From the Maccabees to the Maccabeats

The story is told of a group of Jews who fled Spain in the 15th century and ended up in Syria. It took some time for them to be welcomed into the community, however. As Rabbi Herbert Dobrinsky writes, their acceptance was made official one year on erev Chanukah, and from then on “an additional candle was lit each night of Chanukah by these Syrian Jews of Judeo-Spanish origin as an expression of Thanksgiving.”

In other words, from the Maccabees to the Maccabeats, there has been no shortage of traditions associated with Chanukah. Like Judaism as a whole, the holiday seems to thrive both on tradition and improvisation.

Jacob Minkin has suggested that this relationship with Chanukah was alive as far back as the second century. Writing about the compiler of the Mishnah, Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi, Minkin says that ha-Nasi did not spell out regulations regarding the mezuzah or fringes or festivals like Chanukah simply “because their practice was widespread.” Chanukah was already a living thing ready to be adorned with traditions as well as some added twists.

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Mystical light
It is no surprise that the lights of Chanukah eventually took on a mystical interpretation. As the Hasidic Rabbi Pinhas of Koretz declared, “The light which was hidden since the days of creation was then revealed. And every year, when the lights are lit for Hanukkah, the hidden light is revealed afresh.”

Also referring to this primordial light, the 13th-century Kabbalist Rabbi Eleazar of Worms described a Chanukah ritual “in which 36 candles would be lit to correspond to the 36 hours the primordial light shone.”

Few things are more Jewish than suggesting that everyone who has ever lit a menorah —from Hasmonean times to medieval Mainz, from Poland and Lithuania to suburban Pittsburgh —is somehow getting a glimpse of the creation of the world.

History and tradition
Even as Arthur Waskow writes that Chanukah remains “the only one of the traditional Jewish festivals for which we have a clear, nearly contemporaneous historical statement about how and why it started,” mere history matters much less than tradition. After all, the literary sources for the Maccabean victory in the second century BCE over the Greeks — the books of 1 and 2 Maccabees — have their own agenda.

The miracle of the oil isn’t mentioned for the first time until a few centuries later, in the Babylonian Talmud — and indeed the Talmudic sages had their own agenda, too. Living after the sack of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple in AD 60, they were not keen to celebrate the kind of military actions that had, within living memory, led to such devastation.

This is why, in the Babylonian Talmud (Shabbat 21b), the miracle of the oil is emphasized over the human might of the Maccabees: “…when the Hasmonean house grew strong and defeated [the Greeks], they searched and found but a single cruse of oil that was sealed with the seal of the high priest. It contained sufficient oil for only one day. A miracle occurred, and they lit [the menorah] from it for eight days.”

The passage continues and describes a disagreement between the Houses of Hillel and Shammai about the order to light the candles: one on the first night, progressively up to eight, or the reverse? Should all of the light be experienced at the beginning of Chanukah, or at the end? As Rabbi Dvora Weisberg writes, not only does this passage show how essential change and development is to Jewish practice, but it also shows that everyone who loves Chanukah actually owes a great deal of its ritual aspects to the Talmud.

Children and the hanukkiah
Depending on your preference for beauty, plainness or the delightfully overwrought, the history of the hanukkiah, or Chanukah menorah, has something for everybody. A quick search at the Israel Museum online (imj.org.il) shows a beautiful array of menorahs from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. Originating everywhere from North Africa, the Middle East and Europe, many of these simply consist of a row of nine oil cups, sometimes with a slightly raised shamash.

This row of cups is often just an excuse for an elaborate back panel filled with plant motifs (rosettes, foliage, fleur-de-lis), architectural details (windows, gothic towers, gateways), and animals and fantastic creatures (birds, dragons, mermaids or even demonic figures). Contemporary and Biblical figures (Moses and Aaron, or Emperor Franz Joseph II) are also sometimes given a place behind the lights. We can only hope to see some of this reflected in menorahs available each year at Target.

While Moses and Aaron may at first glance seem to have nothing to do with Chanukah, connections between Chanukah and Pesach are not hard to find. The earliest Hasidic courts had three kitchens: one for meat, one for dairy and one set aside for Pesach that, months later, became a Chanukah kitchen. And Yaffa Eliach’s “There Once Was a World” is only one place among many to find the anecdote where, “The chicken fat used at Passover had been stored since Chanukah.”

Both holidays also obviously contain large roles for children, so that everyone who bemoans the occasional kitsch-factor of Chanukah (or the remaking of the Maccabees into something like Marvel heroes) should remember how many times the Torah emphasizes that Judaism will only live through the interest and participation of children.

American Chanukah
Like the sages of the Talmud, Jews throughout the centuries have been understandably skittish about emphasizing the anti-assimilationist message that Chanukah very clearly embodies. The peculiar qualities of America have made it the perfect place for the Maccabean and the miraculous aspect of the holiday to exist side-by-side without apology.

Everything from Hallmark Chanukah movies, to the national menorah lighting at the White House, to an understanding that tradition emerges from conflict and study and from family and ritual, are all opportunities to ask how Jewish we want to be, and to ask again (and again) what that means. What will the darkness, and what will the lights, means for us this year? PJC

Tim Miller is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.