How does each Jew become a Judah the Maccabee?
Chanukah lights, in one sense, are wax and fire, or oil and fire. In another sense — a totally different light.
These burning lights consume the dross of history, yielding a pure flame. A purity based on a totally different history.
The history of Chanukah boils down to two points: the willingness to fight, and the willingness to die.
To fight is the fight of the few against the mighty. Of Judah the Maccabee and his few soldiers against the Syrian-Hellenistic empire.
The death is the death of martyrdom. Of Hannah and her sevens sons, defying the desecration of the Torah demanded by Antiochus IV Epiphanes.
Judah the Maccabee has much to teach about placing faith above resources, about fighting against odds.
Israel, surely, has learned the lesson and, clearly, the context of Judah’s lesson is military. But for those not challenged by this level of violence, the courage of Judah Maccabee is applicable to anything that would destroy Judaism. Which is just what Antiochus and his Syrian-Hellenistic empire sought to do.
As is always the case in Jewish history, the battle was fought on more than one front. We are the people of the book and when we need to pick up the sword we do not lay down the book. When we fight in Israel with weaponry we also mount resistance through Torah study. When we fought the Nazis in the ghettos of Europe, also against all odds, we also resisted spiritually, by studying and keeping Torah in the most oppressive of conditions.
This, too, is rooted in the history of Chanukah. The same Antiochus, who waged battle against Judah the Maccabee and his forces, is the villain in the story of Hannah and her seven sons. The essentials of the story are simple enough. Antiochus commanded each son sequentially to eat swine’s flesh — forbidden by the Torah — and as each son refused, each was slain after horrible torture.
The king — just like the Nazis after him — could not believe the Jews’ allegiance to G-d and Torah. The king himself begged Hannah to ask her youngest son to eat the swine, rather than “force” the king’s men to martyr him, too. The incomparably courageous Hannah urged her son to follow the faith of his martyred brothers. He did so, and then she, too, died.
There are different versions as to how she died, and even as to what her name was, but the point of the story is clear. While oppressors know to strike at the heart of Jewish survival — the Jewish allegiance to Torah — the Jews know how to repulse the challenge. Alongside Judah’s military resistance, Hannah’s spiritual fortitude and discipline form the second point of the Chanukah story.
The two points are complementary. They both say: Fight for religious freedom when it is denied. Both Judah the Maccabee and Hannah and her seven sons did this. They each did it differently, but the legacy of both became the legacy of Chanukah.
Once the minority of Jews in Maccabean times stood up both militarily and ritually, the actual ceremony of Chanukah was a natural consequence. To rid the land of its anti-Jewish oppressors was to rededicate the holy Temple and carry on the ritual service therein. This is why Judah fought. This is why Hannah and her sons died. This is the end point of their trajectory. The rededication of the Temple was not the message of Chanukah, but the result of the message: courage, both militarily and ritually.
The lesson for Chanukah today, especially in the United States, is clear. We do not need to fight militarily for our lives, even as we face growing anti-Semitism. We do not need to die for our Torah, even as a few have. All of us, however, do face challenges that, in their own way, are as difficult as those faced by the ancient Jews of Judea.
Today, we are more subtly but still powerfully asked to abandon the Torah, to dismiss its teachings, often the very same teachings for which Hannah and her sons gave their lives. To light the Chanukah menorah is to rededicate our lives to Judah the Maccabee’s defense of the land of Israel and the right to practice Judaism in the land of Israel, and to Hannah’s and her son’s absolute faith in the immutability of G-d’s command to foreswear unkosher species.
Yes, the burning lights consume the dross of history, yielding a pure flame. It is expressed in one word: rededication. The celebration of Chanukah is itself rather easy. The holiday’s remembrance — what it really stands for — is, like the ancient Maccabean age, fraught with temptation. Back then, Hellenism would pull Jews away from the Torah. Today, the same. Back then, others would pull Jews away from their land of Israel. Today, the same. Today, each Jew must become his own Judah the Maccabee, his own Hannah, his own child of Hannah — his own totally different light. The challenge is as new as today and as old as time immemorial.
Copyright © 2022 by the Intermountain Jewish News
