Festival of Lights

I hate to be picky, and I'm grateful that my men's chorus included a medley of Chanukah songs in our Christmas program this year. I'm even impressed that the medley included a song in Hebrew, since it would doubtless have been easy enough to find Chanukah songs exclusively in English.

Now, would someone please explain to me why the translator insisted on the following English lyric (emphasis added)?

Chanukah, Chanukah, happy time of year,
Chanukah, Chanukah, presents and good cheer.

Maybe it's just me, but there's something indisputably goyisch about the phrase "good cheer" - makes me think of a bunch of Charles Dickens lookalikes sitting at the groaning festive board, surrounded by holly-decked halls, toasting each other like crazy with mulled wine while a low-level blizzard slowly covers the windows, and suffering from horrible gout for the ensuing six months. In any case, it doesn't have much to do with Chanukah.

Granted, the original Hebrew is pretty difficult. It goes like this:

Chanukah, Chanukah, chag yafeh kol kach,
Ohr chaviv misaviv, gil le-yeled rach,
Chanukah, Chanukah, s'vivon sov sov,
Sov sov sov, sov sov sov, ma na-im va tov!

Which very loosely translated means this:

Chaunkah, Chanukah, a completely happy holiday,
Beautiful light all around, joy for the little child,
Chanukah, Chanukah, dreidel spin, spin,
Spin spin spin, spin spin spin, how pleasant and fun!

(Let's just casually ignore the Yiddish version until next year. Enough is enough already.)

I probably need not go over the Chanukah story here - if John Belushi felt it was familiar enough to spoof on Saturday Night Live years ago, then everyone must know it - but this is my blog and I'm telling the story, so siddown and listen up!

It all starts when the Syrian Greeks conquer Judea, which had before that time been in the control of Persia. (Matter of fact, I think the Greeks conquered pretty much all of Persia at around that time, but everyone knows that we Jews only care about Israel, so let's skip over that part.) Foreign control of Israel was nothing new, but unlike most previous foreign entities, the Greeks decided that everyone in their empire had to imitate them. So they outlawed the study of Torah, put up statues of the Emperor (a guy named Antiochus) in the Holy Temple, and commanded that every religious observance in the empire include the sacrifice of a swine.

Strike three.

A certain priestly family called the Hasmoneans, led by Mattityahu (or Mattathias as he's known in Greek), organize an insurrection and an army called the Maccabees, and despite their small numbers they eventually throw the Greeks out. This is Miracle Number One. Control of Israel is back in Jewish hands for the first time in ages, and one of the first things they do is cleanse the Temple and rededicate it ("Chanukah" is Hebrew for "dedication").

Now, worship in the Holy Temple included a good many activities, one of which was keeping the seven-branched candelabrum, the "Menorah," lit at all times with olive oil. Unfortunately, the Temple has been desecrated for so long that the Jews can only find one small container of pure oil - the rest have either been broken open or used for idol worship. There's only enough oil in the one container to burn for one day, and it's going to take them eight days to prepare more. They decide, rather than wait to light the menorah and keep it lit, they'll light it for the one day. It's a pretty well-established Torah principle that God would have us follow the commandments as well as possible, even if we can't do it perfectly at the moment.

So someone lights the menorah and they get to work on more olive oil. Eight days go by, and the same oil is still burning when they pour the new oil in. Miracle Number Two.

Here's an interesting, if rather disturbing, commentary on Chanukah from a rabbi at Yale named James Ponet. Rabbi Ponet proposes that telling the Chanukah story as I have done above is all very well when the Jews are weak, scattered and oppressed, but that today when we have our nation and land back, we'd be wiser to think of the Chanukah story as that of a Jewish civil war. He has a point - the Maccabees were a considerable minority in Israel at the time, and most Jews wanted to assimilate among the Greeks. There was a lot of blood spilled, with Jews killing Jews, a horrible thing to contemplate. However, I think that Rabbi Ponet's question as to "whether an ethnic group that wishes to survive must turn itself into a nation-state" is disingenuous, at best. We're talking about Israel here, not just any ethnic group, and Israel is in danger at all times of being "wiped off the map," as you may remember.

Rather, I suggest that we take time this Chanukah to wonder whether Israel can survive with its soul intact if it continues to ignore God. I wouldn't dream of advocating that Israel become a theocracy - some of those rabbis are scary enough in civilian life. I do, however, call this to mind; on Chanukah we're told to remember the miracles that God did in saving Israel from its foes. What makes us think that God won't do that now if we let Him?

Benshlomo says, Could you help someone if they thought you weren't even there?