Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Hanukkah's significance
Supersedes: <92351.131912YZKCU@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Organization: City University of New York/ University Computer Center
Date: Thursday, 17 Dec 1992 08:42:32 EST
From: Yaakov Kayman <YZKCU@CUNYVM.BITNET>

I've been hearing a lot, especially lately, from fellow-Jews who describe
Hanukkah as a minor holiday. I find this disturbing.

While in the sense of religious observances Hanukkah is indeed a minor
holiday, as it carries with it no prohibition against work, no mandating
of a special festive meal, no Mussaf (additional) prayer service, etc.,
(even though we do recite the Hallel prayer to praise G-d for His mira-
cles, and we do read the Torah all eight days), unlike Pessah (Passover),
Sukkot (the festival of Tabernacles, or booths), or Shavu'ot (the festi-
val of weeks (seven weeks after Passover), commemorating the giving of
the Torah to us), all of which required our presence at the Temple in
Jerusalem, or Rosh HaShanah (the Jewish New Year), or Yom Kippur (the Day
of Atonement), known together as the "Days of Awe," nonetheless in a
purely SPIRITUAL sense it is very far from minor.

Hanukkah celebrates the triumph of G-d's Way, expressed in Torah, against
the alien values of the majority culture of its day. The Greeks, at that
time probably at least as powerful as whatever superpowers still remain
today, and certainly more influential upon the world of their day, sought
nothing less than the spiritual annihilation of the Jewish People. They
forbade the studying and teaching of Torah, as it was in direct conflict
with their "progressive" values. They forbade circumcision, G-d's
Covenant with our People, as they celebrated (and almost worshipped) the
human body. They defiled our Temple, G-d's Abode in this world, because
the concept of one all-powerful G-d running the world according to a
definite plan, and telling Man how to act, was not something they could
stomach, what with their pantheon of capricious "gods," seemingly doing
whatever it was they were supposed to have done while governed by nothing
more significant than whim.

Hanukkah commemorates G-d's granting victory to a numerically inferior,
and militarily weaker Jewish force, over the Greeks, and it celebrates
our People's rededication of itself to G-d, in our purifying of His
Temple and in our beginning to distance ourselves from the alien
Hellenistic ways.

The Greeks, powerful as they were, are no longer a force to be reckoned
with. They went the same way as the Egyptians and Persians before them,
and later, the Romans, after them. Those superpowers are no longer in
existence, but the Jews remain. We shall always remain. Let those who
today, or tomorrow, try to sway us from G-d's Way, or point to super-
ficialities in a spurious attempt to convince us of the "similarity"
of Hanukkah to their holiday(s), know this. Let those of our People
who might otherwise be tempted to listen to them likewise know this.

Torah lives. G-d's Glory is intact, for it could not be otherwise.
This is what Hanukkah is about.

Yaakov K.
--------
Yaakov Kayman      (212) 903-3666       City University of New York

BITNET:   YZKCU@CUNYVM        "Lucky is the shepherd, and lucky his flock
Internet: YZKCU@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU     about whom the wolves complain"