We Keep Getting Hanukkah Wrong

The Candles Miss the Bigger Picture

We keep getting Hanukkah wrong. I know, I’m shocked too. Since I was a kid, I always equated the holiday with presents doled out over eight nights (as opposed to the one-day Christmas climax, pick your preference) and the adage that applied to most Jewish holidays: “they tried to kill us. We lived. Let’s eat.”

And look, that’s not not the story. King Antiochus IV, a Greek-Syrian King, did invade ancient Israel and force a Greek way of life onto its people – and we’re not talking just feta and fancy columns either, but full-blown polytheism. The Second Temple, dedicated to the one God, HaShem, was repurposed as an altar to the greek god Zeus, whose list of deeds included…*checks list*…cheating on his wife while disguised as a bull and…*flips paper*…a swan? I…how?!

But us Jews did what we do, kicking kingly tuchus. A high priest (kohen gadol), Matityahu, along with his five sons, led a revolution and expelled Greek hegemony from Jerusalem. Matityahu didn’t live to see victory, but his eldest son, Judah, did, and he even had a cool name – “HaMakabi,” The Hammer. Sick. When the Second Temple was reclaimed, the oil left over was believed only enough to light the lamps for a single day, yet it burned on for eight. Nice - let’s commemorate this by lighting eight candles every year. Someone get the dreidel. “O’ Hanukkah, O’ Hanukkah, come light the menorah…”

Except, that isn’t the whole story. Let’s go back to our big bad, Antiochus. Ever wonder why he was conquering the Jews in the first place? If you just assumed it’s cause us Jews always get taken over as a matter of course, fair, but this time there was a specific context: he had collaborators. The Ptolemaic Egyptians? Nah, he hated their guts. The Romans? A few decades too early.

It was, in fact, another faction of Jews called the Tobiads who all but rolled out the red carpet for Antiochus’s invasion. The Tobiads weren’t like Matityahu and his motley crew. They were more assimilated into Hellenistic Greek culture, and when one of their number was denied the high-priesthood, they hoped to leverage Antiochus’s power to reclaim their own. So hot was the feud between these Jewish factions that Rabbis Jacob Telushkin and Irving Greenberg both use the phrase “civil war” to describe Israel during this period.

The Book of Maccabees tells us the first victim of the Hanukkah story wasn’t one of Antiochus’s men, but a Jew Matityahu slayed for wishing to comply with Antiochus’s commands. The Book of Maccabees didn’t make it to the version of scripture Jews use today, but it was included in the Septuagint, the Greek translation used by ancient Jews, and is as close a source as any to the conflict. And it just makes sense. If the Tobiads were willing to have Jersualem invaded to reclaim their authority, it isn’t a stretch to believe Matityahu would be willing to kill one of his own tribe in the name of zealotry.

So what am I trying to say. That as much as it is a story of Jewish identity overcoming all odds, Hanukkah is also a cautionary tale to us Jews thousands of years later. The adage “two Jews, three opinions” has never been truer, and with good reason. We, along with the rest of humanity, are being confronted with everything, everywhere all at once: the reemergence of autocracy and conflict. A dying planet. Algorithms that threaten to gobble our attention and rip us from our passions and loved ones. Finding solutions to these problems can be as challenging as the problems themselves, and our people, like all people, disagree on how best to proceed.

But this year, as we light the Hanukkah candles and chant the prayers, let us remember that we must strive to remain a single, unified tribe. We are orthodox, we are secular. We are liberal, we are conservative. We are Israeli, we are American (and everywhere in between). Each of us may be living our Judaism differently, but those differences must not triumph over our collective identity, lest we invite another Antiochus into our temples, our homes, our lives. The oil lasted eight nights, but we will last forever. Together.

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Some odds & ends:

• I’m proud to announce that as of the last update, my debut Jewish fantasy, The Sanhedrin Chronicles, has sold over 500 copies since its launch last month, and that’s a conservative estimate! The feedback has been overwhelming, from DMs filled with support to fan-mail from across the globe. If you have already purchased your copy and would like to show your support, a review on Amazon and Goodreads would be, to quote Ferris Bueller, “so choice.” If you have yet to join the journey, now is the perfect time! The ebook version is now on sale for just $.99 here, and is also available for a reduced price in paperback here.

• NYC area people! I’ll be doing my first book-signing and Q&A at Theodore’s Books in Oyster Bay, NY, on Wednesday, January 22nd at 7pm. Click here for the event website and to RSVP!

• A few weeks ago, I had the honor of leading a literary workshop for High School students in Great Neck, NY. It centered around themes of Jewish identity and pride using my book as an anchor text. Check out the video I made recapping the event on my socials here. If you’d like me to host the event for your community, let me know!

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