In short, Hanukkah is as powerful a commemoration as it is today because it responds to a host of factors pertinent to contemporary Jewish history and life. Poignantly, telling a story of persecution and then redemption, Hanukkah today provides a historical paradigm that can help modern Jews think about the Holocaust and the emergence of Zionism. Hanukkah, with its bright decorations, songs, and family- and community-focused celebrations, also fulfills American Jews’ need to reengage disaffected Jews and to keep Jewish children excited about Judaism. Hanukkah today responds to Jews’ desire to see their history as consequential, as reflecting the value of religious freedom that Jews share with all other Americans. The point is that even as the holiday’s prior iterations reflected the distinctive needs of successive ages, so Jews today have reinterpreted Hanukkah in light of contemporary circumstances – a point that is detailed in religion scholar Dianne Ashton’s book, “Hanukkah in America.”Īshton demonstrates while Hanukkah has evolved in tandem with the extravagance of the American Christmas season, there is much more to this story. How then to understand what happened to Hanukkah in the past hundred years, during which it has achieved prominence in Jewish life, both in America and around the world? Throughout the medieval period, however, Hanukkah remained a minor Jewish festival. The ninth candle in the Hanukkiah is used to light the others. This is symbolized by the kindling of an eight-branched candelabra (“Menorah” or “Hanukkiah”), with one candle lit on the holiday’s first night and an additional candle added each night until, on the final night of the festival, all eight branches are lit. From that period on, rather than directly commemorating the Maccabees’ victory, Hanukkah celebrated God’s miracle. The earliest version of this story appears in the Talmud, in a document completed in the sixth century A.D. Instead, they said, Hanukkah should be seen as commemorating a miracle that occurred during the Maccabees’ rededication of the temple: The story now told was how a jar of temple oil sufficient for only one day had sustained the temple’s eternal lamp for a full eight days, until additional ritually appropriate oil could be produced. In this context, rabbis rethought Hanukkah’s origins as the celebration of a military victory. This would lead to God’s intervention in history to restore the Jewish people’s control over their own land and destiny. What was required, rabbis asserted, was not battle but perfect observance of God’s moral and ritual law. In response, a new ideology deemphasized the idea that Jews should or could change their destiny through military action. War no longer seemed an effective solution to the Jews’ tribulations on the stage of history. As a result of the second revolt, the Jewish homeland was devastated and countless Jews were put to death. The first of these revolts ended in the destruction of the Second Jerusalem Temple, the preeminent center of Jewish worship, which had stood for 600 years. 133-135, the Jews mounted passionate revolts to rid their land of this foreign and oppressing power. By now, Rome controlled the land of Israel. The Maccabees’ descendants – the Hasmonean dynasty – routinely violated their own Jewish law and tradition.Įven more significantly, the following centuries witnessed the devastation that would be caused when Jews tried again to accomplish what the Maccabees had done. The military triumph, however, was short-lived. Hanukkah, meaning “dedication,” marked this military victory with a celebration that lasted eight days and was modeled on the festival of Tabernacles (Sukkot) that had been banned by Antiochus. They captured Jerusalem from Antiochus’s control, removed from the Jerusalem Temple symbols of pagan worship that Antiochus had introduced and restarted the sacrificial worship, ordained by God in the Hebrew Bible, that Antiochus had violated. The Maccabees revolted against this persecution. In 168 B.C., Antiochus outlawed Jewish practice and forced Jews to adopt pagan rituals and assimilate into Greek culture.
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