Hanukkah 2014, December 19th, 2014
Among the sacred myths of Jewish history is the Talmudic story of Hanukkah about the oil lasting for 8 days when there was only enough sacred oil for a single day. A second sacred myth, also attached to Hanukkah, is that the Maccabees won the war against the Syrian Greeks. While both may be spiritually true, neither is historically accurate. The Talmudic story was created to give credit to God regarding the rededication of the Temple and the resumption of the Temple sacrifices, rather than giving credit for the military victory to the Hasmoneans. Second, the war continued after the Maccabees succeeded in removing the Syrian Greeks from the Temple Mount, and the war lasted another 2 decades plus. So why do we celebrate? Hanukkah commemorates the first war for religious freedom. It recognizes the victory of the Judaizers, those who would preserve Judaism, over the Hellenizers, those who preferred Greek culture. But one more unnoted historical innovation also occurred, more important than either. During the period of the Hasmonean dynasty, because the High Priesthood became illegitimate (the wrong people served as High Priest), a small group of Jews removed themselves to live according to their own innovative ideas of Judaism near the north western corner of the Dead Sea. We know them as the Essenes. This group of Jews, frustrated with the Temple cult that no longer represented the people before God, chose to express their spirituality through purity rites and, most creatively and importantly, introduced text study as a means to contacting the divine. This innovation, that studying holy texts enables the preservation of God's covenant, saved Judaism after the destruction of the Second Temple and changed all of Western civilization. After Qumran and the Essenes, study of sacred texts enabled the democratization of Judaism: anyone can learn to read and study God's word (you need not be a scribe or priest), bringing us into direct connection with the divine. The basis of Judaism for the last 2 millennia was created and rooted in the Hasmonean period, and that, in and of itself, is a reason to celebrate!