Hanukkah: Judaism’s Bi-Polar Holiday

The upcoming holiday of Hanukkah is easily the most substantively confusing holiday in the Jewish calendar. Even worse, its confusion is not a mere theological or historical oddity. Rather, it has practical and political resonance to this day – indeed, especially these days!
First, its bi-polar nature. On the one hand, Hanukkah celebrates the fight of the Hasmoneans against the local (Jewish) assimilating Hellenists – and then military victory against the Seleucid Empire that came to the Hellenists’ aid. This was the Jewish nation’s first military victory in many centuries – a sure cause for celebration and future commemoration.

Then why did the Rabbis in the 2nd century CE try their best to downplay – even eliminate – any vestige of this military triumph? First, in setting the final parameters of all the books that would be included in the Bible they amazingly left out the Book of Maccabees (actually two separate books). In contrast to Yom Kippur (Book of Jonah), Purim (Megillat Esther), Tisha B’Av (Megillat Eicha), etc., Hanukkah is the only significant Jewish holiday that doesn’t have a specific reading attached to it! Moreover, the holiday’s main ritual (lighting the candles) was designed to focus on the miracle of the 8-day lighting in the Temple with only one day’s worth of olive oil. And then to top it all off, the haftorah (post-Torah reading) for Hanukkah’s Shabbat ends penultimately with the following verse: “Not through soldiers/might and not with force, but with my spirit says the Lord” (from Zechariah 4: 6).

What’s going on here? The answer is quite straightforward. When the Jews’ relative political sovereignty and/or internal religious autonomy are threatened, it is incumbent upon them to take up arms to protect and maintain these. However, if they are in a seriously weakened position politically or militarily, then trust and belief in God’s aid has to suffice.

For the Hasmoneans, the former was the case – so they fought their enemies with arms. For the Rabbis near the end of the 2nd century CE, there was little military choice after being crushed in 68 CE and the Temple destroyed – and then completely decimated during the Bar-Kochba rebellion (132-135 CE). At that point it had become clear that military force was counterproductive for Jewish survival – ergo their transmutation of Hanukkah from a military celebration to a theological one.

How is this ancient history relevant to today’s news? It explains the huge chasm between Israel’s ultra-Orthodox and the rest of Israeli society (including the mainstream Orthodox and religious “traditionalists”). Although the ultra-Orthodox reside in Israel, for them the state is merely another incarnation of all the non-Jewish political entities that they lived in over the past two millennia. In their eyes today (not during Israel’s War of Independence; see my post: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/haredi-army-service-it-already-happened-in-the-bible-and-in-1948/), the situation continues to be one of non-Jewish sovereignty, notwithstanding its quasi-Jewish character in their eyes. Thus, until the Messiah arrives – or until Israel becomes a true halakhic-centric state – the ultra-Orthodox approach (in Hanukkah terms) continues to be “theological spirit” over “forceful defense.”

The rest of Israeli society views the renaissance of Jewish sovereignty in the State of Israel as a return to the days of the Hasmoneans, in which military force took precedence over any theological (spiritual) considerations. Indeed, it was the Hasmoneans who first publicly espoused the cardinal principle of “pi’ku’ach ne’fesh” (saving life) taking precedence over the sabbath i.e., military self-defense was permissible (actually, mandatory) if attacked by one’s enemy, even on the weekly holy day. Here was a clear statement regarding physical survival being more important than spiritual survival – precisely because the former is the only way to guarantee the latter!

The ultra-Orthodox today claim the reverse: it is their “spiritual” Torah study in the yeshivot that guarantees the Jewish State’s physical existence. To be sure, they do have an historical precedent to lean on: Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai’s students surreptitiously smuggling him out of soon-to-be-destroyed Jerusalem in 68 CE, to establish the great center of post-Temple Torah learning in Yavneh (south-central Israel). But such an approach assumes that modern Israel cannot defend itself – a future self-fulfilling prophecy if they continue to refuse army service.

Hanukkah, therefore, is not merely “another Jewish holiday.” Rather, it is the clearest contemporary reminder and expression of the great socio-religious divide in Israel. From a long-term future perspective, no other issue holds a candle to it. Pun intended – but not a laughing matter at all.