A Message from the
Rabbi
What do you mean - seven days of Chanukah? Every Jew knows that there are eight days to commemorate the “miracle” of the cruse of oil lasting eight days in the Temple. Actually, there are three different versions of this story of how we arrived at the eight-day holiday in the Talmud. Each one has something to do with providing oil for the “eternal” light in the Temple, but only one tells the story of the single cruse lasting for eight days. To further complicate matters, the Talmud didn’t become a written document for over seven hundred years after the story of the Maccabbees actually took place.
There is a principle of the study of history that a document that was written closer to the actual event is more likely to be accurate than a later document and we do have such a document - the Books of the Maccabbees. They’re not in the Hebrew Bible (although they can be found in Christian Bibles) but they are part of a collection of books we call the Apocrypha. The Books of the Maccabbees make no mention of any oil shortages but they do mention that the feast of the re-dedication (the word Chanukah is Hebrew for “dedication”) of the Temple lasted eight days because they had skipped Sukkot that year.
So why the story of the “miracle?” Because the rabbis didn’t like the Maccabbees. When they came to power as the Hasmonean dynasty, they became every bit as corrupt as their predecessors. In addition, the rabbis didn’t like the idea of celebrating a military victory and wanted to make the holiday have religious significance. So, like so many other parts of every religion, a new meaning was given to an old holiday.
That’s why I said “the seven days of Chanukah.” As our religion evolves, we look for new meanings that make our religion relevant in our lives. One example is the rise of the heksher tzedek movement that says it is not enough that an animal be on an approved list of species and killed in a certain way for it to be kosher. To be kosher the animal must have been humanely treated while alive - as well as the farm workers and the workers in the slaughterhouse. Another is that we are actually returning to an earlier meaning for the holiday of Chanukah. As many of our religious school and adult ed students know, the story of the Maccabbees is really a story about preserving Jewish identity in the face of the efforts of our own ancient Jewish leadership (as well as the Seleucid Greeks) to assimilate us into Greek culture. So today, many celebrate Hanukah as a time of re-dedicating ourselves to our Jewish Peoplehood. A new custom has also arisen that, instead of giving gifts for eight days (a “custom” that only came into being in an attempt to compete with Christmas), we take the money we would have spent on that last day and give it to Tzedakah. There are many worthy charities and I can certainly recommend a few, certainly including American Friends of Bet Morasha (on whose board I serve) and our own HCS. Another one I would like to suggest is American Jewish World Service. Headed by former Manhattan Borough President (and long- time Reconstructionist) Ruth Messinger, this is a Jewish organization that focuses on providing help in the name of the Jewish People to non-Jewish causes - especially in the under-developed countries. Just as important as where they work is how. They expend considerable effort to act as a “seed” to get the recipients to help themselves. For further information, please go to their website - www.ajws.org.
One final
word. We have many wonderful and active members of our community who are the
non-Jewish spouses and parents of our Jewish members. May you have a
Merry Christmas.
Rabbi Fred