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Every December, Jews celebrate the eight-day festival of Hanukkah, perhaps the best-known and certainly the most visible Jewish holiday.
While critics sometimes identify Christmas as giving rise to the prevalence of Hanukkah kitsch in America today, which one might refer to as Hanukkah kitsch, this assessment ignores the social and religious significance of Hanukkah within Judaism.
Let’s consider the origins and evolution of Hanukkah over the past 2,000 years.
early history
Although it is 2,200 years old, Hanukkah is one of Judaism’s newest holidays, an annual Jewish celebration that does not even appear in the Hebrew Bible.
The historical event that is the basis of Hanukkah is instead told in the post-biblical books of the Maccabees, which appear in the Catholic Biblical canon, but are not even considered part of the Bible by Jews and most Protestant denominations.
Based on the Greco-Roman model of celebrating military victories, Hanukkah was established in 164 BC to celebrate the victory of the Maccabees, a ragtag army of Jews, against the far more powerful army of the Syrian king Antiochus IV.
In 168 BC, Antiochus outlawed Jewish practice and forced the Jews to adopt pagan rituals and assimilate into Greek culture.
The Maccabees rebelled against this oppression. He captured Jerusalem from Antiochus’ control, removed from the Jerusalem Temple the symbols of pagan worship that Antiochus had introduced, and reintroduced the sacrificial worship prescribed by God in the Hebrew Bible, which Antiochus had violated.
Hanukkah, meaning “dedication”, marked this military victory with a celebration that lasted eight days and was based on the Festival of Tabernacles (Sukkot) which Antiochus had banned.
How Hanukkah evolved
However, the military victory was short-lived. The descendants of the Maccabees – the Hasmonean dynasty – regularly violated their own Jewish law and tradition.
Even more importantly, the following centuries saw the devastation that occurred when the Jews tried again to accomplish what the Maccabees had done. By now, Rome had taken control of the Land of Israel. In AD 68-70 and again in AD 133-135, the Jews led passionate rebellions to liberate their land from this foreign and oppressive power.
The first of these rebellions ended with the destruction of the major center of Jewish worship, the Second Jerusalem Temple, which had stood for 600 years. As a result of the second revolt, the Jewish homeland was devastated and countless Jews were executed.
On the stage of history, war no longer appears to be an effective solution to the suffering of the Jews.
In response, a new ideology emphasized the idea that Jews should or could change their destiny through military action. The rabbis insisted that what was required was not war but complete observance of God’s moral and ritual law. This would lead to God’s intervention in history to restore control of the Jewish people over their land and destiny.
About the author
Alan Avery-Peck is the Kraft-Hyatt Professor of Jewish Studies at the College of the Holy Cross. This article is republished from Conversation Under Creative Commons license. read the original article,
In this context, the rabbis reconsidered the origins of Hanukkah as a celebration of military victory. Instead, he said, Hanukkah should be seen as a commemoration of the miracle that occurred during the rededication of the Temple by the Maccabees: The story now told is that a jar of Temple oil sufficient for just one day sustained the Temple’s eternal lamp for a full eight days, until additional ritually appropriate oil could be produced.
The earliest version of this story appears in the Talmud, a document completed in the sixth century AD. From that period, instead of directly celebrating the victory of the Maccabees, Hanukkah celebrated God’s miracle.
It is symbolized by the burning of an eight-branched candelabra (“menorah” or “Hanukkah”), with one candle lit on the first night of the holiday and an additional candle added each night until all eight branches are lit on the final night of the festival. The ninth candle at Hanukkah is used to light the others.
However, throughout the medieval period, Hanukkah remained a minor Jewish festival.
What does Hanukkah mean today?
How then to understand what has happened to Hanukkah over the past hundred years, during which it has gained prominence in Jewish life in America and around the world?
The point is that even though prior iterations of the holiday reflected the specific needs of successive eras, Jews today have reinterpreted Hanukkah in light of contemporary circumstances – a point detailed in religion scholar Dianne Ashton’s book, “Hanukkah in America.”
Ashton shows that while Hanukkah has evolved in tandem with the extravagance of the American Christmas season, there is much more to the story.
Hanukkah today responds to the desire of Jews to see their history as consequential, reflecting the value of religious freedom that Jews share with all other Americans. Hanukkah, with its bright decorations, songs, and family- and community-focused celebrations, also meets the need of American Jews to reunite disaffected Jews and keep Jewish children excited about Judaism.
Poignantly, telling the story of persecution and then liberation, Hanukkah today provides a historical paradigm that can help modern Jews think about the Holocaust and the emergence of Zionism.
In short, Hanukkah is an equally powerful commemoration today because it responds to so many factors related to contemporary Jewish history and life.
Over two millennia, Hanukkah has evolved to tell the story of the Maccabees in ways that meet the specific needs of successive generations of Jews. Each generation tells a story appropriate to the timeless values of Judaism, but also to the specific cultural forces, ideologies, and experiences of each period.