Hanukkah in America
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Hanukkah in America

A History

Dianne Ashton

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eBook - ePub

Hanukkah in America

A History

Dianne Ashton

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About This Book

In New Orleans, Hanukkah means decorating your door with a menorah made of hominy grits. Latkes in Texas are seasoned with cilantro and cayenne pepper. Children in Cincinnati sing Hanukkah songs and eat oranges and ice cream. While each tradition springs from its own unique set of cultural references, what ties them together is that they all celebrate a holiday that is different in America than it is any place else. For the past two hundred years, American Jews have been transforming the ancient holiday of Hanukkah from a simple occasion into something grand. Each year, as they retell its story and enact its customs, they bring their ever-changing perspectives and desires to its celebration. Providing an attractive alternative to the Christian dominated December, rabbis and lay people alike have addressed contemporary hopes by fashioning an authentically Jewish festival that blossomed in their American world. The ways in which Hanukkah was reshaped by American Jews reveals the changing goals and values that emerged among different contingents each December as they confronted the reality of living as a religious minority in the United States. Bringing together clergy and laity, artists and businessmen, teachers, parents, and children, Hanukkah has been a dynamic force for both stability and change in American Jewish life. The holiday’s distinctive transformation from a minor festival to a major occasion that looms large in the American Jewish psyche is a marker of American Jewish life. Drawing on a varied archive of songs, plays, liturgy, sermons, and a range of illustrative material, as well as developing portraits of various communities, congregations, and rabbis, Hanukkah in America reveals how an almost forgotten festival became the most visible of American Jewish holidays. New Books Network interviews Dianne Ashton

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Information

Publisher
NYU Press
Year
2013
ISBN
9781479858958
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1


What Is Hanukkah?

Hanukkah has always had something of a protean character. It emerged in the ancient world in a conflict between Judeans and one of their conquerors (except for roughly eighty years between 142 and 63 B.C.E., foreign powers controlled Judea from 586 B.C.E. through 70 C.E.), as well as among Jews themselves. The primary documents that tell us about Hanukkah’s origin were written perhaps generations after the event, and “legends seem to be inextricably interwoven with historical traditions.”1 They also reflect the interests of their different, anonymous, authors. One document, written about 100 B.C.E., describes Hanukkah originating amid the rebuilding and rededicating of the Jerusalem Temple in 164 B.C.E. during the war against a particularly nasty conqueror, Antiochus IV, who had forbidden Jewish religious practices. A second text, written about twenty-four years earlier, explains it as part of a late celebration of the autumn festival, Sukkot, that had been delayed because of wartime disruptions.2 Historian Lee I. Levine wondered why one year’s delayed Sukkot celebration would initiate an annual Hanukkah celebration and suggested two contributing factors. First, those who cleaned and dedicated the Temple undoubtedly knew about previous occasions when the Temple was rededicated, notably, King Hezekiah’s centuries-earlier purification of the Temple in a ceremony lasting eight days. Hezekiah’s effort is described in the biblical book Chronicles, written in the fourth or third century B.C.E. They may also have been influenced by a popular pagan winter-solstice festival of lights that also lasted eight days.3 Each of those factors may have contributed to the initial creation of Hanukkah celebrations.
Yet the rules and norms for celebrating the holiday that have been practiced for the past millennium became institutionalized hundreds of years after the Temple’s rededication, among a very different group of Jewish religious leaders working in Babylonia, who reshaped the holiday to reflect their own perspectives. Rhetorically asking “What is Hanukkah?” their reply defined the way the holiday came to be understood for future Jews. They focused the holiday on the kindling of lights in memory of divine deliverance, which is how they viewed the victory against Antiochus IV. Yet their Hanukkah creation, too, came to be elaborated in later texts and practices written by medieval and early modern religious leaders who thought about lessons to be learned from Hanukkah. All those creations and modifications occurred long before American Jews entered the scene.
Like most Jewish holidays, Hanukkah commemorates ancient events. For this one, the Temple in Jerusalem proved pivotal. From 536 through 332 B.C.E., Judea (then called Yehud) existed as one of many different temple-states, each worshiping its own god, that dotted the eastern Mediterranean and lived under Persian rule.4 Judea’s political identification with the Temple continued for the next four hundred years, until the Temple’s destruction in 70 C.E. Believed to house “the Living God, [the Temple] radiated its holiness over Jerusalem” and served as the “central religious institution” for Jews in both Judea and the diaspora.5 First built by King Solomon in the tenth century B.C.E., it stood for more than four hundred years before being destroyed in 586 B.C.E. by Babylonia during that country’s conquest of Jerusalem. Rebuilt around 515 B.C.E. after Persia conquered Babylonia, the Second Temple dominated Jerusalem for another 585 years.
The Temple’s specific location in the Judean hills has been identified as both Mt. Zion and Mt. Moriah (where Abraham promised to sacrifice his son, Isaac).6 “Defended by a stone wall ... on the northern summit of the eastern ridge” of the Judean hills, it dominated the city.7 Its design expanded on the instructions for a house for God described in Exodus and featured outer and inner courts where Jews gathered. Within those stood the House of the Lord, a small building set on an east-west axis, with gold ornamentation and a curtain covering its entrance. Most likely, this structure was divided into three parts, a Vestibule, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies.8 More sacred than anything else in the Jewish realm, the Holy of Holies was the most religiously important spot in Jerusalem. Only once each year, on the day of fasting and repentance called Yom Kippur, did the high priest enter it. Priests stood outside that inner room within the Temple to conduct daily sacred sacrifices to God. A seven-branched candelabra—called a menorah—burned throughout each night. The sixth-century B.C.E. prophet Zechariah said that the menorah symbolized the divine presence and called its lights the eyes of God.9 Each morning, priests cleaned it and prepared it for the upcoming evening.10
Priests also maintained strict rules for their own ritual purity in order to be fit to enter the Temple, and they performed their duties according to rules set down in Leviticus (1–9).11 Each morning and afternoon, they performed incense offerings before the Holy of Holies. Twice each day, they sacrificed a lamb and sprinkled its blood on the Temple’s altar. Outside, in the Temple’s courtyard, priests sacrificed animals selected from among ten different species, as well as grains. In addition to those daily acts, priests conducted special sacrifices each Sabbath meant to assure the divine connection to the Jewish people.12 Public monies stored in the Temple purchased the items to be sacrificed on these occasions and also provided charity to widows and orphans.
The lives of ordinary Jews were also linked to the Temple. On three festivals each year, Passover in early spring, Shavuot (Weeks) in early summer, and Sukkot (Tabernacles) in autumn, Jews traveled to Jerusalem to offer their own sacrifices to ensure God’s protection over their households. Yet concerns about maintaining the Temple’s ritual purity limited those pilgrims to the Temple’s courtyards only. Non-Jews could not enter the Temple precincts at all. Through these many rules and rituals, Jews believed they maintained the Temple’s ritual purity, assured the nation’s continuing link to God, and contributed to the people’s material well-being.13
When Alexander the Great won control of Judea from the Persians in 332 B.C.E., he strengthened the power of the high priest, largely because he generally distrusted the secular rulers whom he conquered. Religious leaders became the spokesmen for conquered peoples and often enjoyed honors and riches.14 Yet, at the same time, Hellenic culture became more influential, especially in urban areas near the coast. Even before Alexander’s conquest, Jews used objects that reflected Greek culture and style, such as Greek imported tableware, painted vases, and sculptures. Greek fashions in clothing became popular, as did Greek names, too, lending a cultural tone to an economic and somewhat geographic divide.15 Some Jews participated in athletic contests in which the norm of performing in the nude offended the historical Jewish sensibility almost as much as did the participation in activities that were sometimes dedicated to a foreign god. Other Jews studied Greek literature, sparking new ideas and new literary styles.16 For example, scholars argue that the biblical book Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) reveals a Hellenic attitude about the meaning of life quite different from earlier biblical texts, evidence of growing Jewish engagement with Greek culture in the two centuries before Jesus.17 Its assertion that human striving is futile—because God knows and determines everything in advance—offers a fatalistic philosophy of life at odds with the instructions to obey God’s rules in order to earn a divine reward in this life and in the world to come, instructions that fill much of the Pentateuch.
In many areas under Alexander’s rule, he founded new Greek cities and settled them with his military veterans and other migrants, leaving local peasants of the conquered territory to farm the land. Those locales invariably became prestigious and prosperous, and their success enticed residents of other towns and cities to transform their own places into Greek cities, even though they lacked a population that could claim Greek ancestry.18 Yet, while Greek values, styles, and politics influenced much of Judea, the Temple underwent little change. After expanding the power of the high priest, Alexander did not interfere with the Temple, and the daily and Sabbath Temple rites continued.
That situation changed after Alexander’s death in 323 B.C.E., when his four generals divided his kingdom, and Judea ultimately came under the control of Seleucus of Syria. Judea spanned a mere eight hundred square miles, but its location near the Mediterranean plain made it attractive to larger nations from the east, north, and southwest whose armies traversed the area and competed for power.19 Seleucus’s large territory underwent sweeping administrative reforms that strengthened Seleucid power throughout the Middle East. Greek customs remained preeminent over indigenous cultures. Especially in urban areas, a Greek-speaking class dominated the Seleucid state.20 Despite those changes, the Temple still remained relatively free of foreign influence. “The pagan world was known for its tolerance,” Levine explains, “a characteristic that flowed, inter alia, from the recognition that there were many deities and temples in the world, and honor was due them all.”21
Although the Seleucid king Antiochus III displayed goodwill toward Jerusalem and Judea, not so his son, Antiochus IV, who came to power in 176 B.C.E. In Judea, different attitudes toward Hellenic culture and religion soon exacerbated the hardening political divisions. Since the Syrian wars of the previous century, Judea’s population remained divided by family feuds, political disagreements, and diverse foreign-policy connections.22 These divisions contributed to ongoing unrest which ultimately reached the Temple itself. We can see traces of those differences in the different accounts of the events that occurred. One account chronicles the actions of armies, kings, and priests, while others recount Seleucid cruelties and Jewish martyrdoms that might promote faith and loyalty in their listeners and readers and harden their opposition to the Seleucids.23
Events that led to Hanukkah seem to have been set in motion with particularly corrupt individuals claiming the powerful and remunerative office of the Temple’s high priest. A year after the new Seleucid king (Antiochus IV) took the throne, Jason, the brother of Judea’s ruler, Onias III, purchased the office of the high priest for himself. Within Jason’s first year, he encouraged worship dedicated to Greek gods in the Temple, to be conducted by Jewish priests in Greek garb. He sent Jewish emissaries to festivals dedicated to foreign gods in order to represent Jerusalem on the international stage. In 172, a priest named Meneleus wrested the office of the high priest away from Jason by offering bribes to Seleucid officials, and then he arranged to have Onias III murdered.
These actions, along with Greek worship in the Temple, outraged some Jews. Rioting erupted near the Temple, and three members of the Jerusalem Council of Elders were murdered. To quell the violence, Antiochus took military control of the city in 169 B.C.E., killing resisters, men, women, and children. He drove out Jason and his followers. Documents of the period suggest that contrary to historical custom that respected local temples, Antiochus then entered the Temple and took the gold ritual items—the menorah and the table for the show-bread, along with libation jars, bowls, ladles, gold cornices, coins, and other precious articles—and carried them back to Antioch. His general, Apollonius, created a new fortified area around the Temple called the Akra. Some of its original residents fled the city, and new settlers sympathetic to Antiochus came to the fortified area. In that way, Antiochus established an area of Jerusalem loyal to the Seleucids. He left the rest of the city undefended, however, and Jerusalem refugees fleeing the area may have spread unrest to other parts of Judea.24
Meneleus and Antiochus replaced some Jewish religious practices with Hellenic rites and allowed acts that were seen by some Jews to further defile the Temple. Documents from the period differ regarding exactly how these events occurred. Some versions describe Temple entry by ritually impure Seleucids, the king, his emissaries, and non-believers, with Meneleus leading them. Most documents list the robbing of the Temple treasury, the erecting of a statue representing Zeus Olympus–Baal Shamaim (the god identified as protecting the Hellenic and Syrian conquerors), and the lodging of Antiochus’s troops within its precincts—each act an affront to Judea.25 Worship of the Greek and Syrian deity erected in the Temple included the sacrifice of pigs, animals deemed unclean and forbidden to Jews by biblical law. Pious Jews saw each of those acts as polluting the Temple. Just as importantly, the money stolen from the Temple treasury depleted funds for the daily and Sabbath sacrifices and for charity.26 No open rebellion occurred, but resentment brewed.
The changes made during Antiochus’s rule turned the Temple into a place where Jews could be forced to worship a deity other than the God of the Bible, which according to Judaism is the most terrible of sins.27 If priests still performed the daily sacrifices, pious Jews may have considered them ineffective in a Temple now polluted by idol worship. In addition, by outlawing study of Torah and possession of Torah scrolls, Antiochus demanded that Jews stop promulgating their own culture and religion.28 He also forbade rites central to Judaism, including observance of the Sabbath, a time for worship and rest, and circumcision, which Jews considered the sign of their covenant with God.29 Thus, Antiochus IV prohibited core Jewish religious practices: Temple worship in its purity, Torah study, Sabbath observance, and circumcision. Contemporary scholars continue to debate why he broke longstanding custom and tried to quash Judea’s religious life.30
Accounts of Antiochus’s brutality in enforcing his decrees appear in several sources, attesting to death sentences carried out against resisters.31 In vivid images, and following the Greek pathos literary style, some of them describe mothers who had circumcised their babies being killed with their infants “at their neck.”32 Some historians doubt Antiochus’s mental stability, while others suggest that military threats from Egypt compelled Antiochus to strengthen his kingdom by unifying it under common worship. He may have thought that by making Judea and Jerusalem fully Greek, its wealth would increase and the likelihood of rebellion would diminish. With Judea calmed, he could deploy all his forces against outside threats to his kingdom. Thus, tight control of Judea may have been part of Antiochus’s larger plan to unify his territories and to concentrate his armies against an external enemy that enjoyed significant military and political power.33 Whatever his reason, he made it nearly impossible for Jews to live “according to their ancestral laws.”34
Jews responded to the new repression of their religion in different ways. Menelaus and others living in the Akra supported Antiochus’s policies. Elsewhere, while some Jews resisted nonviolently, others took up arms.35 The revolt against Antiochus IV and the Jerusalem priesthood erupted in 164 B.C.E. in Modein, a small town northwest of Jerusalem, away from...

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