3 Things You REALLY Didn't Know About Chanukah
Learn more about the Jewish faith!
What Is Chanukah REALLY About, Anyways?
Hello my lovely friends! Did you know that Chanukah started last night?
Chanukah is a really special holiday and one that pretty much everyone knows about, Jewish or not! You might recognize the cultural icons of Chanukah, AKA the menorah, the dreidels, and the jelly donuts. However, even though it may seem like it, Chanukah is not just the Jewish version of Christmas - despite the fact that during both holidays we give gifts and they happen right at the same time of year.
In fact, the story of Chanukah is much more interesting than you might realize. The history is fascinating. It has much more to do with a civil war within the Jewish people than it does with the miracle of the menorah.
So today, I want to share three facts about the history of Chanukah with you all. If you want to get more in depth about the holiday, I highly recommend reading this article and watching this video. They will give you a thorough understanding of what Chanukah is really about. But for today, I’m just going to share three things you’ve probably never heard about the Festival of Lights!
Chanukah celebrates the triumph of religious Jews over those who wanted to actively assimilate. The story of Chanukah takes place during the time of Syrian-Greek rule. Hellenist Jews, those who accepted idol-worship and the Syrian way of life, had wormed their way into religious positions in the Jewish temple through bribery and deceit. In doing so, they began to spread their Hellenistic views to those who were at the religious core of the Jewish people.
Antiochus IV, the Greek King of Syria, decreed that the Jewish worship of God must be stopped on penalty of death - and many martyrs did die for their faith. But many other Jews assimilated and stopped being Jewish altogether. The story of the Maccabees is not simply the story of a militaristic victory of a much smaller group of Jews against a much a larger group of Greeks. It’s the story of religious Jews rising up against both a foreign empire that wanted to destroy the Jewish faith and the assimilated Jews who were more loyal to a pagan empire than their own God.
Chanukah is about an attempt to destroy the Jewish faith, not the Jewish nation. The Greeks were unique because they didn’t want to kill the Jewish people simply for being Jewish. Unlike the Jewish holiday of Purim, where Haman wanted to kill and destroy the Jews regardless of their actions, the Greeks wanted to destroy the religion and faith of Judaism. Jews weren’t killed for their ethnicity; Jews were killed for the practice of their religion.
Antiochus IV banned eating kosher food; he banned circumcision; he banned study of Torah; he banned worship of God. In many ways, this was worse - the Greeks were trying to erase Judaism and prevent future generations from learning about God.
The part about the menorah is actually really small in comparison with the rest of the story of Chanukah! By now, you have probably heard about the miracle of the oil on Chanukah, but here’s a quick refresher. After the Maccabees won against their enemies, they returned to the temple and fashioned a new menorah (since the old one had been stolen by the Syrians). The lights of the menorah were never meant to go out, so the Maccabees wanted to light it. The oil for the menorah needed to be kosher, and they could only find a small amount of untainted oil, not nearly enough to last until a new batch was made. They lit it anyways and found that it lasted EIGHT days, until a new batch could be brought to the temple and used.
This is a beautiful part of the story of Chanukah, but it’s not at all the main point! The miracle of Chanukah was a military victory of a tiny group of guerilla fighters against an imperial super power. Despite the fact that the lighting of the menorah is incredibly important to the practice of the holiday, the history of Chanukah is much more about the Jewish triumph over assimilation than anything else.
And there you have it, my friends! Those are three facts you may not have known about Chanukah. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and happy Chanukah!
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