Chanukah celebrates the successful nationalist uprising against the dominant assimilationist culture, possibly the first of its kind. In many ways, it resembles the separatist struggles of the French-Canadians against the English-Canadians in Joan of Quebec. Both are driven by fear that the national culture will disappear under the pressure to assimilate. Both are inspired by deep religious convictions. While there were earlier wars fought against conquering oppressors, Chanukah marks the first time in history, to my knowledge, that a war was prosecuted against a dominant culture that sought to be inclusive rather than oppressive.
For those who wish to look more deeply into the light of the eight candles, here is the true story of Chanukah.
The Greek Ideal: Homogeneous Culture
The
Kingdom of Israel had been destroyed by a policy of annihilation through
assimilation on the part of the Assyrians. The Kingdom of Judah, including the Beth
Hamikdash (Holy Temple), was pillaged by
the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar who took Judah captive en masse. Then Cyrus
the Mede conquered Babylonia.[1]
Judaism
flourished under Cyrus[2]
and the Persian Empire. That empire was a model of what is best about a
multicultural state. They encouraged each religion to maintain its integrity
and contributed funds to the rebuilding of temples, including the Beth
Hamikdash. Jews associated mostly with
other Jews, yet felt great loyalty to the State. They paid taxes, flourished in
business, and volunteered for military service. Jewish culture blossomed: the
synagogue, the Sanhedrin (Rabbinical Court), and the widespread learning of
Torah (Bible) date back to those times. Many Jews did not return to Judah when
Cyrus encouraged the rebuilding of the Temple. Many preferred to remain in
Persia, where they continued to build the first great diaspora culture.
In
contrast to the multicultural Persian Empire, Alexander brought monocultural
Hellenism in 332 BCE. Hellenism was universal and inclusive: all nations were
welcomed as Greeks. As conquerors go, the Greeks were nice guys. They did not
plunder and spoil. Instead they encouraged economic growth and unity. After
Alexander, Judah was governed by the Egyptian Greeks (the Ptolemies) until 200
BCE, and thereafter by the Syrian Greeks (the Seleucids). The Greeks brought
heretofore unheard of prosperity to the Jews. They encouraged commerce, and
facilitated trade within the Empire. Greek became the universal language (The
Ptolemies subsidized the translation of the Torah into Greek, the Septuagint.)
Jews studied Greek philosophy, sculpture, and architecture. Jews loved Greek
sports, theater, music, and poetry. A well-bred Jew would have a Greek name,
attend the Gymnasium, and travel widely throughout the Greek empire.
A
reform movement emerged in Greek Judah, in many ways similar to the Reform
movement that would later emerge in Germany as a result of the Enlightenment.
The reformers were by-and-large upper class, well-bred, intellectual Greek
Jews. They reasoned that the Torah was full of fables and out-of-date laws
geared to a more primitive, less civilized people.[3] Now that they were able to use their
new-found science of Reason, they were capable of shaping the Law to fit the
ethical and moral needs of their culture -- of picking up where God left off
with the “less progressed” Israelites. They did not want to completely
disregard the Law, but only to modernize it -- bring it into line with the way
Jews live in the modern world. They wanted to be allowed to belong to a world
that wanted nothing more of them than that they belong to it. Was this so bad?
Now the Greeks also had a big, general idea on offer:
universalist culture. Alexander had created his empire as an ideal: he wanted
to fuse the races and he ‘ordered all men to regard the world as their country
. . . good men as their kin, bad men as foreigners’. Isocrates argued that ‘the
designation Hellene is no longer a matter of descent but of attitude.’[4]
Syncretism
As
James Frazier was to re-discover over two millennia later[5],
there are many similarities among ancient religions. There is a Flood story,
for example, in Greek, Aztec, and Babylonian mythology. The ritual expulsion of
scapegoats (or other animal that carried away the sins of a people) was pandemic
(India, Polynesia, Egypt, California Indians, Medieval Europe, Abbysinia,
Albania, Peru). Also, the offering of first fruits (Madagascar, India,
Indonesia, Fiji, Samoa, Natchez Indians, Old Prussia, Rome, England, Russia,
France, Sweden). One needn’t look very hard to find gods that served parallel
functions across cultures.
Most
of the nations conquered by the Greeks had a god of resurrection: Osiris
(Egypt), Adonis (Syria), Thammuz (Babylonia), Attis (Phrygia), Dionysis
(Greece); Goddesses of reproduction: Isis (Egypt), Astarte (Syria), Istar
(Babylonia), Cybele (Phrygia), Aphrodite or Demeter (Greece); Sun gods: Apollo,
Ra, Helios; etc. These similarities were well known to the Greeks and were
commented upon by Herodotus as early as the fifth century BCE. It seemed to them
that all religions and all people were the same; that all men, if enlightened, would realize they were brothers.
The
Greeks were only too happy to conflate the Egyptian Ammon, the Persian
Ahura-Mazda, the Greek Zeus and the Jewish Jahweh. They wanted the Jews to join
them in their humanistic culture and humanistic god.
The
War Against Syncretism
In
175 BCE, the new Seleucid monarch Antiochus Epiphanes allied himself with the
Jewish reformers. Jason was installed as High Priest. Jason diverted Temple
funds to community activities (like the Olympic Games, and plays). He raised taxes, and gave military
support to Antiochus.
Impatient
with Jason’s progress, Antiochus replaced Jason with Menelaus in 171 BCE.
Menelaus raised taxes still further and built a Greek acropolis replete with a
hippodrome (racetrack), a stadium, and a gymnasium. Menelaus, backed by the
Jewish reformers, instituted secular law. As a final touch, he built a statue
of Zeus in the Temple, and opened it up to ecumenical worship.
In
166 BCE, the un-Hellenized unwashed masses revolted against the reformers. Led
by Matisyahu (a.k.a. Matthias) Hasmon and his five sons (who were called the Maccabees, from a Greek word for hammer) they drove the Seleucids out of Jerusalem
after two years of fighting. Matisyahu's son, Judah (a.k.a. Judas), became the new
high priest at the rededication of the Temple, which we celebrate as Chanukah.
Rededication of the Temple
The
temple was purified and rededicated in a ceremony lasting eight days. Judah
Maccabee declared an eight-day celebration to be analogous to the temple dedication
ceremonies of Solomon and Hezekiah. Only a couple of months earlier, they were
forced to celebrate the eight-day Feast of Tabernacles (Succoth) cowering in the Judean hills (in II Maccabees,
Chanukah is called the Camping Out Festival). They saw this as a celebration to
make up for the lost opportunity to truly celebrate the eight-day Succoth holiday. They ended their
celebration with the lighting of torches reminiscent of Simchas Torah (the last day of Succoth). The festival was called Tabernacles and Fire,
because fire for the altar had descended from heaven at the altar dedications
of Moses, Solomon, and Hezekiah.[6]
Judah
Maccabee declared it a festival for all time, and it was celebrated at first
with much the same spirit that Americans celebrate Independence Day. However,
by the end of the Hasmonean dynasty it was barely remembered. By the first
century CE, Josephus did not know why it was called the Festival of Lights, and
in the second century, no mention of it whatever is included in the Mishnah (the
commentary on Torah laws redacted in the 2nd century CE).[7]
The
Magillat Taanit (Scroll of Fasts)
written by the Tanaim (Rabbis who worked on the Mishnah) in the first century mentions the holiday as one of
36 on which it is forbidden to fast. The Tanaim confirm the explanation of I and II Maccabees:
In the days of the Greeks when the Hasmoneans entered
the Temple they had seven torches. Why eight? When Moses dedicated the temple
in the desert, he made it a 7 day holiday. It took 8 days to restore the
temple.
Gemarah
By the fifth century, the Talmudic rabbis, the
Amoraim[8], mention
Chanukah in the Gemarah but try to
strip it of its political significance. This may have been politically correct
at a time when to be politically incorrect was a mistake punishable by death.
In addition, the Hasmoneans had eventually become an embarrassment. The holiday
was not well known, since they lead off their discussion with “What is
Chanukah?”
What is Chanukah? For our Rabbis taught: On the 25th
of Kislev commence the days of Chanukah which are eight ... For when the Greeks
entered the Temple, they defiled all the oils therein, and when the Hasmonean
dynasty prevailed against and defeated them, they made search and found only
one cruse of oil which lay with the seal of the High Priest, but which
contained sufficient oil for one day’s lighting only; yet a miracle was wrought
therein and they lit the lamp therewith for eight days. The following year
these days were appointed a festival with the recital of Hallel and
thanksgiving.[9]
Mitzvah of Publicizing the Miracle
It
was then politically expedient to not too openly
discuss among gentiles the true meaning of the holiday. The miracle was not a legend about some
long-burning oil, but the miracle of survival among gentiles
who would have destroyed the Jewish people by forcible assimilation.
In
Israel now, the holiday is openly celebrated for its true meaning with giant
Chanukah lamps blazing atop the Knesset and other public buildings. The Amoraim
evidently understood the true meaning of the holiday, although they could not
openly discuss it.
The
display of the Chanukah lights was an act of public defiance and hope. They
wanted Jews to understand that the miracle was not in the lights but in the
public display of the lights:
If the lighting fulfills the precept, one may light
from lamp to lamp [as is done with the holy menorah in the Temple] but if the
placing of the lamp fulfills the precept, one may not light from lamp to lamp.
For the scholars propounded: Does the kindling or the placing constitute the
precept? ... It was stated: Rab said: one must not light from lamp to lamp.[10]
The
passage continues to discuss that the lamp should be kindled and displayed outdoors,
and if there is a decision between the Chanukah light and the Sanctification of
the Day, “The Chanukah lamp is preferable on account of advertising the
miracle.”[11]
[1] The history
that follows is gleaned from Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (1987) and H.H. Ben-Sasson, A History of
the Jewish People (1976)
[2] God’s
annointed, or Messiah according to Isaiah 45:1
[3] Robert
Nisbet traces the origin of the Idea of Progress to the Greeks, History of
the Idea of Progress (New York 1980).
[4] Isocrates, Panegyr, 4:50; as quoted in Johnson, A History of
the Jews (New York 1987), 101.
[5] Frazer,
James George, Sir, The Golden Bough
(London 1890)
[6] I Maccabees (4:36-59), II Maccabees
(1:18-36, 2:12,10:1-5)
[7]
Encyclopaedia Judaica, “Chanukah”
[8] Rabbis who
worked on the Gemarah. The Gemarah is the commentary on the Mishnah redacted in
the fifth century. It is often referred to as the Talmud, which is the
combination of the Mishnah and the Gemarah. The Talmud is a series of opinions
that teach Jews how to practice the laws of the Torah and the traditions of the
Jews.
[9] Talmud tractate Shabbat 21b-22a
[10] Shabbat 22b
[11] Shabbat 23b
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