Hannukah


Recommended Posts

Tonight begins the minor festival of חֲנֻכָּה‎. The time of the year when Jews spend 8 days trying to figure out how to transliterate the Hebrew into English!!

More seriously, Hannukah celebrates the retaking and rededication, after cleansing, of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Maccabees from the Selucids who desecrated it with the erection of idols and the sacrifice of swine upon the altar.

During this holiday that celebrates the victory of the weak over the mighty, the few over the many, may we seek to rededicate ourselves to nurturing the divine spark within ourselves, that we may be a source of strength and love to our families, our communities and all with whom we come into contact. May our lives ever be for a blessing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tonight begins the minor festival of חֲנֻכָּה‎. The time of the year when Jews spend 8 days trying to figure out how to transliterate the Hebrew into English!!

More seriously, Hannukah celebrates the retaking and rededication, after cleansing, of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Maccabees from the Selucids who desecrated it with the erection of idols and the sacrifice of swine upon the altar.

During this holiday that celebrates the victory of the weak over the mighty, the few over the many, may we seek to rededicate ourselves to nurturing the divine spark within ourselves, that we may be a source of strength and love to our families, our communities and all with whom we come into contact. May our lives ever be for a blessing.

have a beautiful holiday, RabbiO ! :)

Edited by SilverRose
Link to comment
Share on other sites

May the oil in your lamp never run out. Shalom.

An interesting thing about the "miracle of the oil." There is no mention of it in the books of Maccabees. There is no mention of it in Josephus. The first account of it is written in the Talmud which of course dates several hundreds of years later.

There is conjecture that the story is a fable spun by the rabbis for a number of reasons. By the time of the Talmud the holiday was well entrenched. The rabbis were unhappy with the holiday for a number of reasons. First, because it celebrated a war. Second, the Hasmoneans were not held in high regard. Once final victory was obtained, which occurred long after the retaking of the Temple and after the death of Judah Maccabee, the Hasmoneans took the throne, but they were not of the Davidic line. Furthermore, within, oh, a generation and a half they were as inept and corrupt as any and they were as ardently Hellenistic, perhaps more so, than the Selucids and their allies were. Furthermore, because of strife within the Hasmoneans the Romans were invited in and as a result.....

Conjecture is that the rabbis could not eliminate a popular nationalistic holiday so they constructed the fable to reinterpret the holiday by demphasizing the military aspect, downplaying the Maccabees, and interjecting G-d into the story as a more active participant.

Even if the story of the oil is not true, the truth of the story is sufficient cause to celebrate a people's determination to be true to their heritage and their G-d.

Edited by RabbiO
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Amulet locked this topic
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share