In the 20th and 21st centuries, religious commitment has waned and more and more people celebrate holidays without much of an educational background. In that context, you often read, hear, or watch popular material, whether in books, on TV, or in movies about the Meaning of Christmas, whether it be family, giving, sharing, or some other core human value. In recent decades, this phenomenon of searching for a specific “meaning” in our holidays, like almost everything else about this season in America, has spread to Chanukah.
In a groundbreaking episode of the 1990s children’s show, Rugrats, the toddler protagonists were unembarrassed to be celebrating Chanukah in their local synagogue with candles, latkes, and an epic retelling of the story of the Maccabees. But the title of the episode was a telling reflection of the times; it was called, “The Meany of Chanukah.” The plot is that kids misinterpreted their parents’ confusion about the “Meaning of Chanukah” and spend the entire 30 minutes searching for the Meany, or the villain, of the Chanukah holiday. The question is, what is it about Chanukah that makes its meaning so elusive to us?
Perhaps Chanukah is unique because there seems to be a big gap between the history of the war and Hasmonean victory on the one hand and our annual celebration of it on the other. Why is the main vehicle for celebration the lighting of candles, in celebration of a relatively minor miracle that occurred after the war was won?
Last year, at the Sisterhood Chanukah party, I talked about the most obvious answer to this question, one we say anywhere from 3 to 6 times a day on each day of the holiday in על הניסים. We celebrate that באו בניך לדביר ביתך ופינו את היכלך וטיהרו את מקדושיך, that the main accomplishment of the war was that the חשמונאים were able to remove the Greek idols from the Temple and purify its vessels from ritual contamination. The lighting of the מנורה represented true purification, return to religious idealism, a fixing of what had been broken and cleansing of what had been defiled.
Rav Aharon Lichtenstein calls this theme לחזיר עטרה ליושנה – making things great again, the way they once were in the past. But, he points out, a closer examination of חנוכה indicates that this cannot be the case, alone. While we’re talking about the “Meaning of חנוכה,” we should probably actually literally translate the word חנוכה. It does not mean “rededication;” it means a new dedication, the first use of an object or place.
On חנוכה, the Torah reading every morning includes one or two of the sacrificial offerings of the 12 tribal leaders at the dedication of the משכן. The Torah calls these sacrifices חנוכת המזבח, the inaugural sacrifices of the מזבח. Immediately following the list of these sacrifices, Hashem instructs משה to tell אהרן about how he should light the מנורה every day.
Famously, the מדרש suggests that this is because אהרן felt left out, watching each of the tribes’ leaders bring sacrifices as part of the inauguration, except לוי, his own tribe. רמב״ן points out several problems with this: First of all, why would the lighting of the מנורה console him and not the countless sacrifices and piles of incense he was supposed to burn every day? What’s special about the מנורה? Second, he did bring sacrifices as part of the dedication of the משכן, special ones referred to as the מלואים?
Explains רמב״ן, it must be that the מדרש is trying to say something else, that it’s not the daily lighting of the מנורה that consoles Aharon but rather the lighting of the מנורה on after the war of חנוכה. The רמב״ן is clearly assuming that חנוכה is not just a holiday of rededication but of something entirely new, just like the original חנוכה of the משכן in the desert. So what is the parallel? What is entirely new after the events of חנוכה that justify its name?
Rav Lichtenstein points out that perhaps we can figure it out by looking at פורים as a model. פורים was a time when our very existence was threatened. But following the war that prevented our destruction, we didn’t just go back to the way things were before. קימו וקבלו – they not only renewed their interest but accepted it voluntarily in an entirely new way. The גמרא says that whereas the Torah had been foisted upon us at Sinai, after the story of Purim we accepted it voluntarily and freely for the first time.
Similarly, on חנוכה there was a new dedication, a new focus in Judaism. But it was not just to the מצוות written in the Torah, in תנ״ך. There was a new commitment to the experiential aspect of Judaism, to its values, to its מסורה, its tradition, to religious authority being placed in Torah scholarship. Judaism had been dominated by ritual acts, by ritual leadership, rather than by the more meritocratic world of tradition. During the Hasmonean period, though כהנים ruled as kings, they also invested more and more in תורה שבעל פה, in the value of religious experience. The מצוה of lighting the מנורה on חנוכה is not written in any Biblical text – it was a new kind of מצוה, one that depended on people choosing to preserve and observe it.
דורש לנפשי 