Winter, Christmas, and Chanukah

 

Winter brings a shiver to the soul. It is the season of hibernation and stagnation. The nights are longer, the air is frigid, and there are moments when the world feels unforgiving, dark and dreary. Winter can very easily become a season of discontent.

Both Judaism and Christianity have holidays right around the winter solstice, and both holidays have thematic connections to the season. In a remarkable passage in the Talmud (Avodah Zarah 8a), we are told about the origins of Saturnalia, the pagan predecessor to Christmas.  Adam, the first man, sinned and was thrown out of the Garden of Eden. It was fall, and he noticed that each day became progressively shorter and colder. Adam began to worry that "perhaps because I sinned the world is becoming dark, and will return to chaos and disorder." He fasted and prayed to be spared; and then the solstice arrived, and the days got longer. Adam, overjoyed with the realization that winter is not the end of the world, established a holiday to thank God. However, this initially well-meant holiday was eventually appropriated by pagans for idol worship. The Talmud teaches us that passing the winter solstice has a spiritual message: light will return, and man, despite his flaws, will be delivered from his distress. Winter is not endless, nor is it the end.

This message is transformative, because belief in a better future makes us more resilient. In a famous 1957 study, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, Curt Richter, tested the resilience of wild rats. Richter placed the rats in a bucket of water to see how long they would swim before giving up. Most would drown within 15 minutes. However, if the rats were “saved” by being taken out of the water before they would drown, they would swim for increasingly longer periods of time, and could continue swimming up to 60 hours. The possibility of being saved made the rats more resilient.

Hope is more than a warm fuzzy feeling; it provides all living beings with greater strength and determination. And each winter, as we pass the solstice, we learn to hope again.

But it is here where Chanukah's message is different. It tells of another type of hope, one that doesn’t depend on the memory of deliverance. Chanukah teaches us that the greatest miracles are products of the soul, which is strong enough to persevere even in the darkest moments. Rabbi Tzvi Elimelech of Dinov notes that Chanukah arrives just before the solstice, on the darkest, most hopeless night of the year. This is because the triumph of the Maccabees is a triumph of inner hope, of finding inspiration when none is apparent. The Maccabees should have given up before they started. How could a small group of men take on a powerful empire? What kept the Maccabees going was their own inner light, a refusal to despair despite the overwhelming odds against them.

The spirit of Chanukah can bend reality. Natan Sharansky tells of one Chanukah in the gulag when the guards confiscated his improvised Menorah. Sharansky declared a hunger strike; in an attempt to avoid bad publicity, the commanding officer in the camp, Major Osin, allowed Sharansky to light Chanukah candles in his office. As Osin stood by, Sharansky improvised this Hebrew blessing: "Blessed are You, God, for allowing me to rejoice on this day of Chanukah, the holiday of our liberation, the holiday of our return to the way of our fathers. Blessed are You, God, for allowing me to light these candles. May you allow me to light the Chanukah candles many times in your city, Jerusalem, with my wife, Avital, and my family and friends.” Then, Sharansky added, "And may the day come when all our enemies, who today are planning our destruction, will stand before us and hear our prayers and say 'Amen.'" Osin, hearing the end of the blessing, politely added in "Amen." While it would take many years before Sharansky made it to Jerusalem, this too was a Chanukah miracle: one courageous man so determined to hold on to his Judaism, that he managed to enlist a KGB Major to pray for his emigration.

Chronologically, Chanukah is the final holiday in the Jewish calendar - the last one established before the destruction of the Second Temple. It arrives at a moment when miracles are few and the Divine Presence is hidden; and it teaches a lesson for an age when deliverance is improbable. For much of the last 2,000 years, Jewish history has been an endless winter, a hopeless, barren terrain of exile. Yet, during this time, there has been an ongoing miracle of faith, the spirit of a remarkable people who never lost hope. And on the darkest night of the year, Chanukah reminds us of a hope that requires no promises, just the miracle of perseverance.

We Need Chanukah More Than Ever This Year

It is easy to dismiss Chanukah as relatively unimportant. In America, what has made Chanukah prominent actually diminishes its value; it is an also-ran holiday that only achieved importance as the Jewish counterpart to Christmas. But Chanukah has a universal message, one that is more meaningful than ever. Eight months into a pandemic, our morale is already wearing thin; and now we face a challenging winter, where we are forced indoors just as a new spike of cases arrive. Chanukah reminds us to never let hold of hope, no matter what.

“What is Chanukah?” It is surprising to see this question posed by the rabbis of the Talmud, as if the origins of the holiday were unknown to them. By the time the Talmud was written almost 2,000 years ago, the holiday was well known, and the story had been recorded in the  Book of the Maccabees in the Apocrypha. There had been a war of independence fought by Jewish rebels, the Maccabees, against the Seleucid Empire, and afterward the Temple in Jerusalem was rededicated. The celebration of this event was called “Chanukah,” the Hebrew word for dedication.

Yet if this were the rationale for Chanukah, the holiday should have disappeared once the Temple was destroyed. It would have been irrelevant. Why celebrate the rededication of a Temple that no longer existed? This is what the Talmud is wondering when it asks, “What is Chanukah?”

The Talmud offers an alternate reason for Chanukah. It tells of a miracle involving the menorah, the Temple’s candelabra. During the rededication, the Maccabees found just one jar of the High Priest's olive oil, enough for one night; but miraculously, the menorah remained lit for eight nights. With this explanation, Chanukah no longer depends on the rededication of the Temple. Yet this explanation prompts a question of its own: Why institute a holiday for a miraculous jar of oil?

The Talmud is actually reinventing Chanukah. For Jews in exile, this holiday celebrating a former triumph was transformed into a festival of hope, and the relatively unimportant miracle of the menorah now took center stage. One small jar of oil lasting for eight nights became a metaphor for a small community overcoming the odds against them. Jews in exile could take heart in the fact their Maccabees ancestors were able to overcome all odds; they were inspired to think that they could too. 

Hope is a puzzle; many observers are unclear as to what  value it has. To some, like  the Roman Philosopher Seneca, hope is a denial of reality, which prevents us from “adapting ourselves to the present”. Others see a value in hope as a useful myth, one that prods people to feel more confident, and to aspire to build a better future. This certainly is enough of a reason to be hopeful. But a Jewish theology of hope goes much further, and sees hope as part of the divine blueprint. Hope is based on the belief that the world is always taking another step in the direction of redemption. And even one small Menorah miracle can serve as a reminder of that blueprint.

For nearly two millennia, the ritual of lighting candles on the longest, darkest and coldest nights of the year gave an embattled people hope. And it is the very smallness of the ritual that makes it so powerful. Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Chassidic movement said: “A little light pushes away a great deal of darkness.” The same is true of hope. Even a bit of hope gives us the strength to continue onward and pursue redemption.

Last December, paramedics were called to the home of an elderly couple in Lakewood, N.J. As they were taking the wife to the ambulance, they noticed that alongside the Chanukah menorah there was a burning wick embedded inside a half of a potato. When the paramedics asked what the potato was for, the husband explained that during the Holocaust, he was on the run from the Nazis, hiding in different locations. He had very little, but for Chanukah he was able to improvise a menorah from a potato, some oil and a wick. After his liberation, the man explained, he continued to light a potato Menorah, to remember the miracle of his survival.

This December, hope is on the horizon, with the first deliveries of covid vaccines. But there will be much worry and suffering to come before the end of this pandemic. Right now, the lesson of the Lakewood man’s Chanukah potato is especially useful: A little hope can go a long way, and a little light pushes away a great deal of darkness.

Defiance, the Chanukah Story: A Response to the NY Times