Is Chanukah an important Jewish holiday?
Most of us have had to answer that question at some time or another. Maybe it was to explain to our children or grandchildren, about why Chanukah feels different from other winter holidays, or why the entire community is dressed in red and green and not blue and yellow. Or maybe it was to a neighbor or co-worker who couldn’t imagine an eight-day-long celebration not being “important” (especially one that falls in the season of a very important day on their calendar).
So is it?
The easy answer is, “no, it’s not.” Religiously, Chanukah is not of our most important holidays. Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, our High Holy Days, can easily be said to hold that spot, followed by our three festivals of Sukkot, Pesach, and Shavuot. Each of them, ordained and fixed in the Torah, have been marked since our people became a people, and connect us to the Holy One in specific and meaningful ways. They commemorate the foundational moments in our Covenant with God, invite us to express our gratitude for the blessings we have received, and guide us to do the introspection and repair to our relationships that make for a meaningful life. These holidays help define what it means to be Jewish, to live in relationship with God.
Chanukah invites us to do something else. Chanukah emerges from a later period, when our experience of being in covenant with God intersects with the political realities of being a people in relation to other peoples, other nations in the world. When the Syrian Greek King Antiochus forbade the study of Torah or the observance of Shabbat, God didn’t down plagues like a reprise to our revolt against Pharaoh. With gratitude to God for the spirit and strength to do so, we rose up ourselves against Antiochus, led by the Maccabees, and fought for our ability to live the way we wanted to. It was this national triumph, a triumph for the Jewish people, that the rabbis of the Talmud invited us to commemorate each year as the days ran short, by filling the darkness with our lit chanukiyot.
It may not be our most important religious holiday, but over two millennia later, as we continue to navigate the challenges and opportunities of living in relation to our neighbors around the world, Chanukah very well may be the most important holiday of what it means to be Am Yisrael, the people of Israel. The story of our small and meekly armed band overcoming the mighty Greek empire was a deep inspiration to the Zionists of a century ago, as they worked to build the State of Israel. The integrity of the Maccabees, refusing to submit to the oppression of King Antiochus, standing up for our rights to worship and practice in our unique manner became a model for Jewish pride, especially in the diaspora. The miracle of the single cruse of oil lasting for eight nights, commemorated by the lighting of the chanukiyah, illuminating our hearts to be sources of light in dark times and spaces (darkness that we as a people know all too well).
It’s this tapestry of messages that makes Chanukah so important to the Jewish people. Over the years we have been able to lean on the story for inspiration in such a variety of circumstances, because Chanukah is not only about one thing- military might, religious freedom, spreading light- it’s about all of them separately and together.
This year, as we are still holding 100 hostages in our hearts as they spend a second Chanukah in captivity, as the State of Israel is still engaged in a multi-front war, as a wave of antisemitism not seen in generations continues to crash onto Jews in the US and around the world, Chanukah comes just as we need it. We need the hope that lighting candles on darkened nights represents. We need to feel the energy of the Maccabees flowing into the soldiers of the IDF as they stand guard and protect our land and our people. We need the might, and the power, and the spirit to stand proudly for our Jewish tradition and our people, while too many around us would see us silenced into the shadows.
When we sing each night in the second candle blessing, “who performed miracles for our ancestors in their time at this season,” we are asking God to share that triumph with us too. Together we will triumph, the post-October 7 slogan said.
Why is Chanukah so important? Because it is ours together.
Shabbat Shalom v’Chag Urim Sameach,
Rabbi Greg Weisman
