a none-too-stable Greek culture guy known as Antiochus Da God. After beating up on the Egyptians, he decided to settle the Jews’ hash, siding (of course) with the liberals.

Seizing Jerusalem, Antiochus decided to outlaw the practice of Judaism altogether, burning copies of the Torah, prohibiting observance of the Sabbath and holidays and forbidding circumcision. He turned the Temple into a Greek religious shrine, complete with a statue of Zeus.

As a result, a country priest named Mattathias and his five sons instigated a revolt. These Maccabees, as they came to be called, used guerrilla tactics to defeat the Syrian army, recaptured Jerusalem and rededicated the Temple.

Many of you have heard that their victory was accompanied by a miracle, in which a one-day supply of undefiled oil kept the Temple menorah burning for eight days. I’m sorry to have to tell you it never happened.

The real deal was that, because of the Temple takeover, the Jews hadn’t been able to observe the weeklong fall pilgrimage festival called Sukkot. The first Hanukkah was designed to make up for that, and it continued annually as the Feast of Dedication. Jesus himself visited the Temple during this feast.

As for the miracle of the oil, that was an old rabbis’ tale, told in the Talmud centuries after the fact to demonstrate that God had a hand in the story. In fact, the rabbis didn’t really like Hanukkah.

How come?

For starters, it was the Maccabean revolt that inspired the revolt against the Romans some 170 years later, which led to the destruction of the Temple and the exile of Jews from Judea. Plus, the descendants of the Maccabees who ruled as the Hasmonean dynasty were deeply flawed characters.

They combined the office of king and high priest in their own persons, violating the separation of religious and political authority established under Moses and Aaron after the Israelites left Egypt. (Talk about Jewish theocracy!) The Hasmonean priest-kings were also intolerant, slaughtering thousands of Jews who didn’t agree with them. And they got into fights with the religious precursors of the rabbis.

At the same time, the Hasmoneans conquered a bunch of territory, leading scholars to debate whether they wanted to restore the Greater Israel of King David and King Solomon. Whether their territorial ambitions were primarily religious or secular is also a matter of debate. They did force people in their territory to have their sons circumcised.

Truth to tell, this period of history has long served as a touchstone for reckoning with control of the land of Israel. Where the rabbis of the Talmud kept the Maccabees at arm’s length, the Zionists happily rehabilitated them as heroes of their new state.

These days, we may wonder whether the deeply flawed Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is seeking to restore the Greater Israel of David and Solomon, and whether his government, well supplied with zealots, is motivated by secular or religious goals. As always in the Jewish world, the debates continue.

Happy Hanukkah!

Opinion

How oil burning in a single spoon became a Hanukkah miracle

(RNS) — Taped to the front window of my in-laws’ house was a photocopy of a photograph of a tarnished and bent spoon. Of course, there was a story behind it.

I.I. Cohen, right, shortly after World War II, with an orphan in France. Cohen taught in an orphanage. 

(Photo courtesy of Rabbi Avi Shafran)

Avi Shafran
December 24, 2024

(RNS) — The modest but lovely home in Toronto has been sold. My beloved, widowed mother-in-law has moved in with one of her daughters, who lives nearby.

For years, though, when my in-laws lived in the house, taped to the front window was a piece of paper, a photocopy of a photograph of a tarnished and bent spoon.

Behind it, of course, there is a story.

My father-in-law, I.I. Cohen, of blessed memory, was an alumnus of a number of World War II concentration camps. The spoon in the photograph was one of the items he smuggled out of Auschwitz when the Nazis moved him into “Camp No. 8” — a quarantine camp for those suspected of carrying typhus.

Due to the illness, there were no regular labor teams in this new camp, but healthy inmates were ordered to help in its construction, which was still underway. Having had some experience in the Lodz ghetto as a mechanic, my father-in-law was assigned to assist the electrical technician in installing the camp’s lighting.

Given access to tools, he brought his spoon, his only possession, to work one day and surreptitiously filed down its handle, turning that end of the utensil into a sharp knife, which he used for cutting the chunk of bread he and others were allotted and had to apportion fairly. The knife end became a key to avoiding disputes and maintaining relative peace among the prisoners, while he continued to use the spoon to eat his soup ration.

When winter came, he was transferred to “Camp No. 4” in Kaufering, an installation similar to Auschwitz. Despite terrible deprivations and hardships, my father-in-law and other religious Jews in the camp tried whenever possible to maintain what Jewish law and practices they could, despite all the dangers that involved.

My father-in-law always kept mental track of the Jewish calendar, and he knew when Hanukkah had arrived. During a few minutes’ work break, he and a group of inmates began to reminisce about how, when they were children back home before the war, their fathers would light their menorahs with such fervor and joy. They remembered how they could never get their fill of watching the small flames sparkling like stars, how they basked in the warm, special glow.

And the inmates spoke of the ancient battle that Hanukkah commemorates, the Jewish rebellion against the Seleucid Greek conquerors of the Holy Land, who were intent on erasing Jewish observance from the populace, and Judaism from their hearts. And how, with God’s help, the rebels were able to rout their enemy and resume their fully Jewish lives.

If only, the prisoners wistfully mused, they could light a Hanukkah candle these nights. Although it’s ideal to light an additional candle each night of the eight-day holiday, Jewish tradition’s requirement is satisfied with the lighting of a single candle.

One prisoner offered that he had a bit of margarine saved from his daily ration. That could serve as oil. And wicks? Some of those present began to unravel threads from their uniforms.

But a menorah. They needed a menorah.

With a smile (at least I imagine he smiled; he was a happy person) my father-in-law took out his spoon. Within moments, the small group was lighting their Hanukkah “candle,” reciting the requisite blessings. The prisoners stood transfixed, immersed in their thoughts of Hanukkah gone by.

The small flame also kindled a glimmer of hope. As the prisoners recited the blessing referring to the miracles wrought by God “in those days,” but also “at this time,” they understood that, indeed, “at this time,” what they needed was a miracle.

Nonreligious Jewish inmates, too, stood nearby and watched the luminous moment in the darkness of their concentration camp lives.

My father-in-law merited personal miracles, surviving that dark time — a harrowing story in itself, which he chronicled in his book “Destined to Survive.” And throughout his life, he brimmed with gratitude for having been graced with a postwar life, and for the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren he was able to see.

The photocopy depicting the spoon is now in a new house, far from where I live. But each year I think of it and am reminded of my father-in-law’s resilience and faith, and of the resilience and faith of the Jewish people.

(Rabbi Avi Shafran writes widely in Jewish and general media and blogs at rabbishafran.com. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)

Hanukkah 2024: Festival of Darkness and Light

Stephen F. Eisenman

 December 31, 2024
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Pietro Santi Bartoli, Judaicus Triumphus, from Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Veteres arcus augustorum triumphis insignes (Rome: Ad templum Sanctae Mariae de Pace, 1690).

Hanukkah v. Christmas

In liberal, Jewish households, Hanukkah has always been something of an embarrassment. First, there’s the unavoidable truth that Hannukah is no match for Christmas. Liturgically speaking, it’s a minor holiday; it ranks somewhere between Simchat Torah and Tu Bishvat, neither of which most Gentiles (and many Jews) have even heard of. So, efforts by assimilated Jews since the 19^th century, and especially the 1950s, to treat Hanukkah like Christmas are a stretch. The birthday of God (even if you are a non-believer) in 1 CE is objectively speaking a much bigger deal than the re-dedication by the victorious Maccabees (Judean rebels) of the second temple of Jerusalem (long since destroyed) in the 2^nd century BCE.

Second, there’s the matter of the name. “Hanukkah” — in Hebrew, “חנך‎”, meaning “to dedicate” — only gained its association with the ancient temple and Winter holiday in the 19^th century.  Prior to that, the commemoration was known as the Festival of Lights, according to the Roman chronicler, Titus Flavius Josephus. That term, (of obscure origin), may have prompted the legend – taught in every Hebrew school — that oil in the lamps of the newly rededicated temple miraculously lasted eight nights instead of the expected one. That’s why there are eight nights of Hanukkah and why the menorah holds eight candles plus the Shamash (“שֶׁמֶשׁ”) or “helper candle”.  It’s not exactly a loaves-and-fishes, or Santa Claes coming down the chimney miracle, but good enough. And it aided generations of Jewish parents teach their children a lesson in thrift: “Turn off the lights when you leave a room!”

There is much more to be said about the deficiency of Hannukah compared to Christmas (the music!), but this season, like the last one, there’s a third factor that far dominates the others: How can ekht Jews, in Yiddish Menschen, celebrate a holiday that honors an ancient victory when the Jewish military in Israel continues to rain death and destruction upon their Palestinian brothers and sisters?   What Jew with a moral compass can challenge the Catholic Pope’s recent chastisement of Israel, following an airstrike in Jabaliathat killed 12 members of one family, including  seven children: “Yesterday, children were bombed. This is cruelty, not war.”  After spokespersons for the Israeli government protested Francis’s words, the pope amplified his condemnation: “And with pain, I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty, of the children being machine-gunned, of the bombings of schools and hospitals. What cruelty!” Shade on any Jew – Israeli, American or other – who still supports Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians. May their Hanukkahs be dark!

A deliberate decision to kill civilians

We learned this week from an investigation by The New York Times, that in the days after the Oct. 7 Hamas outrages, Israeli leaders specifically changed military rules of engagement to allow up to 100 civilians to be killed for every high-ranking Hamas militant targeted, and 20 civilians for every rank-and-file militant. The latter weren’t necessarily armed or uniformed, billeted in barracks, or travelling in convoys. They might be seasonal fighters, recently mobilized, or even just lookouts or money changers – in effect, Hamas affiliated gofers. When killed, they might have been in bed with their wives, seated at family dinners, or playing with their children. A successful attack is one that kills the target and inevitably everyone near them – right up to the predetermined limit.

In practice, many more Palestinian civilians are killed than even the high number permitted by Israeli officials. The bomb that killed Ibrahim Biari, a senior Hamas commander in October 2023, according to the Times, also killed 125 others, including many small children. Israeli government war protocols mean that 25 of that number were innocents. Which 25?  The first or the last 25 dead? The youngest or the oldest 25 victims?

In addition to the deaths-per-strike ratio, the Israeli military established a civilian death cap of 500 per day, in effect a quota. If on Tuesday, 499 non-combatants are killed, medals may be awarded. If on Wednesday, the number is 501, an official expression of regret is due, like the following, issued by Netanyahu after the bombing of a tent camp at Tel al-Sultan in Rafah in southern Gaza in May 2024, setting it ablaze: “Despite our utmost efforts not to harm innocent civilians, last night, there was a tragic mistake. We are investigating the incident and will obtain a conclusion because this is our policy.” An IDF spokesman quickly walked back even that limited mea culpa, claiming without evidence, that the fire was caused by munitions stored in the tent camp. The more likely source of secondary explosions was cooking gas cylinders.

Subsequent investigations revealed that Israel knew full well that the camp was densely packed with refugees, and that its U.S. made GBU-39 bombs propelled lethal shrapnel and metal fragments as far as 600 meters. It’s also now clear that according to its revised rules of engagement, the deaths of as many as 200 civilians was considered a fair cost for whacking Yassin Rabia and Khaled Nagar, two senior Hamas officials, on May 26, 2024. In fact, the Israeli military and civilian leadership might have congratulated itself; that bomb killed only 150.

Hamas militants have been killed by munitions grossly disproportionate to their purpose. Unguided 2,000-pound bombs, supplied by the U.S., have leveled entire apartment buildings. The consequence is an average daily death rate in Gaza higher than any other conflict this century. At least 10% of the pre-war Gaza population of 2.3 million has been killed or wounded, or else is missing or detained by  Israeli security. Some detainees have been tortured. A third of the total casualties in Gaza are children. A report prepared by the EU representative for human rights Olof Skoog, (obtained by The Intercept) determined that because the Gaza death toll matches the regions demographic breakdown, indiscriminate attacks – war crimes — are occurring. If it were otherwise, a far greater percentage of young men than women and children would be dying.

 The Hanukkah blessing

This Hanukkah, my daughter Diane (aka Sarah, after the biblical matriarch) is visiting us from Pasadena, CA. We both recently fled in opposite directions; she west, to escape an abusive husband in Chicago; my wife Harriet and I east, to Norwich, U.K. to evade incipient American fascism.  We also left because we wanted to be closer to Harriet’s two daughters and her increasingly frail parents. On each night of Hanukkah – it commenced this year on December 25 — Sarah has lit the candles while I recited the single prayer I know:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה, יְיָ
אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ, מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם,
אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָֽׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֺתָיו
וְצִוָּֽנוּ לְהַדְלִיק נֵר שֶׁל חֲנֻכָּה.

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tsivanu l’hadlik ner shel Hanukkah.

The blessing starts, like most Jewish prayers, with an encomium to the master on high: “Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all…”  (I’ve always hated the bowing and scraping in Jewish prayers, but the blessing gets better) “…who honors us with moral action”.  Mitzvot ( מִצְוָה) is usually translated “commandments,” but my version isn’t wrong, and it allows us to embrace the righteous obligation to justice felt by generations of Jewish dissidents and activists. Hanukkah for me is a link between the past and a redeemed or post-revolutionary future.

The candles Sarah lights are the cheap kind I grew up with — corkscrewed and fragile, fast burning and messy. They leave droplets of green, blue, purple or orange wax on our steel and brass menorah and Formica countertop. After about 20 minutes, they flicker out. Each night, I’ve watched the last candle flame die. Sometimes, it’s the Shamash, the light that delivers light to the others.

It’s unclear now, when the Palestinians in Gaza will be delivered from their torment — their second Nakba — or who will help bring them the light of peace and justice. But given their resilience, they will in time recover and thrive as a community. The Jewish people also suffered a scourge – a Holocaust even greater in scale — and yet survived and prospered, both as a global diaspora and in eretz Israel, historic Palestine. But how will Israeli Jews and their supporters in the U.S. ever overcome the shame they must feel – if not now then soon — for what they have wrought in Gaza?

Stephen F. Eisenman is emeritus professor at Northwestern University. His latest book, with Sue Coe, is titled “The Young Person’s Guide to American Fascism,” and is forthcoming from OR Books. He can be reached at s-eisenman@northwestern.edu