Hanukkah is Not a Minor Holiday!
Hanukkah is not a minor holiday. I hereby raise it to the same status as Yom Kippur and Pesah! And, if you ask me, the food is better.
When we light the lights, we are celebrating the rededication of the Temple by the hands of the Maccabees. Even though the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, Hanukkah remains a holy festival because it is a celebration of Jewish continuity. Without the Maccabees and taking the Temple around 165 BCE Torah and ethical monotheism would have been lost forever.
The Hanukkah lights stand for Jewish history being able to move forward. The culture we celebrate when we light the lights is one unique to our own People and an intellectual history central and foundational to Western civilization. The many flames remind us of multiplicity in thinking and a culture of debate, Talmudic reasoning, Torah law as a system that develops over time like legal systems with biblical roots. No book of ancient theology or philosophy held what the Torah asserts: every individual is created in the image of the Divine. Striving for equality under the law is an entirely Jewish idea – the flame at the center of “being a light to nations.”
Some scholars hold that the Rabbis wanted to downplay the holiday by focusing only on the miracle of the oil lasting eight days. But our liturgy indicates that we are conscious of the truly miraculous nature of our history. A small army of committed Jews defended our homeland and maintained monotheism – the very foundation of Jewish and Western Civilization. They did not allow the Greek mythological or pantheistic system to displace the textual and Temple traditions of our People.
The Maccabees would not be the end of Jewish history, but without them, there would not have been a next chapter in Jewish history. When we light the Hanukkah lamps we remember their contribution to the life of our People, in that time and in our day – as the blessing goes.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Bolton