Judaism (and Hanukkah) in Light of History

I attended a modern Orthodox Jewish Day School from 1st through 8th grade, and then a similar high school. The secular education was quite good, and the Jewish part – at least from the standpoint of “dos and don’ts” – wasn’t bad either. But something was missing, although I didn’t realize what until I went to college and took a course in Jewish History. For me, that’s when everything changed as I came to realize that there’s a difference between “knowing the religious rules” and “understanding the historical connection.”

Back then, I learned the biblical stories; what a Jew is commanded to do; and how to study the sacred books. The approach was hyper-rational and didactic: this is what the Bible states; that is what the Talmud’s Rabbis argued. The Bible’s main characters were heroic (although each with flaws as well), the Talmudic rabbis intellectually brilliant – but they all existed as if in a socio-cultural vacuum.

One central example: the Talmud (including the Mishnah) covers 500 years of history in the Land of Israel and Babylon, but not once were we taught that “this Rabbi lived in the 2nd century CE in Palestine” (the name given by the Romans), whereas “that Rabbi lived in Babylon in the 5th century CE.” Knowing the specific “century” is actually quite important as it’s critical for understanding the political, social and cultural milieu in which these rabbis worked and argued – and the impact of their environment on their argumentation and law rulings.

In other words, Judaism was taught cut and dry, without much emotional resonance. Yes, I knew about the destruction of the two Temples – but more as a Fast day (the 9th of Av) with some specific prayers, than any flesh and blood detail about who, why, and how those catastrophes occurred.

Indeed, the word “history” never arose in my 12 years of education and based on discussions with some relatives and friends’ children, that’s still the case, at least in the Orthodox world (certainly among the ultra-Orthodox). The Jewish calendar was/is taught as a litany of holidays and commandments, with little historical context except regarding who killed us and/or destroyed this or that Temple. Even worse, any event that did not have a place in the Jewish calendar was simply invisible: the 8th century BCE exile of ten (!) tribes, never to be seen again; Byzantine Emperor Theodosius’s persecution of the Jews in the Holy Land; periodic, Christian campaigns of mass conversion of Jews; Crusader pogroms through the mid-Middle Ages; the Spanish Inquisition; Chmielnetzki massacre of Polish and Ukrainian Jews in 1648; the false messianic, Shabtai Zvi mass movement (most of Western European Jewry following his lead); and other significant, lugubrious events.

Of course, Jewish history is full of other, more positive (or “neutral”) developments, and these too were never mentioned: post-Temple Jewish Babylonian society with the “Rosh Golah” (Diaspora Head) opposite the Yeshiva rabbis; the various Jewish mass migrations from East to West, setting up huge, new communities in North Africa and later in Europe; the literary and commercial effervescence and affluence of Middle Eastern and Spanish Jewry under Moslem authority; the Jewish Enlightenment (e.g. Moses Mendelssohn).

Confronting all this in my college course – the good, the bad, and the really ugly things in Jewish history – was a wrenching experience. When the emotional dust settled, I had a much greater appreciation of Jewish history. Far more important, I now had a greater visceral attachment to the Jewish people and my heritage. Judaism wasn’t only 613 Commandments; it was the product of a 3000-year journey from depths to heights and back again – over and over – each time with the Jews exhibiting the highest level of fortitude and adaptability in the face of some of the greatest challenges that any nation has ever faced. And still the Jews endure(d). Based on the news these past few years (and days), not much seems to have changed.

We are now in the “holiday season.” Why does Christmas fall on the 25th of December? For that matter, why is Hanukkah always celebrated around this time of the year? (The Jewish calendar is lunar so that the “civic date” shifts by a few weeks back and forth every annum.) After all, the Maccabee revolt against the Seleucids went on for seven years; however, Hanukkah’s date does not celebrate the revolt but rather the rededication of the Temple when its Menorah was relit. The answer to both these questions is the same: throughout the ancient (pagan) world the 25th of December was celebrated as the first day that it was possible to see that the sun actually “regenerating” i.e., until Dec. 21 the days got shorter and shorter – only four days later could it be discerned that the days started getting longer and “the world was saved.”

That’s why Hanukkah is celebrated mainly as the holiday of LIGHTS!! That’s why Jesus was (supposedly) born on that day, as the harbinger of a “new era.” Both these religions understood that to survive they had to “piggyback” on the pagan world’s age-old holiday festivals.

Does this “cheapen” Hanukkah? Not at all. It is but one example of many as to how Judaism over the millennia adapted to the exigencies of the time, turning something “unholy Gentile” (a superstitious belief in the Sun’s demise) into a holy celebration of national independence and religious rededication. (The Christians, in their completely different way, did this too. And if already on the topic: why is New Year’s on Jan. 1? That’s eight days after Dec. 25 – when Jewish Jesus had his brit milah [circumcision]! Christians too need to understand their religious connection to Judaism – not just to paganism.)

Moreover, the 2nd century CE Rabbis (almost three centuries after the Maccabean Revolt) decided to expunge the heroics by not even including the Book of Maccabees in the Torah canon. Why not? Because after the military debacles of the two Jewish Revolts (Temple destruction in 68 CE and Bar-Kochba disaster in 135 CE when hundreds of thousands were killed by the Roman legions), the Rabbis decided “enough was enough.” Hanukkah was to be celebrated exclusively as a “spiritual” holiday.

In sum, a true emotional connection to one’s people – whether religious or national – can only arise from a deeper and especially wider historical comprehension of who they were and why i.e., what our forebears had to contend with. It is only through such an understanding of the past that we will be better able to deal with the newer challenges that our people face.