Tonight marks the first night of Hannukah, the Festival of Lights .
While many of you may be familiar with the story of the Miracle of the Oil, what is frequently overlooked is that Hannukah celebrates another miracle - the miracle of a group of farmers and tradesman utterly defeating the professional armies of the Seleucid Empire, a victory for freedom that belongs to all of us, Jew and Gentile.
Hanukkah celebrates one of the important miracles in Jewish history and reminds us of the triumph of faith. It takes place every year in mid to late December. While its date varies if you go by the western calendar, in the Hebrew calendar Hanukkah always falls on the 25th day of Kislev.
Hanukkah celebrates the victory Jewish war for independence in the second century BCE. The story is told in the First Book of Maccabees, and retold in the Second Book of Maccabees. A more contemporary military history of the war can be found in Battles of the Bible, coauthored by Chaim Herzog and Mordechai Gichon.
After his death, Alexander the Great's Macedonian Greek empire was split into several parts, and Israel was under the control of the Seleucid empire, a major world power then based in Syria and with territory that extended through Anatolia, modern Turkey. Israel had lived peacefully under both the Persian Empire and under the Ptolemic empire (of Egypt), both which tolerated Judaism; but the Seleucid Emperor Antiochus Epiphanes was an arrogant, bigoted Hellenizer, who attempted to force the Jews to abandon their religion and to adopt Greek customs and worship.
There were those Jews who considered themselves `modern' and `assimilated' who were willing to go along with this, even to the extent of having surgical operations to reverse circumcision.
Others did not, and they were prosecuted vigorously and brutalized by the Greeks.
The start of the Maccabean Revolt sprang from a single spontaneous act of resistance. In the foothills village of Modiin in 167BCE, a Greek army unit set up an altar, and ordered the local Jewish rabbi, Mattathias, to sacrifice a pig and eat it. He refused, as did his five sons. When a Jewish collaborator came forward to offer the sacrifice, a furious Mattathias "ran and killed him on the spot, killed the king's officer who was forcing them to sacrifice, and tore down the altar" (1 Mac. 2:15-25).
Mattathias, his sons and their followers then headed for the Judean hills, to launch a guerrilla war. They were farmers who had no military training,fighting a well-equipped professional army. There had not been a Jewish army since Babylon had destroyed the Judean kingdom four centuries before. The only weapons the Maccabees had to fight with were farming tools and whatever simple weapons they could construct, such as maces or slings. During this first year, Mattathias died, and his middle son Judah took over command as his successor.
Nicknamed "the hammer" ("Maccabee," in Hebrew), Judah built a guerrilla army that staged daring nighttime raids on the Greek outposts, then melted back into the countryside. His successes attracted more supporters, and the revolt spread.The war went on for 25 years, one of the most singular wars for independence in history and the very first one fought for religious freedom. The miracle, perhaps is that it was fought at all, let alone won.
The Seleucids and Antiochus sent huge armies into Israel to subdue the Jews. They were all defeated, at odds that seem miraculous even today. Judah Maccabee turned out to be a tactical genius, using unheard of tactics and luring the Greek phalanxes and war elephants into the hills where they could not maneuver to destroy them.
To give you an idea of how essential the Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria was and is to Israel's survival then and now, the map below shows where the major battles of the war took place. Click on it to enlarge it:
One thing that is seldom mentioned about the war today is the fact that a significant part of it took place against Hellenized, `modern',`assimilated' Jewish collaborators I mentioned earlier, who were more than willing abandon the Jewish way of life and supported their Seleucid masters against their fellow Jews.
As Ecclesiastes famously said in the Megillot, there's nothing new under the sun.
In 164 BCE, the Jews defeated a force personally commanded by the Viceroy Lysias that outnumbered them two to one. The battle took place six miles north of Hebron, near the Jewish fortress of Beth-zur, and that victory allowed Judah and his army to retake Jerusalem.
When they entered Jerusalem, Judah and his followers entered the Holy Temple on the Temple Mount. They found the Temple wrecked and horribly desecrated, with obscenities scrawled on the walls and on the Holy Ark by the Seleucid occupiers.
The Maccabees built a new altar. When the time came to light the N'er Tamid, the Eternal Light of the Temple, the Jews could find only one sanctified jar of oil marked with the seal of the High Priest. It was only enough to last one evening. On the 25th of Kislev, in the year 164 BCE,the lamp was lit with this small jar of oil and, miraculously, stayed lit for eight days, until more oil suitable for the temple was made. The eight days of Hanukkah celebrate that miracle, as well as the divine intervention that had led the Jews to amazing victories over well-equipped professional armies far superior in numbers. "Therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wants and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm, they offered hymns of thanksgiving to Him who had given success to the purifying of His own holy place" (2 Mac. 10:7).
The war itself continued without letup. In 160 BCE, near modern-day Ramallah, Judah was killed, but Judah's brother Jonathan, and then his brother Simon took command of the Jewish army, finally winning complete independence in 142 BCE. At last, "All the people sat under their own vines and fig trees, and there was none to make them afraid" (1 Mac. 14:12).
The War of the Maccabees was the first war ever fought for religious freedom. Somehow, a group of farmers with no military training who refused to bow to their oppressors defeated a mighty empire and its immense standing armies. There seems to be no plausible explanation for the victory of the Jews except that it was a miracle.
Towards the end of the war, Antiochus and the Seleucids became so obsessed with defeating the Jews that they sacked their own cities and sold their own citizens into slavery to get money to pursue the war against the Jews.
Hanukkah reminds us that no matter how dark the times, the Light can prevail.With G-d's help, victory over evil is assured and no miracle is impossible. Modern Israel and the survival of the Jewish people against all odds are the proof of that.
Symbols in Hanukkah
Aside from the Hanukkiah (eight pronged candlesticks), the other great symbol of Hanukkah are those small spinning tops known as dreidels.
The four letters which appear on the four corners of a dreidel allude to the miracle of Hanukkah. They spell out: Nes (N-miracle), Gadol (G-great), Haya (H-happened) and Sham (S-there, meaning in Israel). Or, `a great miracle happened there.'
Indeed it did.
Chag Sameach! Happy Hanukkah!
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