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Hanukkah: Dedication to God, not GiftsDecember 2006From the Desk of Rabbi CohonAccording to the latest surveys the most observed Jewish holiday in America has officially become Hanukkah, surpassing Pesach by a small margin. And the way most people prepare to celebrate Hanukkah is by engaging in the great American pastime of fighting traffic in parking lots, wading through huge crowds in malls, and shopping madly for gifts for everyone they know.
That is, during a time when we could be enjoying relaxed, quality time with those family members and friends who are closest to them, most of us would rather be spending that time in the maw of a frenzied orgy of retail excess trying to buy things for the very people we could be enjoying. A bit of a paradox, no?
The general commercialization of all life in America, moving from God to gifts -- "Only 15 more shopping days until Hanukkah!" -- has it's advantages, especially if you are a retailer or a credit card company. But Hanukkah shouldn't really revolve around gifts at all, or even around the ever-popular Hanukkah gelt. For Hanukkah is really a holiday of great historical importance to all Western religions, and without the events that Hanukkah celebrates our world would be extraordinarily different.
The word Hanukkah itself teaches a lesson: The Hebrew word Hanukkah means "dedication", from the historical incident of the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Maccabees in the year 165 BCE or so, roughly 2200 years ago. That rededication of the Temple followed one of the most unlikely military victories of all, the first successful guerilla uprising in human history, in which a small group of zealous Jews succeeded in defeating the first state-sponsored official religious persecution on record. The Syrian Greek Seleucid Empire King Antiochus Epiphanes tried to force the Jews to worship not God but himself, and other pagan deities, using the full power of military and governmental authority to enforce it. He was initially successful, and only a desperate revolt by a minority of the Jews under the leadership of the Hasmonean family, called the Maccabees, allowed Judaism to survive at all.
Dedication plays a central role in the entire concept of Hanukkah, for without the profound dedication to Judaism, and the idea of one God and one morality based on the Torah of that one God, all monotheism would have been summarily ended by the oppression of the Syrian Greek tyrants.
In the historical sense, it took a great deal of dedication indeed to assure that Judaism continued at all. You can make a convincing case that without the dedication, the Hanukkah spirit, of the Matathias, Judah Maccabee, the Hasmonean family and the small bands of Jewish guerillas fighting against the strongest army in the world at that time, there would be Judaism today -- and, since this preceded the development of the other Western faiths that are descended from Judaism, there would also have been no Christianity and no Islam, in essence no Western Civilization as we know it.
So this month celebrate Hanukkah in ways that have actual religious meaning. Light candles each night with your family, or with us at our giant Hanukkah menorah on Country Club Road at 5:30 each night. And join us for the Greatest Hanukkah on Earth! VIII on December 17th at 4:30 pm, and for Kabbalistic Chardonnay Shabbat Hanukkah services Friday night December 22nd at 5pm, and for 1st Hanukkah Shabbat services on December 15th at 7:30 pm -- it's Senior Shabbat -- when we will dedicate our new stained glass panels in the Sy Juster Auditorium, adding new light to the Festival of Light.
Mostly, remember to celebrate your Judaism in ways that matter this Hanukkah season!
L'Shalom v'reiut, and Hag Hanukkah samei'ach, in peace and friendship and a happy holiday of Hanukkah,
Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon
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