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FOCUS: Reinventing Chanukah
The Secret of Jewish Survival
The Maccabees not only won a great military victory; they came up with the
quintessential survival strategy that has kept us from extinction.
by MICHAEL L. FESHBACH
Every Chanukah we thank God for the miracle of the season. But what was the miracle?
Simply this: the Maccabees and their legacy survived.
This is a miracle, you ask? The parting of the Red Sea—now that was a miracle! The
manna from heaven? That was a miracle too. But survival—the most basic of human
instincts? Granted, Jewish survival is a great accomplishment, given our history of
persecution. But why single out this one event, call it a miracle, and celebrate it for eight
days every year for the past two thousand or so years.
Simply because our ancestors not only won a great military victory; they came up with
the quintessential survival strategy that has kept us from extinction ever since.
Consider: of the many ancient peoples that went up against Greek civilization, we Jews
alone have lived to tell the tale. The Edomites, gone; the Phoenicians, history; the ancient
Egyptians, a pale memory.
Why couldn’t these other nations compete with the Greeks? Because Greek culture was
all the rage—sophisticated, attractive, excelling in the arts and sports. They had the
Olympics. Travel and trade opportunities abounded. Big business flourished. To be all
that you could be, Greece was your ticket, assuming you had the drachmas.
And this very cosmopolitan society was willing to accept the Jews. Many Jews, tempted
by the “in” society, reasoned, “We’re not really all that different. Well, we do circumcise
our males, so they look different when competing nude in athletic games…maybe we
don’t really need that ceremony. Besides, we’ve heard that doctors in Jaffa can undo or
reverse circumcisions.
“We believe in one God, and they believe in many. But they have a chief god called
Zeus. Well…we could pray to one god at a time, couldn’t we? We wouldn’t want to be
rude and not join them in the prayer at the opening of sports events.”
And in line with these assimilationist sentiments, many urban Jews taught their children
Greek before Hebrew and built a Jewish community center in Jerusalem that combined
study and service with sports—modeled on the Greek gymnasium, which, after all, had
religious overtones.
When more traditionally minded religious Jews rose up in protest, the assimilationists
called in the Greek authorities to intervene. It was a colossal mistake: King Antiochus
Epiphanes IV seized the opportunity to outlaw the practice of Judaism altogether and
install statues of Zeus and himself in the Jerusalem Temple.
Now, with the defiled Temple out of service, Jewish festivals went unobserved, even the
festival of Sukkot, when Jewish farmers offered praise and gratitude to God for a good
harvest. Not only was this an agricultural gamble; it was an affront to the Almighty!
And that’s when it happened. In the small village of Modi’in, the Maccabean elder,
Mattathias, caught sight of a Jew bowing down to an idol and struck him dead. This act
set off the revolt against the Greeks. Using guerilla tactics, the outnumbered farmerwarriors, led by Mattathias’ son Judah, defeated the Greeks, restored the Temple, and
observed a belated Sukkot in the month of Kislev for eight days. Judah did not survive
the extended conflict, so his brother Jonathan took over. Then, in 140 B.C.E., their
brother Simon established an independent kingdom, giving rise to the Hasmonean
dynasty, which lasted until 37 B.C.E.
Secure in their independence, these Hasmonean kings adopted Greek-style names, and
their Jewish subjects followed suit, once again imitating the Greeks. This time, however,
imitation did not threaten, but rather ensured Jewish survival.
In the years following their victory, when the Jews were able to celebrate Sukkot on the
right date (in Tishrei), they added a new, eight-day festival in Kislev, the month of their
military triumph, to celebrate it. The very notion of creating a religious holiday to
commemorate a military victory was a Greek idea: what Jew had ever heard of
celebrating a holiday that wasn’t commanded in the Torah? Other Greek ideas also crept
into Jewish thought—ideas that would later become central to our tradition, such as life
after death and the notion of a “soul.” (Some of these concepts may have had earlier roots
in Egypt and Mesopotamia, but their shape and form as we encounter them in postbiblical Judaism was decisively influenced by this encounter with Hellenism.)
You might ask, if the Maccabees, those bulwarks against assimilation, succumbed to
Greek styles and influence, then how were they any different from the pro-Greek Jews
they had once so violently opposed?
The difference was this: The Maccabees, although eventually open to the world around
them, were Jews first. Their being selective in their openness guaranteed rather than
threatened Jewish survival. The assimilationists knew no boundaries; they would have
traded Zeus for God and trophies for circumcision, discarding the ancient mark of the
covenant of our people. In doing so they would have shared the fate of the Amorites, the
Edomites, and every other ancient people who swallowed Greek culture whole and ended
up digesting themselves. Had we embraced total assimilation, we would have vanished as
a separate people.
We also would have fared no better had the Maccabees’ answer to Greek culture been
one of total rejection. For Judaism to remain vibrant and relevant, the strong appeal of the
Greek way had to be addressed. The purists of ancient Egypt chose to wall off their
culture, resulting in its demise. Its youths flocked to Greek mystery cults and eventually
abandoned the ways of their ancestors.
The genius of the Maccabees was in hewing to a narrow path between the twin perils of
assimilation on the one hand and isolation on the other. This approach of preserving the
old while being open to the new would become the foundational model of our Reform
Movement in the early 19th century. From then until now, we Reform Jews have strived
to maintain a state of equilibrium, preserving our distinct Jewish identity while at the
same time engaging with the majority culture.
This balancing act is the secret of Jewish survival, and its sanctification as a religious
festival is the miracle of Chanukah.
And that’s why some cultural borrowing from our neighbors may actually be in line with
the message of Chanukah—so long as it is an accommodation made in the context of
Jewish affirmation rather than a blurring of boundaries that may lead to the dissolution of
our identity as a distinct minority.
Thus the message of Chanukah remains the same today as it has for centuries: Jewish
survival in the midst of a tempting majority culture. We affirm our Jewish distinctiveness
anew every time the Chanukah candles glow in our dorm rooms and our dwelling places,
our synagogues and our souls. This is, indeed, an ongoing miracle... the light of Jewish
life still shining after all of these centuries... Still Jewish. Still Jewish.
Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach serves Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Of the many ancient peoples that went up against the sophisticated, aesthetic, athletic, and
prosperous Greek civilization (symbolized here by a 5th century B.C.E. vase depicting a
foot race in Athens), we Jews alone have lived to tell the tale.
Michael Jacobs of Temple Israel, Tulsa, Oklahoma helps his 3-year-old daughter Lilah Mei
light the family chanukiah.