Hanukkah, the “Festival of Lights,” is among the most modern of the worldwide Jewish festivals, being only about 2,500 years old. In 2024, the eight-day celebration will last from Dec. 25 to Jan. 2.
The holiday commemorates the Jewish rededication of the Second Holy Temple of Jerusalem, which had fallen into a state of Hellenistic influence during a dark era in Jewish history. The Holy Temple was illuminated by a single flask of olive oil for eight days during the rededication. This occurrence is seen as a miracle and serves as the inspiration for lighting the menorah on each night of Hanukkah.
A “post-canon” celebration
Notably, Hanukkah is a “post-canon” celebration in the Jewish tradition. Yom Kippur — the Day of Atonement — and Passover, by contrast, are recognized as biblical holidays.
In developing the traditions of modern Hanukkah, rabbis chose to focus on the miracle rather than the relatively fleeting military successes that had surrounded it. In the words of Rabbi David Kaplan, Congregation Ohav Zedek of Wilkes-Barre, the “eternal message” of the miracle continues to resonate, and the traditions of Hanukkah have remained sturdy for centuries.
“In the last hundreds and hundreds of years, I don’t think very much has changed,” Kaplan said of Hanukkah’s firm traditions. He added, however, that Hannukuh celebrants have a certain amount of freedom, as the holiday’s “post-Bible” status makes its coinciding rules less rigid.
Shifting perceptions
Some of Hanukkah’s strength comes from its thematic elements. Even the food eaten over the course of the eight days comes with special significance for some.
“Some of the foods that we eat are specifically foods that are made with olive oil, which makes sense because the original miracle was with the olive oil,” Kaplan explained. Traditional Hanukkah foods made using olive oil include, in Americanized terms, doughnuts and potato pancakes.
Other Hanukkah traditions, such as gift-giving, are somewhat modern, and may be influenced by the broader holiday season recognized in the United States and Europe. Kaplan suggested that gift-giving for Hanukkah does not fall in line with any particular Jewish custom, and that keeping the enthusiasm surrounding the holiday can be difficult to sustain over the eight days.
“I know a lot of people are under the misconception that somehow Hanukkah is ‘Jewish Christmas,’” Kaplan said of the way Hanukkah may be perceived as part of the holiday season. “That is not true. They are not really related at all, other than they do fall around the same time of year.”
Kaplan added, however, that different groups within the Jewish community get excited on different days of Hanukkah. For children, the first night of the holiday tends to be the most exciting. In certain Orthodox communities, the final night takes on special significance and is sometimes considered to be the true Hannukah.
Still, Kaplan said that the different branches of Judaism celebrate Hanukkah in roughly the same way, with differences usually only appearing on the edges and on a more granular level.
“In a way, there’s more of a commonality between the different streams at Hanukkah time,” Kaplan said. He added that Sabbath and Passover observations tend to be more dependent on the sect of Judaism. This can be traced, according to Kaplan, back to Hannukah’s more “manmade” roots. In a sense, Hannukah’s origin story makes it more thematically timeless than those Kaplan described as being purely “God-made.”
Celebrating in troubled times
Kaplan noted the themes of Hanukkah being especially crucial to the world’s population at this moment in history.
“We feel, metaphorically speaking, a loss of light and direction in our world, and I think that that’s something thematically that Hanukkah speaks for the Jewish people…,” Kaplan said.
That being said, Kaplan finds solutions in the miracle of Hanukkah as well. What begins as a single glimmer of hope can build over time and form something powerful.
“It doesn’t have to start with tens of thousands of lights; that might be a bridge too far, but maybe that first night of Hanukkah, that solitary, single light. The next night, it’s all of a sudden joined by a second, and then the third, and then the fourth… What began as a solo project, one light, can keep growing. We can keep adding light to bring back that lost light from our world.”
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