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Why Jews Celebrate Hanukkah

Diocesan Press Service. October 7, 1966 [47-2]

Rabbi Solomon S. Bernards, Director, Department of Interreligious Cooperation, Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith

On December nights - this year from Wednesday evening, December 7 through the following December 14 - one can see through the windows of Jewish homes small flickering candles set in an eight-branched candelabra proclaiming a miracle of redemption performed long ago at that season. The candle lights may be pale compared with the blaze of jeweled Christmas trees, but the eye can discern their frail unvanquished flames shining forth in praise of God.

Hanukkah is not central in Judaism as Christmas is in Christianity; its observance is not ordained in the Hebrew Scriptures. Although psalms of praise and special scriptural portions are read in the synagogue, and a brief service accompanies the kindling of the candles in home and synagogue, the eight days of the festival are ordinary working days. Yet Hanukkah is loved by the Jewish people in a measure out of all proportion to its position in the ceremonial round of the Jewish religious year.

The primary source for the history of Hanukkah is in the First and Second Books of the Maccabees, which were written shortly after the events they describe. Alexander the Great brought Hellenistic culture to the countries he conquered. After his death his empire was divided among his generals in Syria and Egypt.

The Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes, in the year 175 before the common era, prohibited the practice of the Jewish religion in Judea. The Books of the Maccabees describe the persecution by Antiochus; the martyrdom of the pietists; and the heroic military exploits of the Maccabean warriors who, though outnumbered, drove out the foe and rededicated the Temple in Jerusalem. Hanukkah, meaning "dedication", thus commemorates the rites of purification and sanctification of the Temple's altars which took place in 165 B. C. E.

While the tradition minimizes the military victory to emphasize the spiritual meaning of the festival, there is no question that the Jewish people love it precisely because the Maccabean triumph, a bright spot in an often bleak, tragic-heroic epic of Jewish history, proves that the hand of God is not too short to deliver His people.

Judaism sees no contradiction between concern for the universal spiritual teachings of Judaism and concern for the national destiny of the people who are the physical bearers of that faith. Without Jews, Judaism could not survive. If, as Isaiah tells us, God has set Israel as a light unto the nations, then it is proper to rejoice that the light has not been extinguished.

If history is, as many of us believe, the unfolding of the will of God, it is fruitful to reflect that had the Jews submitted to the decrees of the Syrian king forbidding the teaching and practice of their faith, Judaism would have disappeared and Christianity and Islam would not have come into being.

The Christian Church, therefore, is correct in honoring the Maccabean martyrs, for their achievement is part of the spiritual history of Western man. Their epic struggle testifies to the indomitability of the soul of man.

For present-day Jews Hanukkah symbolizes their continuing determination to keep alight the spark their fathers kindled long ago on altars high and pure. In the newborn state of Israel where Jews strive to embody the social ideals of the prophets, and in Jewish congregations and homes throughout the world, the lighting of the Hanukkah candles express the deeply held conviction that Jews must continue to work for the establishment of God's kingdom of justice and peace on earth.

For Further Reading:

"The Living Heritage of Hanukkah", David Greenberg and Solomon S. Bernards. New York. Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. 48 pp.

"Hanukkah, the Feast of Lights", E. Solis Cohen. Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society.

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