If our calculations are correct, by now our readers will have finished digging the year-old wax out of their menorahs, and begun firing up a new box of Chanukah candles.
Another year has gone by, and another 25th of Kislev has come again. Everyone knows Chanukah is supposedly a minor holiday on the Jewish calendar, but everyone also knows that is not true. At least, it’s not true anymore.
Today Chanukah is more than the festival of lights. It is a very public celebration of Judaism and Jewish peoplehood.
Some say it all began here in 1975 in San Francisco’s Union Square, when the late Bill Graham and Chabad organized the nation’s first public menorah lighting. It was controversial at the time, since such events struck some within the Jewish community as a blurring of the church/state line.
Nobody worries about that anymore. Today, public menorah lightings are a fixture around the world, from Russia’s Kremlin to the canals of Venice, Italy (where Chabad annually sponsors a gondola-mounted menorah).
How fascinating that this “minor holiday” evolved into the world’s most visible Jewish event. Most people know the charming story of the Chanukah miracle, of the menorah that burned for eight days on a one-day supply of oil.
That’s the part of the story that charms the kids.
But it’s worth remembering that this miracle occurred as a post-script to a war: a guerrilla war in which a band of Jewish brave hearts, the Maccabees, defeated the hated Syrians, who had overrun the Jewish homeland and desecrated its holy places.
Jews, like most people, hate war. Yet history shows we will not back out of a fight if we have the option to resist. It’s difficult not to look at Israel today as beset by enemies as in days of old. Yet we believe with perfect faith that the Maccabee spirit is alive and well in Israel.
Back here, safe in the Bay Area, let us remember, between raucous latke parties, candle lightings and high stakes dreidel games, the Hebrew word “Chanukah” shares the same root as the word “Chinuch,” which means “education.”
During this holiday we direct our attention on our children. We ply them with gifts, chocolate, oily treats and everything else that conveys love and security. But when we “light one candle for the Maccabee children,” we have an opportunity to educate our children as well.
We light the candles for ourselves — the descendants of the Maccabees — who survived and thrived despite the longest of odds.
Talk about a miracle.
Chag sameach and happy Chanukah to all.