Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

You must have heard this story about a child named Haim, who attended Heder (religious school). After coming home from class, his Zeyde (grandpa) asks him, “So nu, what did you learn today at Heder?” The child answers, “Well, the Rebbe told us a story about Moses and all those people crossing the Red Sea that was really great! … So Moses got on his Ipad 2, texted some messages to the Israeli Air Force, the jets soon flew over and bombed the Egyptian army to smithereens!” The Zeyde can hardly believe his ears, “So, is that what they are teaching you in Heder?!” Haim replies, “Zeyde, if I told you what the Rebbe really taught us, you’d never believe it!”

Jewish historical events often reflect the spin of the narrator. This does not necessarily mean that a story is a fiction. We simply need to understand the context by how a story is narrated. Hanukkah is one of those holidays, much like Passover. Even myth often has a basis in fact, which is often embellished by tradition. The task of a modern scholar is to solve the mystery of how the story came to assume its present form. In this sense, the scholar must be a little bit like Sherlock Holmes (see the new movie, it rocks!!)

The children of the original Hasmoneans who fought the Greeks proved to be a disappointment; most of them became as corrupt as the people their grandparents revolted against. Perhaps the marriage of priestly and political power proved to be too incongruous to balance—much like we see in Israel today. Politics and religion are a lot like meat and milk; each by itself is permitted, but when cooked, they form a forbidden substance.

Several centuries later, around the time of the Talmud’s redaction (ca. 400 C.E.), the Talmud nonchalantly asks:

• What is the origin of Hanukkah? Our Rabbis taught: On the twenty-fifth of Kislev begins the days of Hanukkah, which are eight, and on which mourning and fasting are forbidden. For when the Greeks entered the Temple, they defiled all the oils therein, and when the Hasmoneans [i.e., the Maccabees] defeated them, they searched and found only one cruse of oil with the seal of the High Priest, but which contained enough [oil] for one day’s lighting only; yet a miracle happened and they lit [the menorah from that single cruse of oil and it lasted for] for eight days. The following year these [days] were made a Festival including the recitation of the Hallel and thanksgiving.[1]

The rabbis make no reference to the actual book of Maccabees, which the Christian church preserved. It is significant that the narrator of 2 Mac 10:5 does not mention anything about the miracle of the candles burning for eight consecutive nights. Here is what it does say:

• On the anniversary of the day on which the temple had been profaned by the Gentiles, that is, the twenty-fifth of the same month Chislev, the purification of the temple took place. The Jews celebrated joyfully for eight days as on the feast of Booths, remembering how, a little while before, they had spent the feast of Booths living like wild animals in caves on the mountains. Carrying rods entwined with leaves, green branches and palms, they sang hymns of grateful praise to him who had brought about the purification of his own Place. By public edict and decree they prescribed that the whole Jewish nation should celebrate these days every year. Such was the end of Antiochus surnamed “Epiphanes.”[2]

Another ancient text dating back toward the beginning of the 1^st century, the Megillat Ta’anit, explains a different reason why Hanukkah lasted for eight days:

• Why did the rabbis make Chanukah eight days? Because … the Hasmoneans entered the Temple and erected the altar and whitewashed it and repaired all of the ritual utensils. They were kept busy for eight days. And why do we light candles? When the Hasmoneans entered the Temple there were eight iron spears in their hands, which they covered with wood and drove into the ground, lighting oil in each and using them as lamps.[3]

According to this version, it ought to be obvious why the Rabbis purposely left the real story out. A single canister of undefiled oil would have become instantly defiled once it was used on the spears, which were ritually contaminated from war.

A second midrashic source, the Pesikta Rabbati, composed around 845 CE, relates the following:

• “Why do we kindle lights on Chanukah? Because when the Hasmoneans sons, the High Priest, defeated the Hellenists, they entered the Temple and found there eight iron spears. They stuck candles on them and lit them . . .”[4]

The story gets much more interesting when we read the Mishnah 10:1 of tractate Sanhedrin:

• Rabbi Akiva says, Even one who reads external books – Kehati explains, “there are the books by heretics, who interpreted the Torah, Prophets, and Writings according to their own opinion, and did not rely on the expositions of the Sages (R. Yitzhak Alfasi).”

In one Talmudic discussion found on page 100b, the “Sifre Minim” is referred to by some of the Amoraim, e.g., R. Yosef, who notes that the forbidden books refer to the writings of Ben Sira, but concludes that certain passages may be read so long as they do not offend the religious sensibilities of the community. Ben Sira’s book is interesting because he appears to reject the belief in the afterlife—a point which would most certainly have earned his book being excluded from the biblical canon, e.g., “When a man dies, he inherits corruption; worms, gnats and maggots” (Ben Sira 10:11).

Some scholars propose, it is also possible that the entire Apocrypha was included among the other “forbidden books,” because the book of Maccabees glorifies the triumph of the Hasmoneans.[5] I would only add that the glorification of the Hasmoneans’s descendants ( the Sadducees) was an anathema to the young Pharisee movement, as personified by R. Akiba and his colleagues. In addition, the absence of the miracle of oil burning eight nights would have undermined rabbinical authority and its “official” version of the Hanukkah story. Besides, much of the Apocrypha extolls Greek wisdom and represents one of the first major attempts to graft the philosophical values of Jerusalem and Athens together-a process that would later get jump-started by Philo of Alexandria, Saadia, Maimonides, Gersonides and other Jewish thinkers in the medieval era.

Simply put, the real story had to be suppressed because of political reasons.

Now, outside of the Talmud, there are some other narratives that explain why the holiday of Hanukka was originally called “lights,” which reads:

• Now Judas celebrated the festival of the restoration of the sacrifices of the temple for eight days; and omitted no sort of pleasures thereon: but he feasted them upon very rich and splendid sacrifices; and he honored God, and delighted them, by hymns and psalms. Nay, they were so very glad at the revival of their customs, when after a long time of intermission, they unexpectedly had regained the freedom of their worship, that they made it a law for their posterity, that they should keep a festival, on account of the restoration of their temple worship, for eight days. And from that time to this we celebrate this festival, and call it Lights. I suppose the reason was, because this liberty beyond our hopes appeared to us; and that thence was the name given to that festival . . .[6]

Note that Josephus actually provides much more than a scant and reluctant mentioning of the holiday’s origins especially when contrasted to the Babylonian Talmud’s version. The theme of light plays an important role as a symbol of perfection, enlightenment, clarity, and perfect being. Interestingly enough, just as Aaron and his sons lit the menorah in the Temple, so too did their descendants—the Hasmoneans (as noted by Ramban, in his commentary on Numbers 8:1-4). In addition, the 25^th word of the Torah is “or,” (light), and its synchronicity helped reinforce the triumph of light over the forces of darkness and hopelessness.

Lastly, there is some conjecture that the suggests the victorious Jews may have witnessed either a large meteorite shower or possibly saw the appearance of a comet at the time the Temple was being cleansed of its ritual impurities, hence the name, “Lights,” which incidentally is also mentioned in the NT John 10:22, where it is explicitly identified as the “Feast of Dedication.”

Incidentally, the Feast of Dedication, i.e., Hanukkah, was also known as the “Tabernacles of the month of Kislev” (2 Macc 1.9).

Notes:

[1] BT Talmud 21b.

[2] Cf. 1 Macc 4:36–59; 2 Macc 1:18–2:19; 10:1–8 for a fuller account of what happened.

[3] Megilat Ta’anit ch. 9.

[4] Pesikta Rabbati ch. 2.

[5] See Hillel Hayyim Lavery-Yisraeli, “Hanukkah: It’s Greek to Them – The Apocrypha in the Eyes of the Sages.” The author expresses some similar thoughts to my own. See http://www.conservativeyeshiva.org/hanukkahits-greek-to-them-the-apocrypha-in-the-eyes-of-the-sages

[6] Josephus, Antiquities 12.322-326.