In the Talmud a Rabbi asks, "What is Hanukkah?" Strange that a Rabbi should ask this. Of all the Jewish festivals, only Hanukkah and one other holiday-Purim-are post-Biblical; it is the Rabbis, not the Bible, that tell us to observe them. Odd then that the Rabbis ask about the nature of the holiday. This is our first clue that there is more here than meets the eye.

Hidden Treasures
Hanukkah is about one day's supply of sacred oil lasting for eight days, but it's also about a lot more: it offers us a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the perseverance of the Jewish people, the power of human faith, and the splendor of light as it illuminates our darkest moments. If we dig still deeper it provides us with fascinating insights into the engagement of Judaism with other cultures, the development of tradition from popular and Rabbinic influences, and the interplay of history and myth.

The Short Version
At a glance, Hanukkah celebrates the victory of the Maccabees over the oppressive Syrian/Greek empire. The brave Maccabees fought against overwhelming odds to protect the Jewish religion and achieve Jewish political independence. During the course of their war-in 165 B.C.E.-they captured and rededicated the Temple in Jerusalem. This is what the very first Hanukkah celebrated: the name of the holiday means "dedication."

When the Maccabees rededicated the Temple, on the 25th day of the month of Kislev, they found only one day's supply of sacred oil for the Temple's menorah; this would not be enough to last for the full dedication ceremony. The rest of the Temple's oil had been defiled by the Syrians. By a miracle, that single container of oil lasted for the full eight days. In remembrance of this, we light our eight-branched menorahs for eight days every Hanukkah. For this reason, the holiday is also called the Festival of Lights.

Celebration and Customs
Judaism is a rich religious culture which expresses itself in all facets of life. Because of this richness, we express the spirit of Hanukkah in myriad ways.

The Menorah
The menorah is the most familiar symbol of Hanukkah. It is based on the regular menorah-the one used in the Tabernacle in Sinai, and in the First and Second Temples, and still used as an emblem of the Jewish people; it was this traditional menorah that the Maccabees lit when they rededicated the Temple.

But unlike this regular menorah-which has seven branches-the Hanukkah menorah has eight branches to commemorate the eight-day rededication of the Temple, and the miracle of one day's supply of oil lasting for eight days. The Hanukkah menorah-also called a hanukiya - has a separate ninth branch, the shammash. The shammash serves to light the other eight branches (in fact it means "server"), and also lets us fulfill the legal requirement of not using the eight ritual lights for any utilitarian benefit (for example, if any light from the menorah happens to fall upon a book that we're reading, we can ascribe it to the shammash).

There are Hanukkah menorahs which use candles, oil, and electricity, although the electric ones aren't recognized by halakha (Jewish law). We light the first branch (on the right side of the menorah) on the first night, the first and second on the second night, and so on until all eight branches are lit on the eighth night. While we add branches from right to left, we light them from left to right. Before we light them each night we recite two blessings-the Asher Kidishahnu and the Shehahsah Neeseem; on the first night we also recite the Shehekheyanu.

Prayer
Judaism sanctifies every event in life through prayer. Stopping to say a prayer focuses our attention on the larger reality, that which is greater than ourselves. Sometimes it reminds us to be thankful; sometimes it makes us mindful of our obligation to do God's work in the world around us. We mark the festival of Hanukkah with prayer by adding a blessing to the Amidah and to the Grace after Meals, as well as by making a few other changes to the daily liturgy.

Music
There are many popular songs associated with the holiday, ranging from Ma' oz Tzur - composed in the thirteenth century-to Mi Y'Malel and Sevivon Sov Sov Sov, to songs written in the last few decades like the Latke Song, which explains the holiday by noting that it was Mrs. Maccabeus' potato latkes which gave Mattathias and Judah the courage to defeat Antiochus, and used up almost all the oil needed for the Temple.

Games
Another familiar symbol of Hanukkah is the dreidel (sevivon in Hebrew). This four-sided top has a different Hebrew letter on each side: nun, gimel, heh, and shin. These stand for the phrase neis gadol hayah sham-"a great miracle happened there." In Israel sham is replaced with poh, for "a great miracle happened here.") While it's fun to simply spin the dreidel, you can also use it to play a small betting game: each player puts a coin (or nut, or candy) into the pot at the beginning, and then all players take turns spinning the dreidel. If the letter nun comes up, you neither win nor lose; if gimel faces up, you get the whole pot;a heh means you get half the pot; and a shin means you put one coin in the pot. Actually, legends to the contrary, the dreidel was first used in Germany, and the Hebrew letters originally stood for the Yiddish terms nisht ("nothing"), gantz ("all"), halb ("half"), and shtel ("put").

Food
Harking back to the miracle of the oil, it has become customary to eat foods fried in oil. Lucky for us the oil used in the menorah-olive oil-is one of the healthier ones! Ashkenazic Jews usually enjoy potato latkes, while many Sephardic Jews eat a type of doughnut called sufganiyot.

Gift Giving
Children have always had special reason to look forward to Hanukkah because of the gifts they would get. Giving Hanukkah gelt (money) is an old tradition, though in more recent times gift giving has taken on a larger role, mostly in response to Christmas celebrations occurring at the same time of the year.

The Story of Hanukkah
The story of Hanukkah centers on the Maccabees, but it actually begins several generations earlier. The holiday's roots wind back to Alexander the Great, who during the time of the second Temple incorporated the Near East into his empire. When he died his generals carved up his lands, one of them establishing the Seleucid dynasty in the Syrian branch of the empire, which included Judea.

Oppression
Like Alexander, the Seleucids were a Hellenizing influence; unlike that canny emperor, they forced Greek culture upon the Jews. The Seleucid king Antiochus IV outlawed Jewish practices such as Sabbath observance and circumcision. He desecrated the Temple by ordaining it a place for the worship of Greek gods and the sacrifice of pigs. He had a gymnasium, the epitome of Hellenistic culture-with its emphasis on the beauty and strength of the body-built in the heart of Jerusalem. While he accomplished much of this by force, many Jews voluntarily embraced this new Greek way of life and turned their backs on Judaism.

The Maccabees
Not everyone gave up or joined the oppressors, though. One person in particular-an old priest named Mattathias, of the Hasmonean family-challenged the regime. Outraged by a royal order to sacrifice a pig, he killed a Jew who was about to submit as well as the king's agent. The Hasmonean and his sons then fled to the hills where they joined a group of Jews clandestinely observing the traditional ways, and together the two groups began a full-fledged revolt. The revolt-soon led by Mattathias' son Judah, nicknamed HaMaccabee (the Hammer) for his military prowess-gained strength and eventually captured part of Jerusalem, including the Temple. They cleaned the pagan objects out of the temple, purified it, and rededicated it. They also used this opportunity to celebrate Sukkot, which they had been unable to do while the Temple was in pagan hands. Combining a "late Sukkot" with the rededication had a special resonance, since it was during the eight-day holiday of Sukkot that both the First and Second Temples had originally been dedicated.

The Miracle
When they relit the Temple's sacred Menorah, though, they could find only one container of oil which hadn't been corrupted by the pagans-just one day's supply; yet, by a miracle, the oil lasted for eight days. In celebration of this miracle we observe Hanukkah and light the Menorah for eight days.

The Paradox
Hanukkah is our best-documented traditional holiday-we have descriptions of the historical events, and early observances, from people living during that period: the First and Second Book of Maccabees, the Greek historian Polybius, and about two hundred years later the writings of the Jewish Roman historian Josephus. But there is a paradox here: in Talmudic and later times-leading up to the present-the reason for celebrating the holiday is the miracle of the oil, yet the writers living at the time of the "miracle" never mentioned it. To those contemporary sources, the military revolt and struggle for an independent state were paramount, yet later the Rabbis of the Talmud almost ignore it. How could the very people who experienced the miracle neglect to mention it? Why would Rabbis later mention it almost to the exclusion of everything else? The closer you look, the more intriguing this holiday becomes.

The Story Behind Hanukkah
We can resolve this paradox by looking more closely at the event (the revolt), the people (what became of the Maccabees following the revolt), and the time (the darkest part of the year).

The Revolt
The Maccabees led a truly brave and daring revolt, and fought against overwhelming odds. One might even say that the first miracle of Hanukkah was the faith they must have had to begin such a revolt. And they combined their faith with cunning: the Maccabees coordinated their revolt with a Roman war against the Seleucids, forcing Antiochus to fight a three-front war (against the Romans on land and sea, in addition to the Maccabees on land).

Yet the Maccabees were not only rebelling against Antiochus: they were also fighting a civil war. The violence was not only between Maccabean Jew and Seleucid, but between Maccabean Jew and Hellenized Jew. And wars between brothers are painful to remember.

The Hasmoneans
When the Maccabees eventually won control of Judea, they founded the Hasmonean dynasty. And here is the key to our paradox.

The Hasmoneans were not well liked. They were corrupt, ruling by intrigue and force. They became both kings and high priests, even though Jewish political and religious authority were supposed to be independent of each other. The Temple cult became corrupt. The kings-descendants of the anti-Hellenists-became culturally Hellenized; and, descendants too of the nationalist freedom fighters, they became the vassals of Rome. In a word, our heroes the Maccabees were the beginning of a bad dynasty.

But they are destined to fall into still deeper disgrace. It is said that history is written by the victors; while there were many competing socio-religious groups within Judaism at that time-including the Sadducees, Essenes, and Pharisees-it was the Pharisees who survived and developed into the early Rabbis. These Rabbis were the source of the Talmud, which set the basic halakhic perspective on Hanukkah. And these Pharisees/Rabbis were persecuted by the Hasmoneans.

If that wasn't enough for the early Rabbis to look disfavorably on Hanukkah (which was, after all, a holiday decreed by Hasmoneans and celebrating the birth of their dynasty), it was also a holiday that celebrated a revolt against a more powerful foreign oppressor. Those early Rabbis had already experienced two failed revolts against Rome, with disastrous results for the Jewish state, the Jewish religion, and the Jewish people. They did not want to encourage the people to celebrate a holiday that might lead to another revolt against Rome and another tragedy.

The Lights
So where do the lights of the Menorah fit into this picture? Remember, the First and Second Book of Maccabees, written shortly after the event, are silent about the miracle of the menorah and the oil. The origin of the lights may lie farther back, in the widespread pagan custom-observed all over the world-of lighting fires and candles at the winter solstice. Hanukkah falls as close to the solstice as a lunar-reckoned holiday can; and while the Jewish lunar calendar can't pinpoint the solstice, it can identify the moonless night nearest the solstice. And this is the first night of Hanukkah-the darkest night of the darkest time of the year.

The Jewish people may well have observed the seasonal custom of kindling lights at the solstice. When the festival of Hanukkah was decreed for the same time, Jews may have added these lights to their Hanukkah celebration (much as early Christians borrowed a popular pagan custom that was observed at the same time as Christmas, recasting it as the Christmas tree). This would offer a good explanation for why Josephus, writing about Hanukkah, doesn't mention the story of the miracle but does refer to the holiday as "a feast of lights," and why earlier Judean letters to Diaspora Jewery spoke of the holiday as the "Feast of Fire" and called for observing it by kindling lights.

The Miracle
The early Rabbis were faced with popular support for a holiday they found unpalatable, as it focused on a military revolt and the start of a corrupt dynasty that was hostile to them. The people celebrated this holiday-ostensibly commemorating the rededication of the Temple-by kindling lights; it is possible that at some point the people developed a folktale explaining the (originally pagan) lights by making them part of the rededication story. The Rabbis may have dealt with their dilemma-a distasteful holiday that wouldn't go away-by juxtaposing two of its themes: light and the Temple's rededication. Where the two meet we get the miracle of the oil-perhaps an invention of the Rabbis, perhaps an existing folktale to which they gave their seal of approval. Thus they shift emphasis from the Hasmoneans to God, from a military victory to a spiritual victory. It is significant that the Haftarah portion that they chose for Hanukkah, from the prophet Zechariah, closes with God saying: "Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit [you will succeed].

What Did They Do?
The traditional view of our holiday is clear: the Seleucids-whom the tradition frequently calls Greeks-were an evil force seeking to destroy Judaism, and the Maccabees were heroes saving the Jewish people from assimilation and preserving the Jewish way of life. Yet now we know that the traditional view of the holiday is, shall we say, a cultural truth, but not an historical one. The picture is more complex. So when we look at the holiday with our new historical understanding, what do we see?

The Greeks
It is important to remember that the people who tried to subvert the Jewish way of life weren't Greek. However, both Alexander and his Seleucid successors did provide the Jews with their first encounter with Greek culture. The loser in this encounter was the notion of "cultural purity." Hellenism influenced Judaism, particularly the genesis of the Pharisaic tradition which eventually resulted in Rabbinic Judaism. In other words, Hellenistic influence helped to shape what we now understand as traditional Judaism.

Hellenistic Hebrews
When Hellenism influenced Judaism, it happened because Jews lived in two civilizations and wove strands of the new culture into their own Jewish tapestry. Some Jews, though-such as the completely Hellenized people whom the Maccabees fought against-were willing to completely give up their Jewish tapestry for a Greek one. Their Jewish-Greek dialogue became a Greek monologue.

The Seleucids
Though we might want to describe many of the players in the Hanukkah story by saying "on the one hand... but on the other hand...," we need only one hand to talk about the Seleucids. They tried, and nearly succeeded, in destroying the Jewish way of life. We might want to clarify the basic story by noting that the persecution wasn't directed against Jews as Jews but against many of the Seleucids' subject peoples; yet the difference between imperialistic oppression and anti-Semitic oppression is easier to appreciate in hindsight than at the point of a lance.

The Maccabees
The Maccabees are the traditional good guys of the Hanukkah story, fighting to save the Jewish way of life and Jewish national identity from Hellenism and foreign domination. This they did. Yet it is ironic that they achieved this by allying themselves with the Romans, producing in the long run the very results they were working against.

The Maccabees are sometimes also credited with fighting for freedom and against authoritarianism, but this is a modern simplification. They were not fighting for individual freedom, but rather for national self-determination. Their struggle was not for the freedom to act according to personal conscience, but for the freedom to live according to the laws of the Torah-laws which they themselves applied in an authoritarian way.

The Rabbis
The Rabbis took a popular holiday with unpalatable historic connotations and sanctified it by shifting its emphasis to God's concern and power (that is, the miracle). The occasion is holy not because God decreed it so, but because people, using the Jewish idiom, made it an occasion to honor God. And we continue today to make it an occasion to honor what is holy.

Why Are We Celebrating?
Put a beautiful flower under a microscope and the delicate beauty dissolves into haphazard clusters of cells. If we examine Hanukkah this closely, we can lose sight of the meaning and power that it first held for us. If the miracle of the oil is only a story, and the heroic Maccabees were themselves the seeds of corruption, why are we celebrating? There is plenty to celebrate. The holiday began-as all holidays do-with an historical event that was characterized by moral weaknesses and strengths, as any human endeavor must be. After the event, the stories that were woven around it were tailored to express the special hopes and needs of people in each time and place. But the essence of Hannukah-its spiritual truth-has come down to us unchanged over the course of 2,200 years: in the words of Arnold Eisen, "light in the dead of winter, victory when it had seemed improbable, more than enough when there had been far too little, few against many, the freedom to be." This is what we recognize beginning on the 25th day of Kislev, and this is what we join together to celebrate.

Some may wonder what it is about the essence of Hanukkah that is uniquely Jewish. This begs a question that Arthur Waskow has answered:

"What does it mean to live as a Jew? It means to take the universal themes of human life-birth, death, food, sex, family, knowledge, prayer, light, dark, fear, freedom-and respond to them with symbols, stories, and rituals which take their resonance from Jewish experience. The 'call' is always universal. The 'response' is always particular."

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