CHANUKA REFORMULATED

The celebration of chanuka represents a fourth rededication - if the first dedication was the Mishkan, then the first and second temples each were 'rededications', the rededication by the Hashmonaim was the third rededication.

The celebration of that event, when there is no more temple, is a rededication within each person who celebrates the miracle, and an expression of the hope that the Beis HaMikdash be rebuilt.


Or conversely, one can revalue the celebration as a progression from erasing old idolatries during the years in the wilderness, through both a unification of worship in the first Temple and a resurgent national ideological culture during the second temple, to a rejection of tyranny and polytheism with the victory of the Hashmoneans.


Either way, the end result is the same. If prayer stands in for sacrifice since the destruction, then celebrating Chanuka in the home is a defiant statement that Judaic beliefs and ideals still live, nearly two millennia since the victory of Rome.

Rome (the inheritors of the Greeks) may have been victorious. But they have not won.

The act of resistance embodied in lighting the candles is a gesture of defiance and principle that is within the reach of everybody, each year anew. A fourth rededication, a rededication that does not end, but resumes every year.


An act within the reach of the individual. And much more resonant, therefore, than the concept of Temple services, which are now an abstraction that we cannot fully enfold.


Regarding acts which are within the reach of all, it says in Sefer Devarim, Parshas Netzavim,
psook 30:11 "Ki hamitsva hazot asher Anochi metzavcha hayom lo-niflet hiv mimcha ve lo-rechoka hiv" (This mitzva which I command you this day, it is not too hard for you, nor is it far off).
Psook 30:12 "lo vashamayim hiv lemor mi ya'ale-lanu hashamaima veyikacheha lanu veyashmi'enu ota vena'asena" (It is not in heaven, that you could say: 'Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, and make us to hear it, that we might do it?').
Psook 30:13 "velo-me'ever layam hiv lemor mi ya'avar-lanu el-ever hayam veyikacheha lanu veyashmi'enu ota vena'asena" (and neither is it beyond the sea, that you could say: 'Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it uto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it?').
Psook 30:14 "ki-karov eleicha hadavar meod beficha uvilvavcha la'ashoto" (but very close to you indeed is this word, on your mouth and in your heart, that you can fulfill it).



Chanuka is a triumph of remembering. Without the memory of the temple and what it meant, it is meaningless.

Chanuka is also a triumph of dissent. Hence the obligation to publicise the miracle (assuming that we can actually agree on what that miracle is...).

But, al kol panim, we can set fire to stuff. It's a good thing.