Apocryphal tales about oil and eight days apart, the true miracle of Hanukkah has all the time been its adaptability. It’s essentially the most fashionable of Jewish holidays, reliably shape-shifting to handle no matter essentially the most urgent wants or hopes or wishes of the neighborhood have been in a specific second. And it’s lengthy had super communal worth, particularly for these of us who would possibly describe ourselves primarily as secular or cultural Jews.
For Hanukkah in 2023, there are chilly cities in Canada and moist boroughs in London which might be eradicating menorahs from their metropolis corridor greens. Which signifies that, for Jews, this vacation is a vital alternative. Jewish tradition in America can usually really feel overly fixated on the act of remembrance however it’s time, pressingly, for Jewish individuals to look at our tradition within the context of the present second, and to ask whether or not what animates the core of our private Jewishness is nourishing sufficient, resilient sufficient, to equip us to face up to each what is going on and what’s on the horizon. That is the type of factor that’s finest accomplished collectively.
Within the early twentieth century, as Japanese European Jews arrived in cities like New York and took up the celebration of Christmas as a technique to show their Americanness, synagogues and Jewish teams made a devoted push to remodel the minor vacation of Hanukkah into a serious December occurring. After the Holocaust, Hanukkah, which in its most traditional iteration commemorates the Maccabean revolt in opposition to the Hellenization of Judea within the second century B.C., grew to become extra tightly intertwined with the founding of the Jewish state — a manner of introducing the diaspora to the thought of a up to date Israel, and a manner for the brand new nation to mythologize itself.
In newer a long time, as some synagogues struggled to totally embrace the fact of interfaith households — a irritating and self-defeating reluctance, provided that 40 % of American Jews are married to non-Jews — Hanukkah has served as a easy and handy bonding agent inside households and amongst Jews and non-Jews. As a solstice-timed vacation centered on common concepts of light-in-darkness, a extra anodyne model of Hanukkah arose and took maintain. The notion of “Chrismukkah” originated within the nineteenth century amongst German and Austrian Jews (the time period they used was “Weihnukka,” based mostly on Weihnachten, the German phrase for Christmas) however Chrismukkah, as a celebration of the blended household, actually took flight in America when the phrase was featured in a minor plotline on the TV sequence “The O.C.” And it’s truly caught — possibly as a result of Chrismukkah highlights one thing of the open-ended generosity that’s inherent to Hanukkah. Everyone seems to be allowed in. In Judaism, that’s a uncommon factor to have the ability to say.
Actually, in my very own life, Hanukkah has been the vacation I’ve relied on as each diversion and balm in robust instances. Midst of a divorce? Plan a Hanukkah occasion for the youngsters. Latest dying of a father or mother? Hanukkah could be an act of commemoration. If different Jewish holidays are tightly tethered to historical conventional follow — and to no small quantity of religious duty — Hanukkah can perform merely as a celebration of the pleasure of getting rituals, even when a few of them are of a comparatively fashionable classic. Hanukkah has lengthy been a potent image of resilience, as within the Isaac Bashevis Singer story, “The Energy of Mild,” in regards to the lighting of a menorah within the Warsaw ghetto: “That glimmer of sunshine, surrounded by so many shadows, appeared to say with out phrases: Evil has not but taken full dominion. A spark of hope remains to be left.” The normal Jewish calendar is already crammed with hardship, and its justifiable share of lugubriousness. Hanukkah’s lightness is its advantage. It’s a technique to validate Jewish pleasure.
