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Jewish World Review Dec. 3, 1999 / 24 Kislev, 5760
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
'TIS THE SEASON to be Jewish; menorahs and latkes abound, and oil (for each,
unfortunately) will soon flow like water in countless Jewish homes.
Chanukah, thank G-d, is once again upon us.
The original spin
on Chanukah
By Rabbi Avi Shafran
It has become fashionable to attribute the popularity of the Jewish festival
of lights -- second among American Jews only to Passover -- to the fact that
the winter Jewish holiday tends to roughly coincide with a major Western
Christian celebration. 
But to see Chanukah as nothing more than a foil to
another faith's observance is to miss the Jewish festival's conceptual
essence. Chanukah may well resonate with contemporary Jews for a deeper
reason -- because it speaks, perhaps more than any other Jewish
calendar-milestone, directly and powerfully to us.
Chanukah, however, isn't celebratory Silly-Putty. It has a long, deep and
clear tradition in classical Jewish texts, from the Talmud through the
Lurianic mystical works to those of the Chassidic masters. And, on its most
basic level, it addresses neither pluralism nor tolerance, admirable though
those concepts may be in their proper place, but Jewish identity and
continuity, the challenges most urgently faced by the contemporary Jewish
world.
For the rededication of the Temple from which the holiday takes its name
(Chanukah means "dedication") and the military victory over the Seleucids
that preceded it were unmistakable expressions of resistance to
assimilation.
The real enemy at the time of the Maccabees was not the Seleucid empire as
an occupation force, but rather what Seleucid society represented: a
cultural colonialism that sought to erode the beliefs and observances of the
Jewish religious tradition, and to replace them with the glorification of
the physical and the embrace of much that Judaism considers immoral. 
The
Seleucids sought to acculturate the Jewish people, to force them to adopt a
"superior", "sophisticated", wholly secular philosophy. And thus the Jewish
victory, when it came, was a triumph over assimilation. The Maccabees
succeeded, in other words, in preserving Jewish tradition, in drawing lines.
And so the miracle of the lights, our tradition teaches, was hardly
arbitrary. Poignant meaning lay in the Temple candelabra's supernatural
eight-day burning of a one-day supply of oil. For light, in Jewish
tradition, means Torah, the teachings and laws that comprise the Jewish
religious heritage.
Even the custom of playing dreidel, sources explain, is a reminder of the
secret of Jewish continuity. The Seleucids had forbidden a number of
expressions of Jewish devotion, like the practice of circumcision and the
Jewish insistence on personal modesty. They also outlawed the study of
Torah, which they rightfully regarded as the engine of Jewish identity and
continuity. The spinning toy was a subterfuge adopted by Jews when they
were studying Torah in pairs or groups; if they sensed enemy inspectors
nearby, they would suddenly take out their dreidles and spin them, masking
their study session with an innocuous game of chance.
Is it mere chance, too, that Chanukah seems so intriguing to contemporary
Jews, so very many of whom are threatened with assimilation, not coercive,
to be sure, but no less threatening to Jewish survival? Or might that
coincidence be laden with meaning?
Meaning, and a message: Jews can resist the temptation to melt into the
surrounding culture. They have the ability to put away the dreidels, take
out the books and make serious, deeply Jewish, decisions about their lives.
May all we Jews have a happy, and meaningful,
Chanukah.
Rabbi Avi Shafran is American Director of Am Echad, an international organization promoting Jewish unity. He may be reached by clicking here.
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