Soul Force

Miracles and Martyrs

Rev. Paul Sprecher

Second Parish in Hingham, www.secondparish.org

December 13, 2009

This is a story taken from The Jar of Fools: Eight Hanukkah Stories from Chelm by Eric A. Kimmel (Holiday House, 2000.) Chelm is a Polish town which, in Jewish folklore, is populated by noodleheads. "The wise men of Chelm," as they are popularly known, are always logical in their thinking – but usually wrong.

A farmer driving his cart through Chelm hits a bump, and his hayfork tumbles off onto the street behind him. Two wise men find find it and think it is a menorah for it has eight branches the same height, and one longer branch--for the shamus candle, of course! God must have thrown it to them from heaven! They polish it up and put it in the Grand Synagogue of Chelm, where that very evening, the sixth night of Hanukkah, it is stuck with candles and lit for the prayer service. When the farmer who lost the hayfork recognizes it, a debate ensues which the Rabbi of Chelm determines can only be decided by the great Rabbi Jacob Isaac, the Seer of Lublin.

The whole town walks over to nearby Lublin where Rabbi Isaac hears both arguments and judges the object to be a menorah. It may formerly have been a hayfork, he says, but once an object has been used for sacred purposes, it retains "sparks of holiness," and can no longer return to everyday use; that would be a sin! However, since the farmer is out a hayfork, the Seer requires Chelm to compensate him by paying 18 zlotys.

"18 zlotys!" they exclaim. "For a hayfork???"

"What do you mean?" says the farmer. "Can't you tell a menorah when you see one?"

Kimmel, the author of the story, concludes: "That is how the famous menorah came to the Grand Synagogue of Chelm. Don't be fooled. True, it may resemble a hay fork, but it has the soul of a menorah."[i]

Hanukkah stories are like that; a little slippery as they tell the tale of this slightly dodgy Jewish winter holiday. The story of how the holiday came to be is itself a little dodgy, so perhaps it’s only appropriate. Our first reading this morning was a summary of the supposed history of the how the holiday came to be, but Michael Strassfeld, the author, concludes his summary this way:

Hanukkah is the most historically documented of the Jewish holidays. We have early sources for the story in the First and Second Books of the Maccabees and in the works of Josephus. We have somewhat later accounts in the Talmud and other rabbinic literature. There is even a medieval work called … The Scroll of Antiochus, which is modeled after the biblical Book of Esther. The problem we face is that in none of these accounts do we find the story as outlined [in our reading earlier] and as it is popularly known.[ii]

The oil, for example – the miraculous oil which stayed alight for eight days when it should have gone out after one – the oil whose miraculous multiplication gives us the eight candles of the menorah – that miracle is not reported in the original story as told in Maccabees; in fact, the story doesn’t appear for some three hundred years, when it’s described in the Talmud, the compilation of the oral tradition of the Jews by the Rabbis of that era. It seems odd that so central a part of the holiday should be documented so late in the development of the tradition, especially given that the events behind the original establishment of this holiday are better documented than any other Jewish celebration.

There are several reasons why the holiday took so long to be officially established by the religious authorities. While the battle waged by a small number of Jews loyal to their tradition more than 160 years before the birth of Jesus resulted in the liberation of the nation and certainly saved the traditional heart of their religious practices – circumcision, temple sacrifices, kosher laws, the teaching of the Torah and so on – it did not result in a political system that was admirable or longstanding, and it encouraged seeking martyrdom in defense of the religion. There was also the uncomfortable fact that much of the impetus for abandoning traditional Jewish religious practice came from Jewish leaders who themselves were embarrassed by what seemed to them to be primitive superstitions that they were happy to leave behind to participate in the more “modern” Greek way of life.

Nor did the story as told in Maccabees include a genuine divine miracle. There was, of course, a military victory won by a small guerrilla band against a large invading army, complete with war elephants and other terrifying weapons, but this was, after all, a human accomplishment. The most observant of the Jews were waiting for direct divine intervention. This was one of those eras during which the most fervent of believers looked every day for a sign of God’s intervention to defend and protect them and their religion, but no such sign came. Finally, the military leaders decided to move forward in re-establishing a Jewish state without a direct sign from on high and a new, independent state was formed. Unfortunately, the new leaders were themselves corrupt and tyrannical, and, lacking sufficient support from its own people, they ultimately made the disastrous error of inviting the Romans in and initiating an era of even greater oppression.

So when the Rabbis wrote down the details of how all of the holidays were to be celebrated more than 300 years after the victory which Hanukkah celebrates, they were left to ask themselves the question “What is Hanukkah?” Jewish history during those centuries had been marked by one disaster after another. The rule of the victors over the Greeks was oppressive, only to be followed by still greater oppression by the Romans. Then, some thirty years after Jesus was crucified, a revolt against the Romans led to a still greater catastrophe – the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple itself, along with the expulsion of the Jewish religious leadership from Jerusalem. Christianity, founded by Jews, established itself as an independent religion in opposition to Judaism and its traditional practices. Finally, there was one more rebellion against the Romans, led by Bar Kochba, endorsed by some of the Rabbis as their messiah, in 132 C.E. This resulted in yet another military defeat at a cost of more than half a million lives lost, followed by the expulsion of all Jews from Jerusalem. It was in the wake of this seemingly unending series of catastrophes for the Jewish people that the Rabbis sat down to answer the question, “What is Hanukkah?”

Here is a contemporary reflection on that question from the New Jersey Jewish News:

What is Hanukka?

The rabbis were asking this question in the Talmud, aware that the story of the Maccabees and the miracle of the oil were subject to many interpretations.

Is it a holiday of religious freedom? After all, … Hanukka’s villains are those who would suppress religious freedom, and its heroes are those who fight for it.

Is it a holiday about resisting assimilation? Like many of the people conquered by the Hellenists, the Jews were surely tempted to adopt their conquerors’ ways — and certainly many did. Judah Maccabee and his followers resisted the lure of the dominant culture and fought for a religion uncontaminated, like the temple oil, by outside influences.

Is it a holiday about Zionism? For centuries, the story of the Maccabees inspired Jews in their dreams of Israel. They recounted the rebels’ underdog military victory and their success in restoring Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem and ousting Antiochus’ legions from Palestine.

Is it a holiday about hope? We light the menora during the darkest time of the year, when dark days might lead to dark thoughts. But the number of candles increases each day, increasing the light and symbolizing our hope that things will get better.

In fact, Hanukka is a holiday about all these things, even when the lessons seem contradictory. That, after all, is the Jewish way, and another lesson: We come to our celebrations both as individuals and as members of a people. We find our own meanings in our rituals — but we find them together. It’s the happy paradox of a Happy Hanukka.[iii]

As Unitarian Universalists, we have tended to prefer the interpretation that understands the holiday as a celebration of religious freedom and toleration, admiring the plucky few who defeated a mighty army to practice their religion in the manner they had been taught. The problem with this viewpoint is that the victors were not in fact interested in religious toleration; they opposed efforts to change the practice of Judaism by other Jews. If we were to transport ourselves back in time, our own sympathies would more likely be on the side of the so-called Hellenizers, those Jews who were attempting to modernize their religion and make it compatible with the more universal religion of the Greeks, who were inclined to tolerate any religion that didn’t interfere with their political and military objectives. This struggle highlights a potential weakness of our own universalism when we lose track of the particulars of our own religious traditions and begin to wish that everyone would adopt our wiser and more “modern” willingness to see what is common across all religions and lose track of the particulars which give each religion its unique strength. Rabbi Irving Greenberg offers this critique of universalism in the context of Hanukkah:

One theme [of Hanukkah] is the clash of the universal with the particular. Hellenism saw itself a the universal human culture, open to all.... [The conflict] preserved the stubborn Jewish insistence on “doing their own thing” religiously; never mind the claims of universalism that only if all are citizens of one world and one faith will there truly be one humanity. By not disappearing, Jews have continued to force the world – down to this day – to accept the limits of centralization. Jewish existence has been a continued stumbling block to whatever political philosophy, religion, or economic system has claimed the right to abolish all distinctions for “the higher good of humanity.” ....

The Maccabee revolution made clear that a universalism that denies the rights of the particular to exist is inherently totalitarian and will end up oppressing people in the name of one humanity. Universalism must surrender its overweening demands and accept the universalism of pluralism. Only when the world admits that oneness comes out of particular existences, linked through overarching unities, will it escape the inner dynamics of conformity that lead to repression and cruelty.[iv]

I like the term “universalism of pluralism.” Our own Universalism arose out of the belief that every person – everyone in the whole universe – would ultimately be saved. In the context of the times that Universalism was founded, this came to mean that everyone would eventually get to heaven. For me, this means that we are not in a position to judge the particulars of each person’s religious beliefs and practices, but that our task is to acknowledge the particulars as they are while still finding common cause and common purpose in the humanity that unites us all. As the whole world becomes more tightly knit by communication, transportation and trade, Hanukkah is a good reminder to honor the differences, to tolerate the pluralism, to insist on maintaining the particulars, including our own.

In the end, Hanukkah was too popular for the Rabbis to ignore, even though they were troubled by some of the unfortunate outcomes of the struggle of the Maccabees to free their people from the Greeks. It had become an important part of their religious life and so they found a miracle after all – the miracle of the oil that lasted eight days instead of only one. That miracle in turn marks Hanukkah as one of the almost universal festivals of light that fall around this time of the year, a celebration of the reality that on the shortest days of the year, when the light is more and more fleeting, there is still hope for a return of the sun. That hope has kept many alive in the depths of despair, and that hope is shared with our own festival of lights, Christmas. It is therefore appropriate, as our story for all ages said so wonderfully, that the Christmas star should help intensify the light of the menorah, while the menorah does the same for the Christmas star.

May we share the hope of this season of lights, and spread the love which makes hope possible. Thus may we all join in the joy of the season.

Amen www.secondparish.org