Hanukah, a celebration without text.
By Renato Athias
This year (2017) I am celebrating Hanukah in Williamsburg, Virginia, in the USA, southeast of Washington, as you may know, together with friends Bill and Stuart. I’ve been to this party in several places. The year I enjoyed the most was when my dear companion Ilana and I celebrated in Cuba, taking our little hanukiá to the places we were visiting, on that beautiful Island, and in the afternoon lighting the candles at the times with the brachot appropriate.
Rambam already told us, in the 16th century, that this celebration is super popular and well-loved among Jews all over the world. In 2015, when I was in Morocco, together with my son Aaron, my sister Yolanda and my brother-in-law Ivo, we visited an antique shop in the city of Ouarzazate, on the other side of the Atlas Mountains, and we saw a hanukiá, a unique piece, a beautiful work. of art, magnificent and, above all, very old, with nine lamps to place the oil and wick, very similar to the one in the image above. A wonderful piece.
Looking at the beautiful hanukiah, I could imagine how the Moroccan Jews there celebrated the mitzvah of Hanukah. The fact that there are many hanukiot collected and exhibited in many museums in all corners of the planet confirms Rambam’s observation about the popularity of this public festival, and at the same time celebrated at home with the family, when we really light up our home with the Hanukah candles.
I was quite impressed to see how this festival is celebrated in the USA. I had already heard about it, but I didn’t imagine it would be so visible everywhere, with so much publicity. Even in non-Jewish stores people can purchase a hanukiah, along with all 44 colorful kosher candles to be used during the eight days of lighting. This celebration was transformed, especially in this American context, into a festival very close to that of Christmas. I’m not talking about proximity in terms of dates, although both are celebrated in the month of Kislev/December with elements very close to each other. I am referring, in approximation, to certain symbols found in the “celebration” with very specific meanings for celebrating this mitzvah. Some even talk about Chrismukkah.
The festival of Hanukah says a lot about how Jews see themselves and show their own “Jewishness”. When we enter an antique shop or a museum and see a very old hanukiah with its lamps to put the oil with the wick and make the light shine, we can see how that group of Jews who made the hanukiah identify themselves to others.
A few years ago, my dear Haham Isaac Essoudry, of blessed memory, told me that the celebrations of Hanukah is not one of the Hagim that are listed in the Torah. And, since there is no reference to the festival of Hanukah in the entire Mishnah, there is no treatise on Hanukah.
It enters the Jewish calendar of celebrations very late, and is related to a historical fact: the domination of the Seleucids (Hellenized Syrians) and the submission of all of Judea in the year 180 before the Common Era. The domination will be very strong when Antiochus IV ascends the Seleucid throne. In reality, this was a submission that aimed at nothing more than the assimilation of the Jews into the Seleucid (Hellenized) culture. Antiochus wanted to transform Jerusalem into a “polis”, a Hellenized city. And, in reality, he effectively succeeded. In the year 167 BC, this ethnic group took over the second temple completely, removed the Torah, and built an altar dedicated to Zeus, making non-kosher animal offerings on the altar, and forbidding Torah reading from being practiced, Anyone who fails to comply with this order will be killed.
Near Jerusalem, near the village of Modiim, the guerrilla war against the Seleucids began, led by Mattathias (Matitiahu) of the Hasmonean family, together with his five sons: John, Simon, Eliezer, Jonathan and Yehudah. After the death of Mattathias, Yehudah (Judas) takes the lead in the battle, with a small army made up of mostly peasants. The Jews managed to defeat the strong army of Antiochus in the year 164 BC. Yehudah ended up being known as Yehudah Maccabee (Judas the Hammer). Some historians say that this battle would have been a war of religions. I believe that this revolt was, in fact, against assimilation and the installed acculturation process and, therefore, a struggle to strengthen Jewish identity, about to be completely Hellenized. Every day we still live this ghost of the assimilation and gradual transformation of Jewish traditions.
After achieving the recovery of Jerusalem and the Temple, Yehudah (Judas) ordered that the Temple be cleaned, that a new altar be built in place of the one that had been desecrated and that new ritualistic objects be produced. So the Hanukah celebrations would have been instituted by Judas Maccabeus and his brothers to commemorate this inauguration event of dedication of the new altar. When the fire was duly renewed on the altar and the Menorah lamps were lit, the inauguration of the altar was celebrated for eight days with offerings, food and lots of music.
These events are reported in the books of Maccabees 1 and Maccabees 2. However, these books are not part of the Tanach, that is, this literature was not codified by the rabbis as part of the Tanach, but was codified in the Christian Bible. Another source about these events, probably late, is the Megilah Antiokhos, a text that would have been written by the Maccabees themselves and that according to Saadia Gaon, probably around the first or second century of the Common Era.
The miracle of Hanukkah is not in the books of Tanach, but it is described in the Talmud. It is recorded that after the occupying forces were removed from the Temple, the Maccabees entered to remove the pagan statues and restore the Temple. They discovered that most of the ritual objects had been desecrated. They sought purified olive oil to light the Menorah and rebuild part of the Temple. However, they only found enough oil for a single day. They lit the Menorah anyway, and went to purify a new amount of oil. Miraculously, that small amount of oil burned off over the eight days, it took time for there to be new purified oil ready. It’s the reason why Jews light a candle each night during the eight days of Hanukah.
The Talmud describes two ways of showing this miracle, of performing the mitzvah. It was common, both to have eight oil lamps lit on the first night of the festival, and to reduce one lamp each successive night; or another way is to start with one lamp on the first night, increasing one lamp until the eighth night. Shammai’s followers in the Talmud preferred the former custom, but Hillel’s followers already advocated the use of the second way (Talmud, Treatise Shabbat 21b).
The word Hanukah actually means inauguration, dedication. And, for us in Recife, what does this miracle of Hanukah mean? What is our tradition? What do we want to show? The mitzvah is exactly this: to show, to promulgate this miracle, therefore to publicly show (it has to do with our Jewishness) to anyone who wants to see our identity, our tradition.
Hanukah Sameach!
(Renato Athias 12/12/2017).
