Beth Shalom
Oceanside Jewish Center

Celebrating Chanukah with Double Vision

Parshat Vayeshev
Chanukah 5764 - December 20, 2003

The Talmud introduces its discussion of Chanukah with a question, "Mai Chanukah" - What is Chanukah (all about)? The answer to that question, I would suggest, depends who you are and at what time in history you're living. For Jews living in the year, 2003, Chanukah has a meaning all its own...and it has something to do with a man named Saddam Hussein.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First let's consider how we celebrate our holidays.

Each year, as we mark the highlights in the Jewish calendar, we look at our holy days with a kind of double vision. On the one hand, we look toward the past as we celebrate our feasts and fasts. Our calendar is a veritable history book. Passover is a reminder of the Exodus from Egypt. Purim is a commemoration of our triumph over Haman in ancient Persia. Tisha B'Av is a day to mourn the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, not to mention our expulsion from Spain in 1492. Our calendar reminds us that we are a product of history.

On the other hand, our holidays more than just a commemoration of the past. They are very much about the present. In a sense, the present is a frame which influences how we tell the stories of our past, and how we recall who we are. We don't simply commemorate the past, then; we relive it in new ways each year depending on what's happening in the world around us. We retell the stories of our people's past in light of our present day experiences.

This is especially true when it comes to Chanukah. While Chanukah marks the military victory of the Maccabees over the Hellenists, the sages of the Talmud played down the militaristic aspect of this story. Instead, they recalled the miraculous tale of a one day cruse of oil which burned for eight days. In the Middle ages Chanukah became a story of martyrdom. Hannah and her seven sons became the true heroes of this holiday. And in contemporary times the Maccabees became courageous Israeli soldiers and the pioneer Zionists who risked their lives to reclaim the land of Israel. In America, Judah Maccabee was transmuted into a freedom fighter defending the civil rights of his beleaguered people. Will the real Chanukah please stand up? Each of these images is based on the same set of facts but each retelling reframes the story of Chanukah differently. So Chanukah is a prism through which we seek to understand ourselves and our place in the world.

With that in mind, I'd like to suggest that this year we should be telling the story of Chanukah differently. The Feast of Lights is the story of divine justice; even mighty tyrants are ultimately vanquished and fall. Chanukah is the story of the triumph of justice and a cautionary tale about the danger of power run amuck.

Not far from the city of Tikrit, American soldiers finally apprehended Saddam Hussein this week, only days before Chanukah. And while the unrest and the violence that has marred post-war Iraq is far from over, for a few moments the entire world - even our opponents - was united in a universal sigh of relief that a wicked tyrant was now in the hands of forces which could bring him to justice.

How that will happen is not yet clear. Should Saddam be tried by an international tribunal? Should he be turned over to the people of Iraq? I don't know the answer to these complex questions but I do know that the story of Saddam Hussein, like the story of Antiochus Epiphanes is but another example of the dangers of tyranny in our lives.

In a sense we have experienced this tale again and again throughout our long and painful history as Jews. It all began with Abraham who was cast into a fiery furnace in Ur Kasdim because he refused to bow down to the idols of the emperor, Nimrod. And it continued with the story of Pharaoh who oppressed the people of Israel fearing that they might rise up in rebellion against him. Antiochus Epiphanes, literally "Anthony the God-manifest," suffered from the same megalomania as the tyrants who came before and after him.

Later the Romans would bring "Pax Roma' to the world; they would build beautiful monuments and magnificent palaces but only by crucifying thousands of Jews and killing their opponents wherever they went. Despite all the good they brought to the world and the sense of peace that they promoted, the leaders of the Jewish community opposed Caesar, because they recognized his tyranny as a challenge to God's sovereignty. By the same token the Roman's mistrusted the Jews because they knew that the Jewish people answered "to a higher authority."

The history of the Jewish people can be framed in many ways but one of them is as a story of the rebellion against tyranny. And we can look back and say that the tyrants of every generation who rose up against our people and demanded our absolute allegiance ultimately fell from grace, just as Saddam has now fallen from power.

But Jews do not have a monopoly on opposing tyranny either. The real irony of the Chanukah story is that the Maccabees ultimately became tyrants in their own right. The grand nephew of Judah Maccabee, Alexander Yannai was responsible for the execution of 800 Pharisees whose interpretation of Judaism he opposed. About the same time the Maccabees were responsible for the forced conversion of the Idumean nation. From this nation arose a man named Herod who rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem but was one of the bloodiest rulers ever to live. The Maccabees fought one another viciously so that in 63 BCE, they had to turn control of their nation over to the Romans in order to quell a civil war of Jew against Jew. It's no wonder that the sages of the Talmud had little to say about the Maccabees. They viewed them as a family of tyrants who brought havoc and destruction upon the Jewish people.

Not long after the founding of America Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson suggested to the congress that it adopt a picture of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea as the emblem of the new nation. Over the picture was the motto, "Rebellion against tyranny is obedience to God." Their suggestion was ultimately rejected (maybe because it sounded too religious to the founding fathers) but it's striking how Jewish this motto really was. A tyrant places him/herself above God. To rebel against tyranny then is truly a sign of our allegiance in a transcendent source of moral authority. This is the basis of our nation – and it is a foundation that is rooted in the Judaic foundation of American democracy.

Saddam has fallen but we must be vigilant in protecting the freedoms we so value in America. In times of crises it's so easy to write them off in the interest of protecting our security. Chanukah reminds that there are certain rights that are God given and can not be challenged by any other authority, governmental or other wise.

As we celebrate Chanukah, then, let us give thanks for the blessings of the nation in which we live. And let us remember: all tyrants are destined to fall. That is God's will. And that is our historical experience.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Chanukah