What Does Hannukah Hold for Adults?

Most of us know something of the Hannukah story - and we heard part of it retold in today's reading from First Maccabees, a book written in the same century as the events it details. As First Maccabees tells us, Judea was conquered by Alexander th Great, who ruled it in ways that the Jews found acceptable. After his death, Judea was a bone of contention between the descendants of two of Alexander's generals, Ptolemy, who took over Egypt, and Antiochus, who took over Syria. Under the Ptolemies, Judea became somewhat Hellenized, even to the building a gymnasium, that most Greek of organizations, where men went to exercize, naked, right under the walls of the Temple in Jerusalem. When Antiochus IV wrested Judea from the Ptolemies he imposed a very harsh, and entirely Greek rule on the Jews, which they could not abide, as it denied them most of their religion and culture. And finally, led by the Maccabees, Jews faithful to the old ways, most of the Jews rebelled and against all odds, they won and threw the Syrians out of Judea.

Hannukah is the one Jewish holiday not ordained in the Hebrew Bible. There are a few books about the Hannukah story, including 1,2,3 and 4 Maccabees, which each have a very different take on the Hannukah story. Our reading from First Maccabees gives a sense of the events that led up to the Jewish revolt against the persecution of the Syrian king Antiochus. All four of the Maccabee books share the understanding that their topic was a remarkable event in history - the one time the Jews ever stood up for themselves and won.

Over millenia the Jews were bullied and defeated by the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks. Even after the victory of the Maccabees, eventually the Jews lost their self-rule, and were defeated and persecuted again, by the pagan Roman emperors, then by Holy Roman Empire, and then by Christians the world over. This one inexplicable victory -over a force that was larger, better equipped, trained, armed, disciplined, experienced, funded - it could only be a miracle, and that justified it to the rabbis as a legitimate holiday to be added to the Jewish liturgical year.

So Hannukah is in many was the simplest of the holidays. And some of what it offers is simple: it is the opposite of Yom Kippur - instead of sobriety and fasting and repentant reflection , it is a time for rejoicing, eating good food, having fun, celebrating with loved ones, not doing a lot of work.

Hannukah is a time for gift-giving. It doesn't have to be for kids only - many adults give each other large or small gifts over the 8 days

Some of what it offers is more complicated. For today, I want to offer just a few aspects. First there is the idea that miracles happen. The war the Maccabees fought was victorious, and that was miraculous, literally, to them. This miraculous victory was followed immediately by the rededication of temple and rekindling of the temple's holy fire. Many people think that the Menorah is lit in honor of a related miracle - that a temple oil lamp which burned for eight days on only one day's worth of oil, while the Jewish supply lines were blocked by the Syrian soldiers. But the story of the oil lamp is actually a legend which comes from a much later text, a portion of Talmud, rabbinical discussion of Hannukah. The original reason for lighting the menorah was in honor of the cleansing of the temple from pig and other Greek sacrifices, and in celebration of that renewed, pure, temple flame.

In lighting the menorah, in performing this action meant to remind us of the holiday's story, Hannukah gives us a chance to reflect on how we see things in our own lives - do we believe in miracles? What is a miracle? Divine intervention? Extraordinary coincidence? If something happens, of tremendous importance and blessing to us, that is beyond our control, that is made manifest by the creative powers that operate in the world, is that a miracle? Or are miracles only a fiction, along with angels and announcements of the birth of the prince of peace? David Ben Gurion, a leader of the modern state of Israel, and a participant in the 20th century battle to establish Israel as a Jewish state, (which was, incidentally, the next successful Jewish war after the Maccabees') said: "Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles isn't a realist."

Second, there is the idea that God helps those who help themselves. This was an issue of great concern at the time. The Hasmoneans, the Maccabees and their followers, felt that Jews had to stand up and fight in order to free themselves of the Syrian persecution, and that only thus could God's power to help them be enlisted - if they actually gave him a venue for his aid. Other Jews of the time disagreed, and felt that only God could help them. Their duty, and the duty of every Jew, was to be rigorously pious, even unto death, and eventually, if they were worthy enough, God would intervene on his own, as they believed he had when they were slaves in Egypt.

The value of this consideration may seem limited to those who are athiestic, but I know athiests who pray because they say prayer changes them, and then they are better able to live as they aspire to live. And I know thiests who pray for the same reason. And I know theists and athiests who don't agree as to whether or not their prayers have been heard, but they agree that their prayers have been answered. Do we pray? Have you ever prayed? What was prayer been like for us? When and how do we pray, and why? Are we responsible for working for what we want to happen in the world, even if it seems impossible, or is it more appropriate for us to live well within our own lives, and leave working for change to forces beyond us?

Third, Hannukah offers a chance to reflect on the age-old issue of assimilation. That gymnasium mentioned before was a big deal. There were naked Jews, and some who were visibly not Jews, exercising, running and wrestling and throwing discuses around, within the walls of the gymnasium right below the temple mount. You could see them from the temple mount! Now athleticism and nakedness were not a big deal in Greek culture, in war, in athletics and of course in art. But athleticism was not a regular part of Jewish life, and nakedness was definitely taboo. Running around naked below the temple was big problem for a lot of people, just as it would be if we UU's could see such men now, just below us in the garden, from this second floor of our sanctuary building.

Cultural assimilation is an ever-present issue for most Jews in one way or another. It also is not an issue for gentiles to ignore, especially given how much the issues was sharpened in the wake of the holocaust, and how now again we are learning about the possibilities for sharing and deepening, and for offense and misunderstanding, that come with attention to multiculturalism. To really understand the issue of assimilation requires more time than we have this morning, perhaps a lifetime. But Hannukah stresses one aspect that is important to notice and honor.

Judaism is impossible to practice devoutly if one is subsumed in a different culture. This is one reason for Judaism's conflicts with dominant cultures over the millenia. Some schools of Judaism hold that the Jew is always the stranger, and must remain so if she or he is to remain true to Jewish faith and identity which is articulated and understood as very different from the rest of the world's practices and ways. Not all Jews agree with this, but nonetheless the difficulty of being Jewish and living in a non-Jewish world is obvious as much in R. Greenberg's modern words as in the text from First Maccabees. The events of the holocaust ended what was for some Jews a hope that Anti-Semitism was an archaic phenomenon that had no place in the modern world. Instead, it seemed, anti-Semitism could profit from modern ways and technology, and take on a whole new dimension of malevolence and threat. Significantly, out of the events of the 20th century, there is no new Jewish religious holiday for the modern establishment of Israel as a Jewish state. But there is Yom Ha-Shoah, the holiday that commemorates the holocaust.

There are even people in this congregation for whom assimilation is, and will remain, a painful issue. This calls for and requires continued attention, not only for those of us who are of related by family or marriage to Judaism, but on the part of all of us. "Why do Jews feel like that?" Or, "Why do I feel like this?" As a denomination we say that we draw from and honor wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life and Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves. But we can only come to terms with what Judaism means to any of us in our own lives and in the lives of our friends or family here or at home when we engage ourselves in thinking and talking, looking for answers that may resolve the connections and the conflicts in us or in those we love. "What does Judaism mean to me, what do I believe, what does this holiday of Hannukah mean to me, what do I honor? And how can I lift that up in my life?" How can we lift that up in the life of this congregation which has so many Jewish members and friends, and which honors the ideas and rituals of Judaism throughout the year?

You may have noticed, today's is a sermon of questions, not answers. I have my own answers to some of these questions, and am still working on others. This is probably true for many of us. Our denominational or personal relation to Hannukah, urges us to confront the modern issues of miracles, of agency, of multiculturalism. Our Unitarian-Universalism tells us that answers change, that questions are gifts, sacred, that without questions, we would not even know we need answers. In that spirit, anyone who's been counting will have noticed that I have offered eight questions in this sermon, one for every night of Hannukah. Happy Hannukah!