The modern State of Israel and the rise of Zionism have transformed the celebration of Hanukkah. About that, there is no doubt.
The world over, Jews light candles and play with dreidels on Hanukkah. But the reason it has become such a significant Jewish holiday is not simply because of its proximity to the winter holiday that Christians celebrate. And the reason Hanukkah has become so significant for Jews, and has been elevated far beyond what it was 120 years ago, is because the modern State of Israel and Zionism have embraced Hanukkah as a symbol of Jewish fighting and Jewish heroism.
When early Zionist thinkers were crystallizing their image of the “new Jew,” discussing who would become the “new Israeli,” they searched for historical non-biblical images of tough Jews, fighting Jews. There are plenty of examples in the Bible. Just think of Samson, Joshua, Gideon, Deborah, David, Yael, Barak, and many more. But what about post-biblical military heroes? The idea of Jews returning to their ancestral homeland certainly resonates. It is romantic, powerful, and deeply relatable – especially for Jews in the Diaspora who were suffering the evils of pogroms and widespread Jew-hatred.
Finding examples of Jews who fight, heroic Jews, was not easy. Rabbinic Judaism, for example, writes the battle of Hanukkah out of Jewish history. We only find a very small mention of the miracle – finding a tiny crucible of oil that lasted for eight days (Talmud, tractate Shabbat).
There is no mention of the battle, which is simply not found in Jewish sources. The books of Maccabees I and II are found in the Apocrypha. Catholics have it in their Bible; Protestants do not include the Books of Maccabees in theirs.
The Books of Maccabees did not make it into the Jewish canon and are not part of the Jewish Bible.
Embracing the story of the Maccabees
The Zionist, modern State of Israel found and embraced the story of the Maccabees and their battle against Syrian Greeks, a greater army and an overwhelming culture. The Syrian Greeks were trying to acculturate the Jews into their paganism. They disdained the Jewish monotheistic culture. They threw a pig into the Jew’s holy Temple in Jerusalem. They tried, often successfully, to lure Jews to adopt pagan traditions and abandon Jewish life.
The Maccabees responded with a military rebellion. Similarly, the story of Masada was written out of rabbinic Jewish history and can be found only in classical, non-Jewish sources. Early Zionist thinkers and the leaders of Israel describe Masada as a few heroes confronting the powerful Roman Legion.
Those few Jews “heroically” chose suicide rather than become slaves to Rome. That explains why for decades IDF paratroopers were sworn in at Masada and recited the mantra: “Masada will not fall again.”
Bar-Kochba’s revolt against the Romans in 132 CE is another example of the embrace of an ancient hero by Zionist thinkers and modern Israelis. Zionists and modern Israelis uncovered the sources of the uprising and crystallized them into the culture of the modern-day Jew. This was a fighting Jew, a modern Samson, an updated Samson.
THERE WERE many legitimate reasons why the ancient rabbis had tremendous difficulty with each of these.
Regarding Hanukkah – as great a victory as it was in ousting the Syrian Greeks and rededicating the Temple in Jerusalem – the Hasmonean dynasty quickly became corrupt and rotten to its core.
Regarding Masada – of course, the rabbis could not possibly embrace suicide, especially the mass suicide at Masada, as a valid Jewish response. As for Bar-Kochba, he was a failed messiah. The great Rabbi Akiva proclaimed Bar-Kochba the messiah, which was very problematic, rabbinically.
In the modern period, another excellent example of Jews fighting their enemies was the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, as well as other uprisings in ghettos and concentration camps during the Holocaust. Zionism and modern Israel latched on to these examples of Jews rebelling and fighting the Nazis.
While these examples are apt and really happened, they are hardly historically typical. As with all the other examples, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising exemplified courageous Jews fighting an overwhelming enemy. They were tough Jews. The image of the Jews as passive victims during the Holocaust did not sit well with the model of the new Zionist Jew. However, this was the case, despite the overwhelming numerical reality that only a handful engaged in armed rebellion against the Nazis while millions did not.
The image of the new Jew, the Israeli, as a fighter is an essential component of the ethos of today’s Israelis. That image lends strength to Diaspora Jewry.
In Israel, the Maccabees are an ancient symbol of that fighter. The “Jewish Olympics” are known as the Maccabiah Games. They could not be called the “Maccabiah Olympics” since that would have been a capitulation to the very paganism that the Maccabees rejected and rebelled against.
The writer is a columnist and commentator. Watch his show Thinking Out Loud on Jewish Broadcasting Service TV.