Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Hanukka, The Fourth Night, From the Thought of Rabbi Sacks
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The military victory [of Ḥanukka] was short-lived. Within a century Israel was again under foreign rule, this time by the Romans. It was the spiritual victory that survived. Realising that the real battle was not against an empire but a culture, Jews set about constructing the world’s first system of universal education. The effect was astonishing. Although they were later to suffer devastating defeats at the hands of the Romans, they had created an identity so strong that it was able to survive 2,000 years of exile and dispersion.
What history taught them was that to defend a country you need an army, but to defend a civilisation you need schools. In the short run, battles are won by weapons, but in the long run they are won by ideas and the way they are handed on from generation to generation. Oddly but appropriately, Ḥanukka comes from the same Hebrew root as the word “Ḥinnukh,” meaning “education.”
Credo, The Times (December 7, 2007)
❖ Points to Ponder
- What was the real triumph of the Ḥanukka story?
- What is the connection between this passage and the message from Rabbi Sacks in “The First Clash of Civilisations” (p. 69)?