Growing up, my Ḥanukah education was pretty limited. Until around 5th grade, I learned the story as: the Greeks wouldn’t let us practice our “religion” so a superhero-like character named Judah the Maccabee, together with his father and brothers, fought back. Then there was a miracle in which their one-day supply of pure olive oil lasted eight days, and that’s the end of the story.
My middle school Ḥanukah education was focused mainly on the halakhot of lighting candles. That and dreidels, oily foods, and presents was basically what I knew about Ḥanukah before I turned 18.
It wasn’t until some years after I had left the Jewish education system that I realized I didn’t actually know the Ḥanukah story. The real story of the Maccabees is one of guerrilla war against an oppressive empire that tried to destroy the essence of our native way of life, that desecrated our people’s most sacred and important holy site – all in the name of “civilization.”
The fighting continued on for many years after we scrubbed the Temple clean and found oil that lasted eight days – it took another two decades to finally defeat the Seleucid Empire and re-establish our sovereignty.
When I finally did learn all of this later in life, I didn’t (and still don’t) understand why we’re taught that the miracle is about oil. Yes, that was miraculous, but clearly less miraculous than a small collection of priests and farmers fighting with inferior weapons and training, yet defeating the second mightiest empire of the time.
What I also don’t understand is why we were never taught how this story can apply to us today. An unfortunate trope in American Jewish education is learning about the stories attached to our people’s festivals as something that happened, rather than as something always happening and always relevant.
There are still many oppressive systems in this world, including systems that oppress the Jewish people, but for some reason we’ve lost the fire to fight them – a fire exemplified by the sons of Matityahu.
So this Ḥanukah, when we light our candles, I want to try tapping into the fire that burned in the hearts of our heroes so we can dedicate ourselves to Jewish liberation, and stand in solidarity with the other oppressed peoples of this world. We may be burning olive oil for eight nights, but we’re still not fully free and there are new festivals to establish.
