Chanukah - Rabbi Dr Michael Shire

Central Reform Temple

4th December 2024

Chanumass/Chrismukah

Chanukah and Christmas only coincide about four times in a century so we are fortunate this year to experience this phenomenon as the first light of chanukah will be lit on the first night of Christmas. I went to google to find out this information and of course I went down a rabbit hole of a lot of other useless information. Like why can’t chanukah start on a Tuesday or did Jesus celebrate Chanukah and what is it called when you put the two together; is it Chrismukkah or Chanumass? Just in case you are interested, Chanukah can’t start on a Tuesday for a really complicated calendar reasons that I don’t understand. Jesus did in fact celebrate Chanukah though definitely not with a Chanukah menorah or with oil lights. It was more of a National celebration of freedom, perhaps like our Independence day. Of course, 25th December at that time was not an important date except for the Rosmans! The final question of what the two are called together, though humorous, begs the question, should we put the two together at all?

Most people think of them both as festivals of light. While it certainly looks that way, it falls into the trap of trying to find a connection where there is none and reduces both festivals to the commercial, blandness we see on our streets and shops. To appropriately call Christmas a festival of light is to call to mind the light of the world that Jesus’ birth represents. As we know the pretty decorated Christmas tree is just a German Victorian invention and is not the main feature of a religious Christmas. For Chanukah, to call it a festival of lights is to highlight a legend in the Talmud that was written 600 years after the Maccabees existed where the oil in the Temple lasted for a miracle 8 days. Even Jesus would have been surprised for he would have known Chanukah as a celebration of freedom after a military victory over the Greek pagans who came to conquer the land in the footsteps of Alexander the Great.

So, Christmas is a celebration of a new light, one that has never been seen before and will never be again in human form. The light that is Jesus comes to save and redeem bringing a message of hope and good news to all people. It is a universalizing message seeking to spread the good news to everyone so that all will be touched to turn towards the light and receive it in their very souls. That obviously is not the light of Chanukah. If we can say there is light involved in the original Chanukah story, it is the light of resistance and hope in remaining separate and distinct from the Hellenistic pagan culture spreading from Greece through the known world. We perhaps have the wrong impression of paganism. Paganism brought knowledge of astronomy, geometry, medicine, philosophy, debate, love of the human body and its attributes, aesthetics and beauty, architecture, theatre and fine arts to the ancient world. All these were products of Alexander’s legacy and we know from excavations in Israel that the people living there, actually loved every part of it. We have mosaics from houses and synagogues depicting the good life with wine, women and song. We have Greek style buildings and accounts of bath houses and philosophical debates about the Torah. The Jewish people it seems actually absorbed Hellenism with alacrity but it came with a consequence. The connections to the Priestly cult of the Temple with its sacrifices and ritual ways was waning. Judaism as practiced since biblical times was in decline. Would it survive this cultural onslaught that disapproved of cutting the human body for circumcision and preferred athletic games rather than study of a sacred text? It took a group of priests who were later called the Maccabees to resist and fight a desperate military action against the Hellenists, most of whom were fellow Jews. As we read in the book of Maccabees, the few defeated the many, the weak defeated the strong and the Maccabees came to rededicate the Temple in Jerusalem to worship Adonai once again. Ironically of course as Reform Jews, we would probably have been on the side of the Hellenists seeking to find a way to bring tradition and contemporary life together. And yet the resistance of the Maccabees to ensure that Judaism survived is what we now celebrate. They stood up for what they believed and resisted becoming part of a homogeneous whole. They wanted to keep their Judaism separate and distinct. Unlike the message of Christmas which is universalistic. Chanukah is very particularistic – it is Nationalist and separatist. It’s a festival to actually celebrate why we continue to remain different and separate from the rest of the world. It’s not surprising that Judaism after the Macabees then begins to emphasize in-marriage, laws of purity, priestly roles for Jewish leaders etc.

So these two - Chrismukkah - though looking more and more similar with lights and decorations and presents and jingly music are actually the opposite of one another. Christmas as a universal light to the world bringing good news, Chanukah as a particularist fight for distinctiveness and separateness. But that is not the end of the story for the purpose of the Jewish People remaining separate is to provide a universal message to the world of the one God and the unity that comes with it. We are to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation and bring light to the nations. As Rabbi Yitz Greenberg has written; for Judaism the vision is universal but the mission is particular. It is through our Jewish practice and teaching that we will also bring about a messianic time for all. Jews never the accept the world as it is, they always want it to be better and rid of imperfections – that is our messianic streak. We don’t think it will all be made perfect by one being or one moment in time. Rather Judaism is there for the long game, slowly bringing the sublime vision of the Torah to fruition. What Greenberg calls ‘A Triumph of Life’ and we might call Holiness.

So what should we do when Christmas and Chanukah fall together? Interfaith families ask me what to do in their homes if they celebrate both festivals and I recommend that this separation be made concrete in having a room dedicated to Christmas and a separate different room dedicated to Chanukah. In that way members of a two faith family can recognize that there are differences that are manifest and should remain apart.

Jewish practice suggests that the Chanukah menorah should be lit in the window so as to proclaim the miracle to all who pass by and by implication identify a Jewish religious household. I was recently working with a group of Jewish and non-Jewish teachers on the teaching of the Chanukah story. One of the Jewish teachers told the group that she was hesitant to put her Chanukah menorah in the window this year for all to see. She was worried about identifying her household as Jewish. She asked me what I thought she should do. It was at that moment that one of the Christian teachers said to her, I will light a Chanukah menorah for you and put it in my window! I couldn’t have asked for a better example of Christian light and Jewish struggle!

I have always felt that both Christmas and Chanukah were compelling particularly growing up in an avowed Christian country. I value the sacred nature of Christmas for Christian worshippers who come together in the darkness to spread more light, more goodwill, more of a universal message. Christmas worship is a powerful religious experience. And I value my festival of Chanukah, trying to eliminate the darkness of hatred and persecution and oppression of minorities and those who are different from the majority. I will put my lit chanukiayh proudly in the window precisely because it will be different from the lights from the trees of my neighbours.

And I will recite the verse at Chanukah from the prophet Zecariah which tells of a vision that he had in the Temple where the 7 branched menorah stood. In his vision, God calls out to the prophet standing among the lights; Not my might, nor by power will redemption come but only from my spirit - from the light of God.(Zecariah 4:6)