Why Hanukkah Is Far More Important Than You Think

In recent decades, Hanukkah has come to occupy a nice, light place in the Jewish calendar; it’s fun, it requires no real observance and it’s seen by most non-Jews as a kind of Jewish counterpart to Christmas. I think most secular Jews feel that way, too. 

But I think that has obscured just how significant an event the Maccabean Revolt was – and how it wasn’t just an inspiring story of underdogs against empire; it’s one of the most important turning points in the last 2,500 years of human history. 

And it began with a singular moment. Not Judah, but his father, Mattathias. 

While Judah is the popular hero of the Hanukkah story, it  was his father whose initial act of defiance kicked off the Jewish uprising against Antiochus, refusing a royal order to make a sacrifice in the town of Mode’in, killing a countryman who had deigned to comply and slaying the king’s messenger, too. 

“Let everyone who is zealous for the law and who stands by the covenant follow me!” He cried, as the 1 Maccabees account tells us. 

Of course, the order to sacrifice on a strange altar was only part of a broader devolution of Jewish identity that had already been going on in Judea, There was already internal discord within the Jewish community, with many calling for a “covenant with the Gentiles” and blaming their separation for “many evils,” according to the 1 Maccabbees account. 

“They built a gymnasium in Jerusalem according to the Gentile custom. They disguised their circumcision and abandoned the holy covenant. They allied themselves with the Gentiles and sold themselves to wrongdoing.”

It was in this exciting climate that Antiochus plundered the Temple, taking away the altar, the holy vessels and “hidden treasures.” Two years later, he sent a rather devastating military force to Jerusalem, ultimately making a broader proclamation that “his whole kingdom should be one people and abandon their particular customs.”

You see, there was already a rupture in the community; the Jewish soul in Judea was fragile and fractured. And “many Israelites delighted in [Antiochus’] religion; they sacrificed to idols and profaned the Sabbath.”

It was in this climate that came Antiochus’ degree; and made Mattathias’ first move even more important, lighting a new fire of identity and spirit among the people. Because they didn’t just need a rebellion — they needed a new will to fight, a new national identity. And that’s what Mattathias and his sons so crucially provided. 

I was listening this week to an old episode of the wonderful BBC podcast “In Our Time” focused on the story of the Maccabees, when one of the panelists, Tessa Rajak, made a rather poignant suggestion. 

Rajak, Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at the University of Reading, suggested that the Jewish revolt against Antiochus wasn’t just a nice story worth celebrating over chocolate coins and doughnuts. 

It was a point in history that, without which, not only would Judaism have been largely erased, but Christianity would never have existed. 

Indeed, if Antiochus’ efforts at Jewish erasure in Judea had succeeded, there would have been no nation from which Jesus could have emerged; just a nation of Hellenists overseen by a remote king. Now it’s true that, at this time, Jews already had a sizable diaspora, particularly in the Greek-speaking world, from Crete to Alexandria. But if the pole of Jerusalem had fallen, if the land of Judea had been wiped of its Jewish identity, what other strange fates would have befallen the Jews? An alternate, even more dire history than the one that began a century later under Roman hands?

Hanukkah is a great story and an entertaining holiday. But it’s also far more important than we think — and a moment in history that massively transcends mere candles and doughnuts.