Forget Christmas: How Hanukkah Can Deepen Your Jewish Identity

In one of the darkest moments of Jewish history, when the Holy Temple lay desecrated and our religion faced extinction, an unlikely group of priests lit a flame that would illuminate Jewish identity for generations to come. The story of Hanukkah begins in 164 BCE, when the Maccabees, though severely outnumbered, stood firm against a Greek army 150,000 strong. Their self-sacrificing resistance turned into miraculous victory as the priests fought their way to the Holy Temple. There, amidst the ransacked mess that the Greeks had left, they found a single vial of pure oil, assembled a makeshift menorah, and lit candles which burned far beyond their natural allocation for a total of 8 days.

What drove the mighty Greek empire to focus its powers on suppressing the practices of this small nation? The answer lies not just in political conquest but in a profound clash of worldviews.

Art for Art’s Sake

To understand Hanukkah’s deeper significance, you need to understand the Greeks. The Greeks were masters of human achievement. They celebrated physical beauty, intellectual prowess and artistic excellence. Their legacy gave us the Olympics, Aristotle, groundbreaking medical advances, and timeless art. Yet beneath this dazzling surface lay a crucial void: their worldview, however sophisticated, remained firmly bounded by human perception and consciousness. For the Greeks, art existed for art's sake, beauty for beauty's sake, science for science's sake – never for God's sake.

This limitation revealed itself clearly in Greek mythology. Their "gods" were merely superhuman figures with superhuman powers and all-too-human flaws. Nowhere in their belief system could one find an Infinite Intelligence who guided the world with moral purpose. Without this higher authority, Greek society was free to pursue hedonism, beauty, and conquest unconstrained by deeper questions of right and wrong.

Judaism - the Divine Alternative

But one stubborn little nation challenged everything about the Greek way of life: the Jews. While other conquered nations simply added Greek gods to their pantheons and adopted Greek customs, the Jewish belief in one transcendent God and Divine moral law stood in complete opposition to Greek values. Rather than simply destroying the nation, the Greeks sought to undermine Torah values and prove their way of life to be superior. The Midrash tells us they specifically banned three crucial commandments:

1. Keeping Shabbat
2. Sanctifying the New Moon
3. Brit Milah (Circumcision)

Why were these three commandments so threatening to Greek ideology?

1. Keeping Shabbat - Shabbat is the Jewish People’s weekly testimony that God created the world. Through ceasing your creative work, you acknowledge that He is the Creator, He is in control, and He - not human intellect or achievement - makes the rules that govern the universe.

2. Sanctifying the New Moon - God bestowed the Jewish People with the authority to declare the new month by sanctifying the new moon. This power to establish the calendar gave the Jewish People control over the months themselves - months that the Greeks attributed to their gods and the spiritual powers of the universe. The Greeks, who believed everything in the natural world could be explained with science and math, could not tolerate a belief system where human involvement, particularly Jewish involvement, had such dramatic effects on the cosmos.

3. Brit Milah (Circumcision) - The Greeks worshipped the male body as the highest form in creation. Their gymnasiums and coliseums served as their temples. The Jewish practice of circumcision, on the other hand, asserts that the body and its drives are inherently flawed and that we must follow God's commands to perfect ourselves. This physical alteration declares that true perfection comes through submitting to God's will, not from natural human form.

These bans struck at the heart of Jewish identity. In response to this spiritual assault and other atrocities committed by the Greek army in occupied Israel, the Maccabees revolted, sparking a miraculous victory against impossible odds.

Celebrating Your Jewish Identity

The primary observance of Hanukkah is to give thanks and sing songs of praise for the miracles that kept the Jewish nation strong long ago against the Greek army and assimilation. If you look at the three commandments that the Greeks banned, you can see three aspects of your Jewish identity that you’re meant to celebrate and feel grateful for during Hanukkah - three key aspects that distinguish you from other nations and from the Greek approach to life.

1. Through Shabbat, you acknowledge and place your trust in God as Creator and ultimate authority over the universe.
2. Through the sanctification of the new moon, you recognize your power to influence the cosmos through your free will.
3. And through brit milah, you embrace your role in partnering with God to perfect an imperfect world.

To deepen your Hanukkah experience, take a few quiet moments while sitting in front of your menorah to feel grateful for these three aspects of what it means to be a Jew. Let that gratitude fill you with joy and light. In this way, you'll leave Hanukkah with the golden flames of the menorah infused into your being, shining forth into the darkness of winter and the year to come.

Happy Hanukkah!

This article is inspired by the teachings of Rabbi Dr. Akiva Tatz.