Zionism and Hanukah

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Friday, December 22, 2006

This is part 1 of a two-part presentation on the Revival of Hanukah in the 20th Century. Read part 2, Sermon in Song, by Rabbi Joel Fleekop.

Mi Yemalel, which we sung earlier in our service, is familiar to many of us, part of the regular Hanukah repertoire sung year after year. But have you ever carefully considered its words?

A careful look at the words of Mi Yemalel, gives us insight into how revolutionary this song really was when it was written and how it reflects a very profound change in the understanding of Hanukah among Zionists in the late 19th and early and mid-twentieth century.

Hanukah as you know is one of the minor festivals. Not mentioned in the Bible, it was also mostly ignored in the Talmud and other rabbinic writings. Unlike Purim, another minor holiday, which merits its own tractate, Hanukah is mentioned briefly in a legal passage where Hanukah lights and Shabbat lights are contrasted and in the accompanying aggadic passage telling the story of the miracle of the flask of oil lasting 8 days. As we mentioned last Saturday, in connection with the special Haftarah chosen for the first Shabbat of Hanukah, for the rabbis the revolt against the Seleucids, Graceo-Syrians and the military successes of the Maccabee’s were placed in the background, while God’s saving power was brought front and center: Not By Might and Not By Power but by My Spirit Alone.

With the rise of Zionism, all this was turned on its head. Notice the first line of Mi Yemalel. It is built on a Biblical text that asks” Who can retell the mighty acts of God?” Instead the Zionist author asks: Who can retell the great actions of the people of Israel? Also notice the words “in every generation a hero has arisen to redeem the people” and contrast them with the well known reading from the Passover Haggadah- In every generation, enemies arise to destroy us – vehakadosh baruch hu matzileinu miyadam, but God delivers us from their hands.

For Zionists the holiday of Hanukah, meaning literally dedication, and celebrating the rededication of the temple, was transformed into Chag HaMaccabbim, the Festival of the Maccabbees. This was literally true in that an attempt was made to change the name of the holiday during the time of the Yishuv, but certainly even more so, was true in spirit.

The early Zionists introduced the Books of the Maccabees which are not found in the Jewish Bible, into the public school curriculum. It was they who promoted the understanding of the name Maccabbee as meaning hammer, while the rabbis up until that point had stressed its derivation from the first letters of the prayer, Mi Chamochah BaEylim Adonai.

This revolution in the understanding of Hanukah began early in the Zionist movement and was expressed in many ways through the period of the establishment of the state of Israel.

In 1881 Hanukah became the official holiday of the Hovevie Tziyon Movement, the earliest of the Zionist movements. It became the holiday of freedom, more so even than Passover.

Early in the 20th century Jewish youth groups and student clubs named themselves after the Maccabbees or after Bar Kochba who led a revolt against the Romans. They dedicated themselves to physical education and sports, trying to eradicate the image of the weak Jew studying indoors all the time and replacing that with “Jewry of muscles, deep chested, sturdy, sharp eyed men, a Jewry steeled in war and enamored of weapons.” This caught the attention of the Orthodox of their time, who accused the Zionists of being “not the spiritual descendents of the Maccabbees but of the Hellenists”. In 1903 a prominent Orthodox rabbi in Israel wrote: “The Zionists magnified the festival of the Maccabees and augmented their strength and power. This is truly a great mistake.” There was also a famous incident when Eliezer Ben Yehudah, the reviver of the Hebrew lanuage, spoke out in favor of the Maccabees and of celebrating their military heroism, and the Ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem informed on him to the Turkish authorities, suggesting that he was promoting an armed uprising. Ben Yehudah was taken to jail, though eventually released.

The identification of the members of the pre-State Zionist movement with the Maccabbess comes through clearly in Shaul Tzchernikovsky’s poem Omrim Yesh Na Eretz, which has been set to music by J. Engel.

As Zionists stressed auto-emancipation, Jews freeing themselves, Hanukah became one of the most important historical symbols used by the movement. They belittled the miracle of the cruise of oil, as representing the passive Diaspora approach to Jewish life and stressed the empire challenging aspect of the Maccabees revolt. Perhaps the most extreme expression of this point of view is found in the song: Anu Nossim Lapidim which was very popular in Labor Zionist youth movements. Here the song declares: Nes Lo Karah Lanu Pach Shemen Lo Matzanu-No Miracle Happened for Us, We Found no Flask of Oil.

In 1911 Yiztchak Ben Zvi, a leading Zionist who would later become the 2nd president of Israel wrote:“The glory and the educational value of the Hasmoneans is that their example revived the nation to be its own redeemer and the determiner of its own future.”

One might also note that the way the story of Hanukah was told varied a little bit among the Zionists depending on their orientation. If we move forward to the period of the British Mandate, we find that Labor Zionists stressed that the Maccabees waged war only after grave acts of provocation and suppression. This was consistent with the defensive ethos of the Labor parties at the time. The Revisionists on the other hand, followers of Jabotinsky and those in the more radical underground movements, emphasized the themes of combating rule without hesitation or compromise no matter how dangerous. They also glorified the Zealots of the Roman period and not coincidentally called their youth movement Beitar, the place of Bar Kochba’s last stand.

In this period in which the return to the land was such as important part of Zionism, Joseph Klausner, a well known Jewish historian, teaching at the Hebrew Univeristy at that time, wrote about Hanukah as the triumph of the Jewish farmer. He wrote:” It was not the city of Jerusalem nor the ranks of the wealthy and large land owners but the obscure village of Modiin, with its peasants whose plot of land was their all, that produced Mattathias, the Hasmonean and his sons, who saved Jewish culture.”

We see working the land and building up the yishuv connected with the Maccabbees rededication of the Temple in Naomi Shemer’s song: Shir Shel Abba.

With the establishment of the State of Israel, the city of Modiin became a national shrine to the Maccabbees and a torch bearing relay race became an important part of the holiday celebration. The race, still held today, begins in Modiin and ends in Jerusalem, culminating in the lighting of the Menorah which stands in front of the Kenesset, the Israeli Parliament, ironically, an imitation of the Olympic marathon. Over the years though Chanukah’s nationalistic aspect has diminished with Yom HaAtzmaut becoming the focus for some of the pageants, marches and speeches, that were associated with Hanukah in the pre-state years.

More recently Hanukah has played a role in the political imagination on the right of the Israeli political spectrum. Gush Emunim, the settler movement, chose Hanukah as the date on which to establish their first settlement in 1976 and in 1981 started their campaign against the Sinai withdrawal on Hanukah as well. Dan Be’eri, a member of the Jewish underground arrested in 1985 for his involvement with a plot to blow up the Dome of the Rock, brought Hanukah into the court room arguing: “this court would also have convicted Judah the Maccabbe for removing the idols from the Temple and spurning the nation’s legitimate legal institutions.”

In Israel today, whatever one’s political viewpoint, Hanukah is a time for celebrating with family and friends, Without the shadow of Christmas, it stands on its own as a celebration of freedom and liberation. To conclude this Israel segment of our modern history of Chanukah, the Cantor will lead us in a setting of Maoz Tzur again by the well known Israeli popular composer Naomi Shemer.