Hanukkah, or the Festival of the Maccabees, and we will soon see that this is not mere semantics, is one of the most fascinating points of contact between religious tradition and Zionism as a modern national movement. In the early days of Zionism, there were genuine debates over the meaning and content of the holiday, as if a choice had to be made between two competing approaches.
From the perspective of religious tradition, the holiday centers on the Jewish struggle against the religious decrees imposed by the Greeks. When the radical faction of Hellenizers is added to the picture, a clear dimension of civil war also emerges. The Talmudic discussion of the origin of the holiday makes it clear that Hanukkah was established for generations because of the miracle of the cruse of oil and the renewal of Temple service, while the military victory is barely mentioned.
When the military victory does appear in the prayer Al Hanisim, the emphasis is that it was achieved with God's help. Even Maimonides, who notes the restoration of independence, "and sovereignty returned to Israel… until the Second Destruction," still emphasizes the victory over religious decrees and the miracle of the oil.
With the rise of the Zionist movement, by contrast, there was a growing tendency to reinterpret Hanukkah and even to strip it of its distinctly religious content. In the words of historian Ben-Zion Dinur, later Israel's education minister, "Hanukkah became the festival of the Hasmoneans." From religious tradition, the words "for the miracles and the wonders," attributed of course to God, were taken, but in the famous song they were transformed into "for the miracles and the wonders wrought by the Maccabees."
The most striking example is the song We Carry Torches by Aharon Ze'ev, with its well-known line, "No miracle happened to us, we found no cruse of oil." The supernatural miracle of the traditional holiday disappears, or more precisely is made to disappear, and the acts of God, which leave the Maccabees in a relatively passive position, are replaced by heroic, initiative-taking Maccabees, whose heirs we are today.
Is there a need to choose between these two approaches, or can they be combined, allowing each individual and community to emphasize whichever elements of the holiday they see fit?
In religious tradition, a well-known question asks why we light eight candles, given that the miracle of the cruse of oil actually lasted only seven days. The oil that was found sufficed for one day, meaning the miracle itself occurred only during the following seven days. A wide range of answers has been offered over the generations, most of them attempting to explain why it nevertheless constituted an eight-day miracle.
But there is another answer. Rabbi Menachem ben Solomon Meiri (1249–1316) wrote, in addressing the question that troubled generations: "On the first night, when there was no miracle of oil, we recite the blessing for redemption and thanksgiving for finding the cruse." In Meiri's concise formulation, the proper synthesis of these seemingly opposing approaches is reflected.
Indeed, for the miracle of the oil we light only seven candles. But the first candle is lit "for redemption," meaning for the national military victory of the Maccabees over the Greeks. Yet there is something more to learn here: gratitude for finding the cruse. We tend to think that only a clear-cut supernatural event qualifies as a miracle, forgetting the ordinary, natural miracles that occur around us all the time. Even the very discovery of the single cruse of oil was itself a kind of miracle, not something that could be taken for granted as if it were obvious it would be found.
On Hanukkah, the Festival of the Maccabees, it is fitting that we look around us and not take anything for granted. Some of what has happened, and is happening, since the start of the war qualifies as a miracle, not necessarily a supernatural one, but a miracle nonetheless, even if we are the ones carrying it out.
The starting point was the most difficult since the establishment of the State of Israel, exacting a horrific price from us. Since then, Israel's strategic position has fundamentally changed for the better. The pager operation and Operation Like a Lion are examples of the miracles taking place around us and through our own actions. Chag Sameach.
