The First Night of Hanukkah

Thoughts on the meaning of the holiday, given the attack in Australia

I had a light-hearted post about Hanukkah prepared for today, but the horrifying terrorist attack on Australian Jews celebrating the first night of the Festival of Lights rendered what I had written inappropriate.

Ironically, Hanukkah commemorates a successful rebellion and is a joyous celebration of bravery, miracles, fighting for one’s beliefs, and overcoming the challenges of overwhelming odds. Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the Second Temple of Jerusalem in the second century B.C.E., following the triumph of a small group of Jewish rebels, known as the Maccabees, over their oppressors, the Greek-Syrians, who had defiled the temple by erecting an altar to Zeus and sacrificing pigs within its sacred walls. To rededicate the temple, the Maccabees had to light a menorah that would burn eternally. But they only had enough pure olive oil to last for one day. Miraculously, the oil burned for eight days, giving the Maccabees time to find a fresh oil supply.

The level of hatred in the hearts of those terrorists to viciously attack a group of innocent people celebrating a holiday takes my breath away. The natural response to such an attack is to ask why? Why are Jews as a group so universally hated? We are not the ones attaching bombs to our children and blowing them up for a misguided cause. Nowhere in the Torah does it say, “Kill the infidels”, as it does in the Koran. Ours is not a proselytizing religion. In fact, quite the opposite. Not only do we not attempt to convert someone to Judaism, but we make it extremely difficult for someone to become a Jew.

The lesson of the Australian tragedy is that, like the Maccabees, Jews around the world today must be vigilant and brave in the face of overcoming the challenge of overwhelming odds, since this vicious attack makes it painfully clear that we still have to fight daily for our beliefs.