The Festival of Hanukkah : What Was Once a Minor Celebration Now Lights Up the Season for Southland Jews

Beginning this evening and continuing for the next eight days, Jewish families and communities the world over will gather to celebrate the festival of Hanukkah.

The celebration is more visible to non-Jews than some other Jewish festivals because of its proximity to Christmas--which, in American culture, has become an official national celebration--along with Thanksgiving and New Year’s, constituting what amounts to a two-month-long commercial holiday season. In fact, Hanukkah has over the years appropriated essentially Christmastime customs such as the giving of gifts and colorful decorations at home.

But is Hanukkah likely to jump on the commercial wagon too?

Low-Key Festival in Israel

Some Jews claim that it has already--at least in this country. But America differs considerably from, say, Israel, where the festivities are by comparison fairly low-key.

“Hanukkah is a minor holiday in the overall Jewish festival cycle,” said Ron Wolfson, Fingerhut assistant professor of education at the University of Judaism. “It’s not even a biblically commanded holiday. It celebrates an actual historical event, so in that regard it is different from, say, Purim or Passover.

“But Hanukkah has become a major holiday celebration in many Jewish families,” Wolfson continued, “and it has taken on added significance, given the status of Jews in American life.”

Debbie Findling, program director at Bay Cities Jewish Community Center, a unit of the JCCA of Greater Los Angeles, and organizer of her center’s festivities, says: “Hanukkah means to me a time of family, of celebration, of giving, of being proud of being a Jew; sharing with the community, Jewish as well as non-Jewish. It’s also a time before the new year to reflect on the past year and ground myself again.”

Lighting of the Menorah

Like most everyone in the large Los Angeles Jewish community, Findling will join her family and other members of the community for the lighting of the Hanukkah menorah, or hanukkiyyah-- one candle for the first night, two for the second and so on. Gifts of Hanukkah gelt are exchanged and traditional foods such as potato latkes (deep-fried potato pancakes) are eaten; also jelly doughnuts, an Israeli custom. And children will play with the dreidle-- a special lettered spinning top of German origin--sing hymns and listen to stories.

The most important story told will be that of Hanukkah itself--an admixture of history and Talmudic legend; the story of Jews’ fight for their right to practice their religion, and the tale of a miracle.

Rabbi Joel Rembaum, senior rabbi at Temple Beth Am, and formerly dean of undergraduate studies at the University of Judaism, explains the story of Hanukkah:

The historical incident commemorated by Hanukkah--also spelled Chanukah (Hebrew for dedication) --took place in Jerusalem nearly 200 years before the birth of Christ, during the Greek dominion of Syria and Judea under Greek-Syrian emperor Antiochus IV. The history comes principally from Book of Second Maccabees of the Apocrypha, which scholars regard as the more historically accurate.

The story tells of the duplicity of two priests of the Temple in Jerusalem, who served themselves politically by paying the pagan emperor to make them high priests in exchange for their furthering the conversion of the city into a Greek city-state or polis . Jerusalem then, as now, was important strategically, valued by Antiochus because he was constantly at war with Egypt. The culmination of this process of Hellenization resulted in the native Jewish population’s total disfranchisement, the banning of the practice of Judaism and Antiochus’ desecration of the Temple. (The famous Temple Mount in Old Jerusalem and the Western or “Wailing” Wall mark the site of the original temple.)

A band of rebellious Jews, under the leadership of Judah Maccabee of the Hasmonean family, fled from the city to the hills to become guerrillas, harassing the occupying army.

In about 165 BC, the Maccabees re-entered Jerusalem and took back the temple, rededicating it to Judaism. For the purpose of celebrating the rededication, they appropriated the nearest religious festival: the eight-day observance of Sukkot (a celebration of the fall harvest two months before Hanukkah), which at that time involved the burning of torches in the Temple court.

It is told in the Talmud that when the Maccabees searched for oil to rekindle the Temple menorah, they found only enough to last a day. Miraculously though, it lasted for eight days.

“The miracle of lights is a legend--a later Talmudic enhancement of the historical story,” Rabbi Rembaum said. “But there was a good reason for it, because there was a need to take the light of the Temple, symbolic of the presence of God, into their homes. (The Hanukkah menorah) created a symbolic surrogate for the Temple. And in terms of the ongoing, long-range theological experience of Jews, this becomes a very important statement.

“Of course Hanukkah is highly symbolic. The lights are the lights of redemption, and the occasion is certainly tinged with Messianic hope,” he said.

Wolfson, who is currently writing a series of books on Jewish celebrations in the home, explained: “Hanukkah really brings Jewish families into contact with their position in contemporary society.

“Of course, a complicating factor is that so many Jews now have members of the family who are intermarried (with gentiles). Religions, of course, change with situation and chronological time in history. To the Eastern European Jews, the holiday of Purim was perhaps the most significant, because it celebrates the physical survival of the Jews, which is what they were concerned about then. In part, I think, these days, Hanukkah has become more important because it celebrates the spiritual aspect of Judaism in the face of another culture.

Christmas and Easter

“Christmas, for example, which was once not as important a holiday as Easter--an event that is more central to Christianity--is now the major celebration, and many of my Christian ecclesiastical colleagues complain about the commercialization of Christmas, and the fact that people have lost sight of its true significance.

“The point” Wolfson stressed, “is that Hanukkah should not try to out-Christmas Christmas. It can’t be done. A really significant celebration of Hanukkah would be just the opposite. It is the time when Jews assert their religion in the face of tremendous pressure to be assimilated into this culture.”

So, in the spirit of keeping the traditional values alive--a particularly difficult thing for children during the vastly more publicized Christmas season--in Jewish Community Centers throughout the Southland, people such as Findling at the Bay Cities JCC organize programs to try to teach children the significance of Hanukkah.

“We’re having a family celebration with a puppet show and storytelling and food (at the center),” Findling said, “and we’re hoping it’ll be a cross-grenerational festival. The children are all very excited about it. They’ve been preparing for weeks, making a huge menorah to be used at the candle-lighting. The older kids--12-year-olds--are making cookies to take and sell for money to donate to the children of Vista del Mar, an organization for disadvantaged children, funded in part by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, and United Way.”

Westside Community Center

Meanwhile, at the Westside Jewish Community Center, supervisor Debra Korisky is organizing festivities for the senior members of that group, including folk-dancing and menorah-lighting ceremonies.

A large collection of Hanukkah lamps, some dating to the 17th Century, fill the collection at the Hebrew Union College Skirball Museum. The exhibit is titled “Reflections of Triumph,” and can be seen Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The museum is at 32nd and Hoover streets. Free admission and free parking. Information: (213) 749-3424; Sundays only (213) 749-8611.