THE THIRD MIRACLE

The festivals that commemorate historical events are the way that we transmit our heritage and our history. They are the most effective way to build our values and our identity in future generations, creating a national DNA that is passed from one generation to the next. For Jews, these festivals do not represent just history, but national memory, and are the basis for national identity.

Hope is a recurring theme in the Ḥanukka story. The Maccabees had hope that despite overwhelming odds, they could defeat the mightiest and largest army in the world. They had hope that they could find oil to light the Menora. And despite the later destruction of the Beit HaMikdash, we still celebrate Ḥanukka because we have hope that one day it will be rebuilt.

The story of the establishment of the modern State of Israel is also a story of hope and miracles, and the overcoming of immense odds. Just three years after the Jewish people experienced the greatest tragedy in human history, they re-established Jewish sovereignty in their ancestral homeland, and thereafter had to fight several wars against numerous enemies, triumphing, despite the odds, again and again.

FROM THE THOUGHT OF RABBI SACKS

Children represent the future, and a society or community that invests in its children has hope for the future. Jewish children in Jewish schools prove that the Jewish people have overcome thousands of years of adversity and persecution, and today we continue to invest in our future, a hopeful future.

This message is the message of Ḥanukka, the story of inextinguishable hope.

IT ONCE HAPPENED…

Heroism comes in small and large acts. The Maccabees were brave military fighters, but these acts from the wider populace were equally heroic and courageous. They were acts of defiance in the face of persecution, making a clear statement that their will and spirit could not be broken.

THE ḤANUKKA STORY IN EMOJIS

From the days of Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Israel was under the control of the Alexandrian Empire of Greece. During the second century BCE, Israel came under the control of the Seleucids who were based in Egypt.

The Seleucid leader, Antiochus the Fourth, who modestly called himself Epiphanes, meaning “God made manifest,” decided to speed up the pace of Hellenisation on the Jews of the land of Israel. He made it illegal to publicly practise Judaism, erected a statue of Zeus in the Temple, and offered a pig before it as a sacrifice.

An elderly priest called Mattityahu, and his sons and their supporters known to history as the Hammers (Maccabees), fought back. Over the next three years, they scored a great victory over the Seleucids, reconquering Jerusalem and bringing it back under Jewish sovereignty. They cleansed the Temple and rededicated it, lighting the great Menora that stood in the Temple, for a celebration lasting eight days.