Festa delle Luci, the Festival of Lights, is what the Italians call Hanukkah. Other nations use similar names for the holiday that translates from Hebrew as "consecration." The Maharal (Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel) of Prague (16th Century) teaches us that the candles we light on Hanukkah are testimony to a far greater miracle, the miracle of the victory of the Hasmonean Revolt, seeking independence for our people.
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Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the ruler of the Seleucid Empire, which ruled the Land of Israel at the beginning of the second century BCE, wanted to unify the empire under one (Hellenistic) culture and religion. Jerusalem was desecrated, swine were sacrificed in the temple before a sculpture of Zeus, and the Jewish religious tradition was banned. The revolt erupted in 167 BCE led by Mattathias the Hasmonean, and his five sons, priests from Modiin. The primary goal of the revolt was religious freedom. Mattathias' son, Judah Maccabee (or Makabi from Makebet the Biblical Hebrew word for hammer) achieved that freedom through a series of stunning victories. Some three years after the outbreak of the revolt, Jerusalem was freed almost entirely and the temple was purified. The Hasmoneans celebrated the consecration of the temple for eight days.
However, the empire was not defeated; the threat remained. Judah Maccabee looked for allies. He had heard worm of Rome, then a rising Republic. He sent a delegation of diplomats to the Senate in Rome and in 161BCE, the Roman-Jewish Treaty, a mutual defense alliance, was signed. Judah allowed most of the army on leave to rebuild their homes after seven years of bitter struggle.
His enemies however did not rest. They feared his alliance with Rome. This time they sent General Bachiddes to suppress the revolt. Judah Maccabee who relied primarily on a reserve army was left to face Bachiddes and his legions, numbering over 25,000 men, with just 800 fighters. His army was destroyed and he was killed at the Battle of Elasa in the hills of Beit El. The Hasmonean Revolt was extinguished and its achievements lost. Now the Seleucids were out for revenge and the situation became worse than it had been before the revolt. The Hellenists returned to the temple, hunted down their enemies, and the religious decrees were renewed. Many sought sanctuary in the desert.
Had history continued that way, then it is unlikely that we would still be celebrating Hanukkah. Just as with Bar Kochba about 300 years later, Judah Maccabee was a great worrier and a brilliant general but the revolt failed. There is no reason for celebration.
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The rebels chose the youngest of the Hasmoneans, Jonathan Apphus, as their leader and fled to Tkoa in the Judean Desert. Jonathan sent a delegation led by his brother Johanan to the Nabateans on the eastern side of the Jordan River, most likely to ensure the safety of their wives and children. He was relying on a defense treaty that Judah Maccabee had signed with the Nabateans when he was at the height of his powers. The Nabateans however did not uphold their side of the treaty and slaughtered Johanan and all who were with him. That perhaps was the most difficult moment of all: When the rebels received the news of the death of their loved ones. The crisis is a supreme test of leadership. The natural reaction is just to give up. One could also grasp theological explanations: God does not want the revolts. As Rabbi Jose Ben Kisma said hundreds of years later about Rome, "the heavens made this nation rule over us." The Book of Esther states that "all the king's servants that were in the King's gate, bowed and paid reverence to Haman" (Esther 3:2). Our sages interpret servants as the servants of THE King, i.e. of God – which were the spiritual and religious leaders of that time - who accepted the temporary supremacy because that was what the Lord had commanded. The decree of history, they believed, was to grit their teeth and wait until the storm had blown over.
Not Jonathan. He rose from the ashes and swept his soldiers and then the entire nation after him to a war of independence. First, he punished the Nabateans - deterrence has always been a decisive issue in our region. Yosef ben Mattityahu, better known by his Roman name, Titus Flavius Josephus, notes that this action led to a complete turnaround in the situation and many Jews then joined the rebels. Because his army was relatively small, Jonathan chose to fight a guerrilla war and for two years he wore down Bachiddes who eventually had enough of this hornet's nest. The Seleucid general decided to return to Antioch, but not before he released prisoners and rescinded the rights he had given to the Hellenistic priests.
Jonathan Apphus had learned of Judah Maccabee and did not rush to re-consecrate the temple. He set up headquarters at Michmas, some 10 kilometers north of Jerusalem, and over seven years built up an army of 40,000 trained soldiers. (Incidentally, Michmas was where some 800 years earlier another Jonathan, the son of King Saul, saved Israel from the Philistines.)
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Only when his army was ready and prepared did he storm Jerusalem on the Sukkot Festival in 152 BCE. He freed the city and purified the temple, and served as High Priest while commanding the army at the same time. In any event, Jonathan's re-consecration of the temple lasted until its destruction in the year 70 BCE. The religious goals of the revolution – annulment of the Seleucid religious decrees – were achieved by Jonathan, not by Judah. Hanukkah, therefore, remains part of our tradition because of Jonathan. He remained faithful to the memory of his brother Judah and retained the original dates for the festival.
From Dr. Hagai Ben-Artzi, I learned that Jonathan drew another conclusion from his brother's failure. On the face of it, the goals had been achieved, the temple had been re-consecrated, the Hellenists were expelled and the religious decrees annulled. However, Jonathan did not disperse his army; he made it larger and stronger. In addition, in the nine years that followed, he liberated the rest of the country. He understood that freedom of religion was not enough. The goal he aspired to was to free the land from the yoke of its foreign occupiers.
That was the will and testimony of Moses. He repeated it in his speech before his death. "For you will cross over the Jordan and go in to possess the land which the LORD your God is giving you, and you will possess it and dwell in it" (Deut. 11:31). One can dwell in the land and settle there and carry out the religious commandments under the foreign rulers. Moses did not make do with this. Instead, he commands the People of Israel to take over the land as a possession. It is an act that only a collective can carry out through the establishment of a kingdom and the imposition of sovereignty of the people over the land. That is how Nachmanides, the Ramban, saw it in the 13th century: "We were commanded to inherit the land … and not abandon it in the hands of other nations (sovereignty) or leave it as wilderness (settlement).
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Amid the storm of the revolt and his early victories, Judah Maccabee did not continue to tighten his grip on sovereignty over the land of Israel. His brothers, Jonathan and Simon did so. They did not suffice with re-consecrating the temple. Our identity as a people is not complete only through the existence of religious life, especially under a foreign ruler; the other half of our collective personality -- the national idea – also needs a place within it that can be focused on national independence.
Thus, the revolt was not over. Jonathan continued his military-political maneuvers for the next nine years. He renewed the alliance with Rome, made another alliance with Sparta (!), and conducted bloody battles of liberation throughout the country. He moves from one town to the next until at one point he fails in his understanding of the enemy. Jonathan believes Diodutus Tryphon invites him to Acre without his army. Jonathan enters the trap and is killed. Of the Hasmoneans, the only one remaining is Simon. He does not withdraw and continues Jonathan's legacy. He takes his revenge on Tryphon and continues to liberate the Land of Israel until in 142 BCE he establishes the Jewish state and becomes its president (that is the title he adopted rather than king). That is why we celebrate Hanukkah. Maimonides, the Rambam, (12th century) emphasizes this in his opening to Hilchot Hanukkah: "and sovereignty returned to Israel for more than 200 years." Happy Hanukkah.
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