Dear All,
It’s our season of conundrums, isn’t it? Christmas’ glittery lights and the classical, pop, and rock music associated with the season (and yes, the sweet story of the birth of innocence) surround us. Some of us are navigating ways to acknowledge and respect the traditions of our non-Jewish family members; others are trying to find ways to make Hanukkah so special that our children won’t feel like they are celebrating an also-ran holiday.
Jews have responded by elevating Hanukkah to one of our most important family holidays, one that can boast its own glittery lights and music written for just the occasion. We’ve even added in a tradition of gift-giving (sometimes for eight nights!). We show we are different and celebrate a different holiday from the majority around us, in some ways, by doing things very much like the majority.
One good way to teach our children about their heritage is to delve with them more deeply into the stories around Hanukkah. There are two essential themes running through the holiday.
Political strength and military courage. Jews were being pressured to give up critical aspects of their identity and their religious observance in the second century BCE. Some Jews decided to adopt the ways of the Greeks, while others resisted. So many questions can be asked about this dilemma.
- What do we want to hold on to in order to make sure we retain our traditions, our identity, the things that define us as Jews?
- What are those things? Why are they important?
- When do you decide to take up arms to fight against the pressure to give up your cultural and religious identity?
These are questions we face, of course, on a different level today, but many peoples around the world are dealing with similar issues in situations that are closer to the ones we faced thousands of years ago when the Maccabees fought King Antiochus. Native Americans are one obvious example, but there are many, many more. There’s a social message for us and our children about minorities living in difficult circumstances.
Light in the darkness: What happened to the story of political rebellion? After the havoc wrought by the Judeo-Roman War (66-70 CE) resulted in the razing of Jerusalem and the Temple and in the dispersal and enslavement of Jews (a population of 4 million Jews fell to about 1.5 million), our rabbis made an important decision. They saw, just decades after this war, how Bar Kochba’s revolt against Rome failed. They knew that Jews would not be able to fight back and survive as a people in Imperial Rome. The result? They deemphasized our story of military courage. For the next 1800 years, until the rise of Zionism, Jews were encouraged to focus on the story of the miracle of one day’s oil lasting for eight days.
Hanukkah is celebrated at the darkest time of the year where the solar cycle is concerned. We celebrate Hanukkah late in the month of Kislev when the moon is on the wane.
God’s eternal light is the light by which we define hope, our future, and even our own Jewishness, and this is another part of the story, and worth discussing with our children and our family. In a way, we rededicate our Temple by lighting the menorah. But the sanctuary we are evoking is now one that transcends time or space. Our Temple is really what we ourselves make of Judaism – how we enter into our Jewish observance with dedication (and rededication) each year, renewing tradition, ritual, and hope.
Imagine sitting before your chanukiah as the candles burn. During those 30 minutes, you can meditate, pray, reflect on our long history. Share the stories of Hanukah with each other; explore them anew. The conversations you have with your children will help them see that Hanukkah is an opportunity for them, for us, and for our non-Jewish family members to ask what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be oppressed or in trouble, what it means to wonder what makes you who you are, what it means to create Jewish community regardless of time or geography — what it means to note the fragility of light and, thus, all existence.
Chag sameach to everyone,
