The story of Chanukah is made up of two radically different components. One is the war, the battles of the Hasmoneans…

The wonderfully joyous holiday of Chanukah occurs this month. Chanukah, in its essence, represents the ability to withstand oppression and evil, coercion and bigotry, and to believe in the improbable miracles that have always marked Jewish history and advanced the cause of all human civilization.

The story of Chanukah is made up of two radically different components. One is the war, the battles of the Hasmoneans, the blood spilled and the casualties sustained, the human sacrifice and tragedy that always accompanies the struggle for Jewish survival and a better world for all humankind.

The other is the miraculous, supernatural event of the small pitcher of oil that supplied oil for eight days while physically holding oil only for one night. Chanukah is thus the culmination of man and God in the joint effort to improve our world and society. There is no message that could be more fitting for us this Chanukah season than this one.

The other is the miraculous, supernatural event of the small pitcher of oil that supplied oil for eight days while physically holding oil only for one night.

In our current struggle here in Israel we face a foe (just as the ancient Syrians of Mattisyahu’s time) that has yet not reconciled to our right to exist in our homeland and be different than our neighbors. It requires of us these same two elements that make up the Chanukah story. There are no cheap victories in the cause of human progress and freedom. “According to the effort and the pain is the reward,” was one of the favorite aphorisms of the rabbis of the Mishnah. We, the Jewish people, out of all nations should realize by our history how costly the battle for good and fairness and tolerance and independence truly is.

Assimilation, ignorance of Jewish values, fear of losses, fright as to being a minority, are all eventually to be cowardice in the Jewish view of things. Risk, sacrifice, devotion, integrity and tenacity are the weapons of the success of the Chanukah story. They are our weapons of success today as well in our war against terrorism inIsraeland worldwide.

Light in the world cannot be judged as being man-made alone. We do not have enough fuel by ourselves to light eternal lights that burn on for centuries and millennia. Chanukah took place more than 2,100 years ago. That is a pretty long time to keep a flame going. But since this flame is inspired by faith in the Creator and by loyalty to His value system and lifestyle, and is not merely the product of another good human idea, its eternity is guaranteed. It is the miraculous, the unexpected, that makes for the natural continuity ofIsraeland goodness in the world.

So, as we light and view the flames of Chanukah in this troubled year, literally in the winter of our current discontent, we should take heart and hope about the eventual triumph of good over evil, of holiness over profanity, of the few over the mighty many, of the original story of Chanukah repeating itself “in our time as in those days.” So, may I wish you, my friends, a happy, joyous, meaningful, memorable, and latke/doughnut filled Chanukah.

In October 1347, a ship came from the Crimea and docked in Messina, Sicily. Rats on board brought with them the Black Death, the bubonic plague, to Europe. Our best estimates now are that at least 25 million people died in Europe over a period of 50 years (peaking between 1348 and 1350). This was almost 40% of the population (some estimates say as high as 60%).

The medieval world was terribly superstitious. Christian Europe was steeply entrenched in belief in witches, witchcraft, demons and evil spirits – and they believed that the evil powers could be brought into being and then harm others simply by thinking them. This led to accusations against the Jews such as “host desecration.” “Desecrating the host” means stealing the holy bread, the wafers, of the communion of the Church.

Throughout the history of the Jews in Europe, from about 1250 onward, pogroms happened on a regular basis for the sin of desecrating the host. And many Jews, under torture, confessed and implicated other Jews. (In medieval Europe a confession wasn’t considered authentic unless the accused was tortured. Thus extracted, anybody could be made to confess anything. It, therefore, went on without an end: one person accusing another to end their torture.)

They insisted that the Jews return the desecrated host. Of course, if there never was one to begin with how does one return it?

Another popular accusation was that Jews poisoned the wells. This accusation gained widespread acceptance when the Black Death, the bubonic plague, wracked Europe in the 1300s.

There were two forms of the plague: one spread by the fleas while another was a virus in the air. The idea that fleas or an airborne virus carried the plague was beyond the understanding of fourteenth century Europeans. Somebody had to be doing it. The scapegoat naturally became the Jews. How did the Jews do it? They poisoned the wells.

How did they know this? They tortured Jews until they confessed.

To protect themselves from Jews poisoning the wells, Christians set up guards around the wells… but the plague continued. If the wells were guarded, how did the Jews poison them? (That option that the Jews were not poisoning the wells was not considered.) They concluded that the Jews did it through Jewish thoughts or prayers.

We find echoes of the Black Death in Jewish custom and law even today. For instance, Jews have an old custom on the first day of Rosh Hashanah to go to a body of water, recite some prayers and symbolically cast one’s sins into the sea. Jewish law says one must go to a body of water which is outside the town. Many commentators say that in the time of the Black Death the custom became to do it at a private well or outside the city, not at a public well or inside the city, to reduce the chance of the Christians accusing the Jews of poisoning the well or, later, cursing the waters through magic incantations.

We find echoes of the Black Death in Jewish custom and law even today. For instance, Jews have an old custom on the first day of Rosh Hashannah to go to a body of water, recite some prayers and symbolically cast one’s sins into the sea. Jewish law says one must go to a body of water which is outside the town. Many commentators say that in the time of the Black Death the custom became to do it at a private well or outside the city, not at a public well or inside the city, to reduce the chance of the Christians accusing the Jews of poisoning the well or, later, cursing the waters through magic incantations.

Once the Jews were accused of poisoning the wells, a wave of pogroms ensued. In January 1349, the entire Jewish community in the city of Basel was burned at the stake. The Jewish communities of Freiburg, Augsburg, Nurnberg, Munich, Konigsberg, Regensburg, and other centers, all were either exiled or burned. In Worms, in March 1349, the entire Jewish community committed suicide. In Cologne, the Jews were forced to flee.

In Mainz, which had the largest Jewish community in Europe, the Jews defended themselves against the mob and killed over 200 Christians. Then the Christians came to take revenge. On one day alone, on August 24, 1349, they killed 6,000 Jews in Mainz.

Of the 3,000 Jews in Erfurt, none survived the attack of the Christian mobs. By 1350, those Jews that survived the Black Death itself were destroyed by the ravages of the mobs. The Jewish communities in Antwerp and Brussels were entirely exterminated in 1350. There were almost no Jews left in Germany or the Low Countries by 1351.

Parades, dances, festooned donkeys and waving pretty girls in farm wagons, marches and bands all celebrated the feast of Shavuot and the triumph of the Jewish farmer, now unfettered by the shackles of the Diaspora and Jewish tradition.

The spring-time festival of Shavuot is the anniversary of the giving the Torah to Israel on Sinai over three millennia ago. New and innovative programs celebrating Shavuot were all the rage in the kibbutzim and in much of the new Israeli society of the 1920’s and 1930’s.

In that age, Shavuot lost all meaning as the holiday of the granting of the Torah to Israel on Sinai and became an almost hedonistic rite of the celebration of Jewish agriculture. Parades, dances, festooned donkeys and waving pretty girls in farm wagons, marches and bands all celebrated the feast of Shavuot and the triumph of the Jewish farmer, now unfettered by the shackles of the Diaspora and Jewish tradition.

All of this was accompanied by a mocking attitude towards the old-fashioned Shavuot and a tough and dedicated spirit of the new age - of Marxism’s triumph - that was to be ushered in together with the new fruits of the season.

All of this was accompanied by a mocking attitude towards the old-fashioned Shavuot and a tough and dedicated spirit of the new age – of Marxism’s triumph – that was to be ushered in together with the new fruits of the season.

Bialik, Tchernikovsy and others wrote poetry about our new farmers and the pagan glory of the new celebrations. In fact, some of the noted writers and journalists of that time wrote that it was certain that May Day, the international holiday of workers and Marxism, would replace Shavuot as the Jewish holiday of the late springtime. Ah, for the good old days of unreal Marxist naivete and doctrinaire thinking!

But the new and innovative Shavuot did not stand the test of time. Communism and Marxism collapsed in the detritus of failed economic planning and murderous dictatorial governments. The kibbutzim now are pretty much broke, both economically and socially. Israeli agriculture is currently almost wholly dependent on foreign laborers doing the work. There is no longer a May Day parade in most of the country and the red flags that were the banners of the brave new world are languishing in mothballs. The Shavuot parades and dances, the enactments of the joys of planting and harvesting, are all passe. The Socialists have turned capitalistic and the Zionists have become post-Zionists.

Tu B'Shevat is a holiday commemorating the new year for fruit trees

The end of Tevet and the beginning of Shevat are usually the period of the winter doldrums. There is already a longing within us for the springtime, for warmer weather and brighter sunshine and for the promise, hope and joy that the holidays of Purim and Passover bring to us. Tevet is a month that has incorporated within it the tail end of Chanukah but also the sad day of fasting of the Tenth day of Tevet. Shevat however is the harbinger of the better days ahead.

The Mishna and Talmud in tractate Rosh Hashana describe Shevat as the month of the new year of the fruits of the trees. There are two opinions as to which day of Shevat begins this new year. Beit Shamai is of the opinion that it is the first day of Shevat. Beit Hillel is of the opinion that it is the fifteenth day of Shevat. Jewish law and tradition follows the opinion of Beit Hillel. Thus, Tu (“15”) B’Shevat is the minor holiday and day of commemoration that highlights the otherwise potentially dreary month of Shevat.

The custom of having new fruit, preferably from the Land of Israel itself, on one's table at this time was an expression of longing and love for the Land of Israel. Tu B’Shevat survived all of the years of exile because it was bound in ritual, Jewish law and holy commitment. It made Jewish memory of the Land of Israel imminent, omnipresent and real.

The fact that Shevat is so inextricably connected to fruit, trees and produce of the Land of Israel automatically grants it the honor of being the harbinger of the end of the days of winter and the beginning of the more pleasant and hopeful period of the springtime. The Talmud explains the reasoning and legal grounding for both the opinions of Beit Shamai and Beit Hillel. However, both opinions concur that it is the month of Shevat that takes center stage in the emergence of the Jewish calendar from the depths of winter.

In the long winter night of Jewish exile, when the phrase “dead of winter” was often given literal meaning through the persecution of the Jews by many heartless and cruel enemies, the coming of the month of Shevat signified renewed hope for a better and more secure Jewish future. Shevat represented a turning point in time and therefore in actions and hopes. It was the source of Jewish memory regarding the Land of Israel, its trees and fruits and farmlands.

It told Jews in the far lands of their dispersion and exile that there would yet come a time that they and their descendants would plant trees and harvest their fruits in the Land of Israel. It reminded them of their past glories and illuminated the darkness of the winter of exile and dispersion. The custom of having new fruit, preferably from the Land of Israel itself, on one’s table in the month of Shevat was an expression of longing and love. It survived all of the years of exile because it was bound in ritual, Jewish law and holy commitment. It made Jewish memory of the Land of Israel imminent, omnipresent and real.

The Zionist movement was built on this faith, religious memory and element. The decline of secular Zionism as an inspirational force in the Jewish world can be traced directly to its foolish abandonment of Judaism and its laws and practices. As we emerge from the dead of winter with the coming of the month of Shevat and its new year’s greetings and blessings to us, we would do well to remember the spiritual content that lies behind the arrival of this new month.

The old water mill at Decew Falls, Niagara Escarpment, St.Catharines, Canada

Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread; on the very first day you shall remove leaven from your houses, for whoever eats leavened bread from the first day to the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. (Exodus 12:15)

The centerpiece of Passover observance is that all forms of leavened bread – yeasted food made from the grains of wheat, oats, rye, spelt and barley – are to be removed from Jewish possession, consumption and enjoyment. Because of the biblical restriction even the minutest amount of leavened bread cannot be consumed or owned by Jews on Passover. Over the centuries this prohibition has been enforced intensively and great care is taken not to allow even a doubtful situation regarding leavened bread to arise in the Jewish kitchen or home.

Yet as technology relating to the production and milling of flour, the baking of matzot and the production of special food products for Passover has advanced and changed, numerous issues have risen in Jewish history and life regarding this constantly advancing technology.

The invention of the steam engine in the eighteenth century changed the process of milling wheat into flour. In Europe until then, milling was accomplished through the use of water driven power (flowing rivers, waterfalls and the like) or the harnessing of animals to the circular mill stones. In this respect, milling flour had not undergone a change in methodology for millennia. One can see the remaining relics of such mills today in the Land of Israel at all of its archeological sites. This is how wheat and other grain (barley, spelt, rye and oats) for matzo production was milled to produce the flour necessary to bake matzot for Passover. Under these primitive conditions there never was any likelihood that the flour or grain would itself become damp and wet during the milling process and raise a question of it becoming leavened bread (the flour or grain fermenting before baking which is forbidden for Passover production or consumption) before being actually baked as matzot.

Matzah being produced at the Manischewitz Matzah Factory. : The invention of the steam engine in the eighteenth century changed the process of milling wheat into flour and demanded a response by Torah authorities whether or not it could be used to make matzot for Passover.

The invention of steam driven power changed this situation. Flour mills now began to be driven by steam power and the steam upon cooling turned into droplets of water which if they fell somehow into the grain or flour being milled could raise the problem of leavened bread. Therefore the question arose how to treat these new mills that used steam power as far as the flour that they produced – should that flour be used for baking matzot for Passover? Almost every technological advance and new invention in the long history of civilization had become an issue of Jewish law and halacha as well. This is no less true in our time when the advances in the fields of computer science, medical technology and a digital virtual world have raised issues in Jewish law regarding a host of laws and rituals.

Usually it takes a generation or two to sort out the matters at hand and arrive at an acceptable halachic consensus.

In all societies the law lags behind the technological advances of that society. That is no less true in Jewish society as well. Thus this issue of the steam driven mills took almost a century to be resolved. From the onset of the matter there were important rabbinic decisors who forbade the use of flour produced in such mills for the baking of Passover matzot and equally as important and prestigious rabbinic decisors who permitted that flour for such use without hesitation.

The issue has been resolved over time allowing the use of such steam powered mills for the production of Passover matzo flour.

This is an example of how technology, far from a threat to Judaism, benefits religious observance and strengthens the popularization of its values amongst Jews. I feel that this is an important lesson for our current Jewish world as well.

The Septuagint, which means “the 70” in Greek -- in reference to the general amount of scholars who translated it -- is the basic translation of the Bible that much of the non-Jewish world has today.

The Talmud (Megillah 9b) tells how King Ptolemy (died 246 BCE) placed 72 Jewish scholars in different rooms and told them to translate the Torah. In an act of Divine Providence the 72 translations all matched each other.

The translation became known as the Septuagint, which means “the 70” in Greek – in reference to the general amount of scholars who translated it. This is the basic translation of the Bible that much of the non-Jewish world has today.

Despite advantages to teaching the non-Jewish world the Written Torah, the Torah Sages did not welcome the opportunity. “The day when the Torah was written in Greek was as unfortunate for Israel as the day of the Golden Calf” (Soferim 1:7). They even decreed that the day the Septuagint was completed, the eighth day of the month of Teves (in the winter), was to be marked on the Jewish calendar as “a day of darkness” (Megillas Taanis).

It was combined with two other tragedies around that date – the death of Ezra and the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem – and decreed a public fast day (Asara B’Teves, “the Tenth of Teves”). Perhaps the reason was because they saw that the translation would open the door for usurpers and new religions claiming to supplant or succeed the Torah.

Mistranslation of the “Virgin Birth”

St. Peter's Basilica, Rome -The most famous mistranslation resulting from the Septuagint is the one that led to the Christian doctrine of the Virgin Birth.

History has proven the Sages right for their ambivalence about translating the Torah into a language that the masses could read. There are numerous examples, but perhaps the most famous is the mistranslation that led to the Christian doctrine of the Virgin Birth.

The Christian Gospels attribute it to a verse in the prophet Isaiah (7:14). The Hebrew word there is not “virgin,” but alma, which means a “young girl.” Now, a “young girl” can be a virgin, but if the prophet wanted to emphasize the miraculous nature of the event and leave no room for misinterpretation there is a better, unique Hebrew word for virgin, b’tulah.

The Greek word, however, for “young girl” and “virgin” is the same; they have only one word for both. Therefore, in the Septuagint when the translation of the prophet Isaiah was written they used the Greek word that means either “young girl” or “virgin.” In the Latin translation, only the word “virgin” already appears. Latin readers in the Roman Catholic Church saw this as an unmistakable reference to the doctrine of Immaculate Conception.

One of the reasons the Protestants departed from the Catholic Church many centuries later was because Luther and others complained about that mistranslation. They refused to accept the doctrine of Immaculate Conception simply because they were Biblical scholars enough to know that that is not what it said in the original.

How the Septuagint Changed the Jewish World

Beyond the later mistranslations, the Septuagint had an immediate impact on the Jews living less than a century away from the Chanukah story. It gave a dangerous stamp of approval to Greek language and culture. After all, the Septuagint was authored by great scholars of Torah. It opened the door for Jews to use all other Greek names freely thereafter. This legitimization of the Greek language allowed Greek culture and values to enter the Jewish world.

From the time of the Septuagint onward, it was very hard to draw a line and say, “We are going to take this amount of Greek culture, but we are not going to take the rest.” What is going to happen is that they are going to take the rest. They are going to become more Greek than the Greeks, which is a Jewish trait. The Jews were super-Germans, super-Socialists, and are super-Americans, because the burden is upon them to prove themselves.

Here, too, the burden will be upon them to prove themselves Greek. And they will, indeed, out-Greek the Greeks. That was fallout from the translation of the Septuagint.

Because Chanuka conveys a military as well as a spiritual message it does not fit comfortably into any of the holiday niches of Judaism.

Jews the world over will celebrate the holiday of Chanuka this month. Chanuka is a difficult holiday to define. It is of rabbinic origin commemorating the victory of the Hasmoneans over their Syrian/Greek oppressors and the rededication of the holy Temple in Jerusalem to monotheistic worship. The great candelabra in the Temple was relit with pure undefiled oil and the light emanated from it for a miraculously long eight days. Hence the eight days of the Chanuka holiday.

Because Chanuka conveys a military as well as a spiritual message it does not fit comfortably into any of the holiday niches of Judaism. There is no other holiday on the Jewish calendar devoted to military victory. There is no special day of commemoration for the military triumphs of Joshua, Saul or David, magnificent as they may have been. And if you will raise the issue that those biblically recorded triumphs were not really permanent then neither was the victory of the Hasmoneans and even the Temple itself was destroyed only a few centuries later. What therefore made this military victory so special and different as to warrant an eternal holiday of commemoration on its behalf? And Jewish holidays do not usually commemorate the spilling of blood, even the blood of our enemies. On the latter days of Pesach only the abridged hallel is recited instead of the full-throated and longer version, since so many human beings – Egyptians all – perished in the Red Sea miracle.

Why the sensitivity towards the Egyptian dead and not towards the Syrian/Greek dead? Why the full hallel recited on Chanuka and not on the latter days of Pesach?

To our rescue in this matter comes the other ritual aspect of Chanuka, the commemoration of the lighting of the candelabra in the Temple and its accompanying of the long burning flask of pure oil. In fact it is this aspect of Chanuka that comes to dominate the holiday though the military victory is recorded as part of the special prayers of the holiday.

The military victory though also miraculous in terms of the odds against its success was nevertheless manufactured and wrought by humans – by human courage, sacrifice, tenacity, strategy and tactics. Everything created by humans is subject to reversal, destruction, decay and abandonment. Military victory is in the long run of history temporary at best and futile at worst. All of the great pantheon of famous warriors of the distant past and of the near present as well testify to this disappointing truth, there are only temporary victors in wars; rarely if ever is there any true permanence to these triumphs.

Only when the military victory is itself combined and even sublimated to spiritual accomplishment, only when God is acknowledged as having somehow fashioned the victory, only when there is symbolic religious ritual attached to the celebration of physical triumph, only then can that victory be seen as having some sense of permanence.

The memory of the victory of the Hasmoneans is glorified because of the candles of Chanuka. It is therefore possibly a greater victory, so to speak, than the drowning of the Egyptians which required no Jewish sacrifice to bring it about nor is there any special ritual commandment associated with it.

Therefore in such a situation our triumph cannot ride roughshod over human sensitivities and empathy, even towards enemies. However, Chanuka with its spiritually uplifting message of eternal fuel and lights allows us to exult fully in the military victory of the Hasmoneans as well. For it is no longer just a triumph of arms and war but rather one of the human spirit and of Divine aid and continuing guidance.

Elephants – the tanks of the ancient world -- figured prominently in the wars of the Hasmoneans.

Many people are under the impression that after the miracle of Chanukah the war with the Greeks was over. Far from it.

The miracle of Chanukah actually occurred only in the third year of the war. After the Jews reconquered Jerusalem, rededicated the Temple and experienced the miracle of the little flask of oil that burned eight days the war dragged out another 5-7 years. Successive Greek emperors could not make peace with the fact that they had lost the Land of Israel. Some tried to reconquer it by force of arms and others by orchestrating internal strife and a coup among the Jews themselves.

At the time of the miracle, according to most historians, Matisyahu (the father of the Hasmoneans/Maccabees) and Johanan (the oldest brother) were dead. The year after the miracle Judah the Maccabee (the third brother) was dead. They were killed in battle. Three years after the miracle of Chanukah there was a major battle where the Greeks tried to reconquer the Land of Israel. At that time, Eleazar was killed when an elephant he attacked and wounded fell and crushed him.

Elephant Tanks

It is worthwhile to note that the elephant was the ancient world’s version of the tank. It had been introduced into ancient warfare by the Carthaginian General Hannibal. (His name is made up of the Hebrew words, Ani Baal, “I am the god Baal.”) The Carthaginians were really Canaanites and Phoenicians who moved from the Land of Israel and Lebanon to North Africa. Their capital city, Carthage, was near the present-day city of Tunis. They were the main perennial threat to the Romans, fighting them in two great wars known as the Punic Wars.

Hannibal won the First Punic War when he brought the Carthaginian army across the Straits of Gibraltar into Spain, then into Southern France, then through the treacherous Swiss Alps and finally down into Italy. It was a very long end run and one of the great logistical feats in all military history.

The Roman army was stationed in the south of Italy expecting the Carthaginians to cross by sea. All of a sudden, Hannibal’s army appeared out of the north with 300 battle elephants. Rome was defenseless. Hannibal took Rome and imposed taxes, but he did not destroy the city. That proved to be a tactical error. Years later the Romans got their own elephants and won the Second Punic War.

That is how elephants were introduced into ancient warfare. They were used in war for centuries and even as recently as the British in India last century.

Five years after the miracle of Chanukah the only two surviving Maccabees were Jonathan and Simon. Jonathan was appointed High Priest, but he did not assume the mantle of leadership. Even though the Greeks were defeated militarily they did not give up and now tried to undermine the Jewish government through assassination plots and pitting Jew-vs.-Jew.

Jonathan was invited to a banquet by people he trusted and thought were his friends. There he was captured, turned over to the Greeks and held for ransom.

The ransom called for the Jews to give up certain cities they had conquered as well as allow the Greeks to enter Jerusalem and re-establish a foothold there. Those were unacceptable terms and the Jews refused. Jonathan was killed in a public execution despite the efforts of his brother Simon to save him.

That left Simon as the last survivor of the original family. He became the founder of what became known as the Hasmonean Dynasty….

Chanuka gelt -- the traditional giving of coins to children -- has morphed into eight days of present giving, concerts, sports events, vacations, trips and other sundry forms of indulgence and recreation.

This month marks the celebration of the holiday of Chanuka on the Jewish calendar. Due its fortuitous falling out in the month of December Chanuka has a special resonance for Jews living in Christian countries, especially Jews living in the United States. Even the most observant of Jews cannot deny that the celebration of Chanuka in those countries has been influenced by the month of December and the attendant societal spirit of Christmas celebration.

Chanuka “gelt” — the traditional giving of coins to children — has morphed into eight days of present giving, concerts, sports events, vacations, trips and other sundry forms of indulgence and recreation. Far be it from me to be a killjoy so I am happy to leave Chanuka celebrations continue as they currently are. However, even in the midst of all of the revelry and excessive food and material consumption, a certain serious note of historical and moral importance should be injected. And who is more qualified than I am to administer that injection? So, here it is.

The struggle of the Maccabees that is the basic story of Chanuka is not restricted to their successful war against the Syrian Greeks. Equally important was their ability to confront and weaken the large and powerful Hellenist Jewish community of the time. These Hellenist Jews viewed Jewish tradition and Torah law as being anachronistic and uninspiring when compared to the dazzling qualities of Hellenistic culture. The Hellenist Jews had very little loyalty to the Land of Israel, certainly not to an independent Jewish run Land of Israel. They also exhibited little loyalty to the concept of Jewish nationhood and solidarity. In their headlong drive for acceptance in the Hellenist culture and world of their time they became essentially traitors to themselves and their people. Unfortunately this is a scenario that has often been repeated in Jewish history over the ages.

Chanuka comes to remind us not to repeat that fatal error of assimilation and abandonment of Judaism and its Torah way of life. The results of such behavior are tragic for the individual and the Jewish people as a whole. The Macabees realized that this double battle against external non-Jewish foes and internal Jewish ignorance, apathy and assimilation had to be fought simultaneously. A military triumph over Syrian Greek foes does not guarantee Jewish continuity and survival, essential as that victory undoubtedly was. Only physical victory combined with moral and religious renewal and commitment to a Jewish way of life can preserve Israel, the lone sheep amongst seventy wolves.

The other lesson that Chanuka teaches us is that Jewish survival and accomplishment are part of a Godly plan for this world. The miraculous lights of Chanuka, burning brightly even though their physical source of fuel is no longer present, is the physical representation of God’s spiritual canopy that protects Israel even in the worst of times. Long after the demise of the Macabees and their kingdom, after the Syrian Greeks disappeared from the scene, after empires have risen and crumbled, the small lights of Chanuka continue to light the way for the Jewish people and its mission in the story of humanity. Let us never discount the miraculous and the unseen in our national and personal lives. Chanuka is the triumph of the rational and easily understood – the wars and victories – in Jewish life.

But equally as relevant, it represents what we cannot understand or predict, of the unseen hand, so to speak, of our Creator guiding us through the dangerous rapids of history and enmity. Only when these lessons are truly understood does Chanuka take on its Jewish dimension over and above the season of the year in which it falls. A happy Chanuka to all.

Temple Valley Beth Shalom decorated for Shavuot. Photo published under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike.

When I was a lawyer in Chicago over thirty-five years ago, I attempted to obtain a new date for a trial. The judge, a scion of a great Eastern European rabbinic family, asked me the reason for my request. I told him that the original trial date was to fall on the holiday of Shavuot, and as such, I would not be able to attend court that day. He sneered at me, “Counselor, there is no such Jewish holiday!”

That is an illustration of the alienation and assimilation of much of Diaspora Jewry. The holiday of Shavuot has been completely forgotten, except by the small sector of observant Jews. Out of all of the Jewish holidays, Shavuot has no distinguishing mitzvot or ritual attached to it. It lacks the ‘glamour” of the Passover seder or the shofar of Rosh Hashanah. Yet, it is the Shavuot holiday that is the backbone of all Jewish life and vitality.

According to Jewish tradition and the Talmud, Shavuot marks the anniversary date of the revelation at Sinai and the granting of the Torah to the people of Israel. The Torah itself phrases it thusly: “Today you have become a nation!” The nationality of the Jews is founded upon its shared experience of receiving the Torah at Sinai 3922 years ago. Shavuot is the uniquely Jewish holiday. It does not represent the universal ideal of freedom as does Passover, nor is it a harbinger of all human happiness, prosperity and bountiful harvest, all of which characterize the Succot holiday. It stands in splendid isolation as a uniquely Jewish event that attests to our role in society and civilization, as the people who accepted the Torah when others refused.

It is therefore difficult to be assimilated and celebrate Shavuot. Shavuot prevents assimilation by reminding us of the event that is baked deep into the DNA of the Jewish people – the revelation at Sinai. Shavuot is therefore not just a commemoration of an historical date, but rather it poses the challenge of defining Jewish nationhood and of its relation to each and every one of us. Because of this challenging aspect of the holiday, it is easy (though painful) to understand why Shavuot just does not exist for so many Jews. It is much easier on one’s mind and conscience to simply ignore and then even deny its existence.

There are certain questions that have remained constant in Jewish life over the millennia. “Who is a Jew?” “Why be Jewish?” “Why marry Jewish?” and “Why all of the fuss, anger, hatred and jealousy in the world over the Jews?” Ignoring Shavuot and what it represents allows for seemingly easy answers, or worse, evasions of these questions. But none of those answers has yet been able to stand the test of time and circumstance.

Forgetting Shavuot has always led to spiritually dire personal and national consequences. The great Rabbi Yosef of the times of the Babylonian Talmud celebrated Shavuot with great enthusiasm, saying, “If it were not for this day of Shavuot, I would not feel chosen and unique, for many Yosefs can be found in the market square.”

This is certainly true of the Jewish people generally. If it were not for Shavuot, we would not be a special people, let alone “a light unto the nations of the world.” Shavuot therefore becomes our reason for existence, the justification of our intense role in the development of a better and more civilized world. Shavuot therefore demands some sort of mental and spiritual preparation to be truly appreciated. Since we still have some time until its arrival, now would be a good time to start thinking about it and its personal relevance to our lives.