The Inconvenient Zionism Of Hanukkah

The two pillars and the Post-Diaspora revolution as a whole are contrary to Hanukkah itself. And they know it. In JVP materials they make repeated use of a retelling of the Hanukkah story in which they hold in disdain the holiday and the events it celebrates. They describe the story as “painful and complex” and the Maccabees as zealots attacking Jewish Hellenists. They contend that the rabbinical consensus was against glorifying the events, and to downplay the “painful history” and ward against militarism they chose an anti-military Haftorah. Further, they claim that the story of the miracle of oil is made up, falsely citing the Talmud. With Hanukkah hollowed out they can insert political advocacy into its empty husk, but more importantly, it can’t be recognized how antithetical the holiday is to their movement. Actual familiarity with the Hanukkah story would reveal them to be modern Hellenists, and modern Zionists their Maccabee rivals.

The true story of Hanukkah is a triumph of Jewish tradition over submission to Hellenization. This triumph saw Israel shaking off the yoke of whims and temperamental mercies of foreign kings and nations, to take command of their own destiny, and determine for themselves how they should live. It is a celebration of Zionism before the idea had been named. According to the traditional narratives, the Books of the Maccabees, and Antiquities by Josephus Flavius, the land of Israel sat at the center of a power struggle between the successors of Alexander the Great. When Ptolemy took Jerusalem, he did so cruelly, enslaving many. When the Selucid king Antiochus took it from the Ptolemaic Empire, he was crueler still to the holy city. 

Even so, there were Jews who were seduced by the politics and pleasures of the scions of Macedon. Hellenistic Jews vied for political power against the traditional Jews, and established Grecian institutions and acted out of disdain of Jewish customs. This faction welcomed Antiochus’ rule. This rule demanded submission of Jewish tradition to Hellenism; Grecian culture, philosophy, and religion. In the Jewish Temple an idol of Zeus was established and swine were sacrificed on the altar. Circumcision was banned under penalty of death for both mother and child. Sacred books were burned, their study forbidden. 

The Hellenistic Jews welcomed this new order, and helped perpetuate it. However, the Maccabees rebelled against the suppression of their peoplehood. They fought the Seleucid Empire, and were able to take back Jerusalem for themselves. In the war for liberation’s most famous moment, they rededicated the Temple, clearing it of false gods. For the Temple to become fully operational, the Menorah had to be lit. However, most of the consecrated oil had been defiled by the Hellenists. The Maccabees lit the Menorah with the remaining oil, which was enough for one day, but through miracle, lasted for eight days until they could make some more. 

The Temple secure, the Jewish resistance went to establish an independent kingdom of Israel. The Maccabees knew that they could not trust the tyranny of a larger nation to permit them to follow Jewish traditions. As Josephus recounts the Maccabee progenitor Matityahu as saying, with the help of Hashem, they had to “return to…that freedom in which you shall live quietly, and enjoy your own customs.” Only under Jewish self-determination could they ensure their way of life, and not be made to submit under another. 

Modern Zionists are successors to the Maccabees. They want a refuge to quietly enjoy their nation, heritage, and culture, where foreign powers can not suppress them. Only they can they be entrusted to secure their own future, to have self-determination in their historic homeland, like the Maccabees before them.