Pádraig McCarthy: Happy Hannukah!
This Jewish feast is celebrated this year, beginning with nightfall on 7 December, and finishing with nightfall on 15 December. In the Gregorian solar calendar, the dates vary, but they remain fixed in the Jewish lunar calendar. The feast celebrates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem in 164 BC after the persecutions under King Antiochus IV, of whom we read recently in Maccabees, and which is the setting for the Book of Daniel. The eight candles on the Menorah are lit on successive nights.
After the Second Temple of Jerusalem was ransacked by Antiochus, there was only enough oil in the jar to burn for a single day. However, the oil miraculously burned for eight days until new consecrated oil could be found. Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, is celebrated for eight days to remember and honour the miracle. An internet search gives much more information.
This year, with the awful destruction in the war between Israel and Hamas and events on the West Bank, may a new (and old) vision inspire a new direction:
Isaiah 2:2-5 (translation: Robert Alter):
“It shall happen in future days
that the mount of the Lord’s house shall be firm founded …
And all the nations shall flow to it
and many peoples shall go, and say:
Come, let us go up to the mount of the Lord,
to the house of Jacob’s God,
that he may teach us of His ways
and that we may walk in his paths.
For from Zion shall teaching come forth,
and the Lord’s word from Jerusalem.
And He shall judge among the nations
and be the arbiter for many peoples.
And they shall grind their swords into ploughshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation shall not raise sword against nation
nor shall they learn war anymore.
O house, of Jacob,
come let us walk in the Lord’s light.”
The destruction and death by Hamas is indeed terrible; the destruction of Gaza might call to mind a story of Abraham in Genesis 18. We usually begin the story of his bargaining with God at verse 20, but this misses the paradox and humour we get from verse 18.
The LORD ponders:
Abraham will surely be a great and might nation, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him. For I have embraced him so that he will charge his sons and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham all that he spoke concerning him.
Then, having noted Abraham as a teacher of righteousness and justice, the LORD consults with Abraham, who in turn proceeds to teach that same lesson to the LORD!
And the Lord said, “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah, how great!
Their offence is very grave.
Let me go down and see whether, as the outcry that has come to me, they have dealt destruction, and, if not, I shall know” …
And the men turned from there and went on toward Sodom while the Lord was still standing before Abraham.
And Abraham stepped forward and said,
“Will you really wipe out the innocent with the guilty?
Perhaps there may be fifty innocent within the city.
Will you really wipe out the place and not spare it for the sake of fifty innocent
within it?
Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put to death the innocent with the guilty,
making innocent and guilty the same.
Far be it from you!
Will not the Judge of all the earth do justice?”
And the LORD said, “Should I find in Sodom fifty innocent within the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.”
And Abraham spoke up and said …
And you know the rest.
I sent this reading to President Isaac Herzog of Israel today
It’s unlikely it will ever get to his eyes, but maybe somebody will see it.