Thursday, November 28, 2013
Five Fascinating Facts about Hanukah
By
Ken Spiro
Here’s some information about the Holiday of Lights that you
may Not have known:
1-Hanukah was NOT a holiday invented by the rabbis so that
Jewish children would get presents at the same time as Christian children got
their presents at Christmas. The reality is the opposite. The Talmud explicitly states (Tractate
Shabbat 21b) that the holiday took place on the 25th of the Jewish month of
Kislev which usually falls out around the same time as Christmas, but not
always. (This year for example it’s a
whole month earlier and corresponds with Thanksgiving in the US!) The opposite is true. Most historians agree that we do not really
know when Jesus was born but that early church fathers deliberately set the date
around the time of the winter solstice in order to depaganize what was normally
a period of time (the darkest time of the year in the northern hemisphere) that
held many pagan holidays.
2-Hanukah was NOT a war for freedom from Greek occupation
of Israel. By the time the Jewish revolt, lead by the Maccabees, finally
took place, the Greeks had been occupying the land of Israel for more than a
century and a half. The revolt only
started when the pagan Greeks went after not Jews, but Judaism, banning many of
the fundamental practices of the Jewish people like circumcision and Sabbath
observance. Hanukah is almost certainly
history’s first ideological war and had the Greeks not meddled in the religious
freedom of the Jews, the Jewish people would have most likely peacefully
existed in the Seleucid Greek Empire.
3-Hanukah did NOT really start out as a revolt against
Greece but as a civil war amongst Jews. Before the open revolt against the
Greeks began, much of the tension that led to the revolt was caused by internal
strife within the Jewish community. Greek culture (sports, theater, bathhouses,
etc.) was THE culture of the Mediterranean thousands of years ago. Many Jews,
especially upper class Jews, were attracted to this culture, believing that it
was Judaism that was outdated and Greek culture was the wave of the future.
Many of these Hellenized (fancy word for “Greek”) Jews were
more Greek than the Greeks (similar to some Jews in Germany prior to the
Holocaust). Their attitude toward their
fellow Jews, the vast majority who remained loyal to Judaism, was often quite
hostile. They believed that even force
should be used to wean their fellow Jews off their primitive beliefs and
practices. It is they who played a
significant role in instigating the Greek attack on Judaism. Hanukah in some respects was really a civil
war of Jew against Jew before it became
a war of Greek against Jew.
4-Hanukah was NOT a short war. We tend to think of
Hanukah as a rather brief conflict but the reality is quite the opposite. It’s true that after three years of fighting
and several major victories, the Maccabean forces, led by Judah, were able to liberate Jerusalem, cleanse and re-dedicate the Temple, but the
city was lost to Greeks and later recaptured by the Maccabees a second time. It was only after about 25 years of on and
off conflict (during which time most of the 5 Maccabee brothers were either
killed-in-action or murdered in various plots) that the Greeks finally gave up
on the idea of ruling over the land of Israel and the country, under Maccabean
leadership, achieved independence for a little
over a hundred years until the Romans came, saw and conquered the land.
5. The story of
Hanukah does NOT appear in the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Bible was already a
closed book many centuries before Hanukah. (One criteria for getting anything
included in the Bible is that it has to be authored by a prophet and the
authors of the Books of the Maccabees
were certainly not prophets). The
story of the Maccabees comes down to us from two sources know as Maccabees 1
and Maccabees 2.
Maccabees 1 was
written in Hebrew probably during the later half of the second century BCE and
most likely by a royal chronicler of the Hasmoneans (Maccabean Dynasty). It gives us a detailed account of the events
leading up to the revolt, the revolt itself and the later Maccabean rulres who
ruled after the revolt.
Maccabees 2, written in Greek, was also written
later-probably in the latter half of the first century BCE and may well be
based on an earlier extensive account written by a Hellenized Jew by the name
of Jason of Cyrene who lived around 100BCE. It is a less comprehensive account
that deals primarily with the early events of the revolt.
While these books do NOT appear in the Hebrew Bible, they
ARE included in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox editions of the Christian Bible
but usually NOT in Protestant editions. (The reason they are included at all is
almost certainly to create historical continuity between the end of the Hebrew
Bible and beginning of the Christian Bible.)
BONUS FACT:
Hanukah does NOT usually fall out on the same day as Thanksgiving. As
I mentioned at the top-it usually happens around Christmas time and then next
time this will occur will be in around 79,000 years!! As rare as this timing
might be there are many connections between Hanukah and Thanksgiving. (Beside
the fact that the word for “praise” in Hebrew is Hodu which also happens
to be the word for “Turkey” in Hebrew).
The Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts in 1680
designated their first Thanksgiving as a day of praise and thanksgiving to the
Almighty for their deliverance from the religious persecution of Europe and
post-Harvest bounty in the New World.
Maccabees 2 (10:6-8) makes it very clear that the first Hanukah was
celebrated as a delayed Holiday of Succoth. Since during the actual time
of Succoth that year, the Jews were fighting the Greeks and didn’t have control
of the Temple – the holiday was “pushed off” until the liberation of Jerusalem.
Succoth also usually takes place after the harvest and Maccabees 2
specifically mentions that this first Hanukah was specifically a festival of praise
and thanksgiving for the Jewish people’s deliverance from the hands of Greeks.
(This Succoth connection may also put another spin on the 8-day length of
Hanukah as Succoth, together with the holiday of Shmini Atzeret is ALSO
8 days!)
HAPPY HANUKAH!!
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