Hanukkah – What It Means to Be Faithful
Rev. Paul Sprecher
Second Parish in Hingham, www.secondparish.org
December 11, 2011
Reading: from 2nd Maccabees in the Apocrypha
The story behind the celebration of Hanukkah is mostly told in the Second book of. The story begins in the year 168 B.C.E, when the Greek ruler over Israel determined to stamp out the practice of Judaism. Some Jews wished to adopt Greek ways and abandon the religion of their ancestors. One of them, Jason, gave a bribe to win the high priesthood in Jerusalem. He then collaborated with King Antiochus IV Epiphanes to undermine the practice of Judaism. According to 2 Maccabees 4,
12 [Jason] took delight in establishing a gymnasium right under the citadel, and he induced the noblest of the young men to wear the Greek hat. 13 There was such an extreme of Hellenization and increase in the adoption of foreign ways because of the surpassing wickedness of Jason, who was ungodly and no true1 high priest, 14 that the priests were no longer intent upon their service at the altar. Despising the sanctuary and neglecting the sacrifices, they hurried to take part in the unlawful proceedings in the wrestling arena after the signal for the discus-throwing, 15 disdaining the honors prized by their ancestors and putting the highest value upon Greek forms of prestige. [2 Macc 6:] 3 Harsh and utterly grievous was the onslaught of evil…. 5 The altar was covered with abominable offerings that were forbidden by the laws [of Moses]. 6 People could neither keep the sabbath, nor observe the festivals of their ancestors, nor so much as confess themselves to be Jews.
An elderly scribe of high repute named Eleazar was ordered to eat pork in violation of the Law of Moses, but he spat it out; he was threatened with the rack and a friend urged him to pretend to obey but actually eat something kosher they would supply.
24 "Such pretense is not worthy of our time of life," he said, "for many of the young might suppose that Eleazar in his ninetieth year had gone over to an alien religion, 25 and through my pretense, for the sake of living a brief moment longer, they would be led astray because of me, while I defile and disgrace my old age. 26 Even if for the present I would avoid the punishment of mortals, yet whether I live or die I shall not escape the hands of the Almighty. 27 Therefore, by bravely giving up my life now, I will show myself worthy of my old age 28 and leave to the young a noble example of how to die a good death willingly and nobly for the revered and holy laws." When he had said this, he went at once to the rack.
NRS [2 Maccabees 7:1] It happened also that seven brothers and their mother were arrested and were being compelled by the king, under torture with whips and thongs, to partake of unlawful swine's flesh. 2 One of them, acting as their spokesman, said, "What do you intend to ask and learn from us? For we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors."
Sermon: “Hanukkah – What It Means to Be Faithful” -Rev. Paul Sprecher
Hanukkah is celebrated each year to keep alive the memory of a struggle against religious persecution. As our reading this morning tells us, the Hellenists who attempted to destroy the Jewish religion failed because of the courage of those who were willing to sacrifice even their lives to maintain their own beliefs and their fidelity to the Laws of Moses. Hanukkah is a time to celebrate such stories of courage and fidelity in opposing tyranny and oppression.
Last year I told a story from Isaac Bashevis Singer’s book The Power of Light, the book from which our children’s story was taken today. The story I told described how two young Jews, David and Rachael, managed to escape from the Warsaw Ghetto and start a new life in Israel – inspired in part by lighting the Hanukkah candles and remembering the successful struggle of their ancient ancestors. I find these stories of courage and endurance from the Jewish tradition inspiring – though I don’t personally aspire to martyrdom!
I’m also inspired by some of our own stories of Unitarian Universalist heroism in fighting Nazi tyranny during World War II, including the story of Waitstill and Martha Sharp – two Unitarians who went to Europe to rescue as many people as they could during the war. Here’s one incident of that struggle:
On a snowy night in Prague in 1939, Martha Sharp jumped from a taxi, darted around a corner, and flattened herself into a doorway. The heels of a pursuing Gestapo agent clicked past her. She entered an unlit apartment building, dashed up five flights of stairs, and rang the bell of a known anti-Nazi leader.
Six weeks earlier Martha, a social worker trained at Hull House in Chicago, and her husband, the Rev. Waitstill Sharp, minister of the Unitarian Church of Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, had left their young children behind in the United States. They had volunteered for a relief effort in Czechoslovakia, sponsored by the American Unitarian Association. Then on March 15, 1939, the Nazi army marched into Prague and occupied the city. Their humanitarian refugee operation instantly changed into a treacherous, cloak-and-dagger mission.
That March night a woman opened the apartment door to Martha, denying she had even heard of the man Martha was asking for. “I begged,”¯ Martha recounted the story later to a biographer. “I told her there was little time. I produced my American passport. When she saw it, she said in Czech, “A moment,” and then snatched my passport from me and shut the door in my face.”¯ For the next few minutes Martha frantically worried whether she’d see her passport again.
But the door did open, and this time a man stood before her. Martha asked if he was “Mr. X,”¯ as she later referred to him when she told the story. He said he could give Mr. X a message. She explained she had been charged by a group of British and American refugee workers with transporting him to the British Embassy so he could be smuggled from the country. The man asked her to wait a moment, then disappeared into the apartment. He opened the door again, wearing an overcoat. He handed Martha her passport and said, “I am Mr. X.”¯
Together, they walked through wind and snow across the city. A Nazi soldier stopped them when they reached a bridge over the Vltava River. Martha produced her passport and confidently announced, “Americans!”¯ They were waved across the bridge, then stopped by another soldier on the other side. The passport trick worked again.
Just steps outside the British embassy, a third Gestapo officer stopped them. Martha began to loudly complain about the lack of taxis and her frustration at being late for a meeting with the embassy secretary. She flashed her passport and demanded the guard tell the secretary, “Mr. and Mrs. Sharp are here.”¯ He waved them ahead to speak with a British guard, and Martha and Mr. X walked into the embassy to safety. Martha then returned to her apartment, where Waitstill was returning from a similar mission. They watched out their window as Nazi soldiers looted Prague stores and warehouses.
The rescue of Mr. X is one of hundreds that the couple orchestrated, helping Jews and non-Jews, intellectuals, political leaders, writers, artists, and children flee to safety from the Nazis.[i]
In the course of the war, the Sharps helped somewhere between one and three thousand people to escape from Europe, including Lion Feuchtwanger, a prominent German novelist who was on the Nazis most-wanted list. They were honored by the State of Israel in 2005 by being named posthumously as “Righteous Among the Nations,” those non-Jews who stood side by side with the Jewish people in their desperate struggle against extermination by the Nazis; they were the second and third Americans to be so honored.
As part of their continuing work to support the struggle against tyranny during the war, the Sharps helped to found the Unitarian Service Committee (USC), which combined with the Universalist Service committee to create our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee fifty years ago. The UU Service Committee banner we’re displaying in our service today thanks Second Parish for our generous support by way of our Second Sunday offerings and our holiday Guest at Your Table offerings. The Service Committee brought desperately needed relief supplies to refugees in Europe. The story continues with another of the founders of the Service Committee:
Rev. Charles Joy, director of the USC’s Lisbon office … was deeply involved in helping refugees escape. As a new and unknown organization, the USC needed a visual identity to function as an easily recognizable symbol of those working on the side of the refugees.
Joy thus asked [a Jewish artist who was refugee from Paris named Hans] Deutsch to create a design for the USC’s papers “to make them look official, to give dignity and importance to them, and at the same time to symbolize the spirit of our work.... When a document may keep a man out of jail, give him standing with governments and police, it is important that it look important.” Deutsch [created a] flaming chalice design [that was] made into a seal for papers and a badge for agents moving refugees to freedom….
The history of the chalice symbol [ –which has now been adopted by most of our Unitarian Universalist congregations – ] is significant. It began by representing the religious courage of Jan Hus, a 15th century Czech priest and forerunner of the Reformation. Jan Hus was martyred for proposing, among other things, offering communion to his congregants in defiance of the Roman church, which reserved the sharing of wine to priests only. He was burnt at the stake for this act, and Unitarians too have a history of being persecuted for innovative and democratic deeds in religion.[ii]
So the chalice we light each week is a reminder – as are the candles of Hanukkah – that oppression and tyranny can be overcome when righteous people struggle with courage and skill in defense of their deeply held values and beliefs.
Hanukkah is one of the festivals of light celebrated in many cultures of the world during the time of year when the days are shortest and the nights are becoming longer and colder. Last year we remembered the festival of lights in the Hindu tradition, Diwali. Most of us have heard the of the Nordic festival of lights, Saint Lucy’s day, which is characterized by a parade led by a young woman wearing a crown of candles. Christmas is another such festival; the date of December 25th was chosen by the Church Fathers to provide an alternative celebration for the Roman feast of Saturnalia, itself a festival of lights in honor of the pagan sun god Saturn.
Each of these festivals helps people get through the darkest days of the year around the time of the winter solstice, which falls on December 21st or 22nd. Each festival also has its own particular back-story as well. Diwali is celebrated in part by remembering the vanquishing of the demon Naraka by Lord Krishna and his wife Satyabhama. Christmas, of course, is our occasion to remember the birth of Jesus. Hanukkah commemorates the courageous struggle of the Maccabees to oppose tyranny and religious intolerance even to the point of sacrificing your own life and embracing martyrdom for the sake of your beliefs.
Sometimes we don’t set out to be courageous. The Sharps went to Europe to provide help and encouragement to the Unitarians of Prague and never expected they would become embroiled so deeply in cloak and dagger activities and the desperate work of rescuing as many refugees as they could. Their commitment to service to fellow Unitarians led them in the direction of much greater service – requiring much greater courage – than they had ever imagined. Sometimes we stand up in small ways for what we believe, for our personal integrity. When I was sixteen, I realized that I could no longer believe in the religion in which I was raised and I withdrew from the church, much as it pained my parents. Others of you have made stands on behalf of your own beliefs in your lives. I believe that courage grows as we stand up in small ways for the integrity of our beliefs.
When people join together to remember what truly matters in their own lives, miracles happen. When individuals like the Sharps or the Maccabean elder Eleazar are courageous, their examples are contagious. Each person in such a struggle gains strength and determination from the examples of others and from the memories of previous struggles against evil kept alive by festivals like Hanukkah. To me, our chalice and the candles of Hanukkah are reminders to all of us of the need to stand firmly on the side of right.
This time of year is a time to remember and to celebrate hope and love and joy and peace. Friends, this time of year reminds me to cherish the fact that each of us has a role in bringing the kind of world we believe is possible into being, and that doing so requires courage and strength of character and a firm belief that we can help to create a future in which everyone on earth can enjoy hope and love and joy and peace. Let us remember and rededicate ourselves to those higher purposes to which we have committed ourselves.
May it be so, and Amen. www.secondparish.org