By Rabbi Annie Belford Finding miracles in everyday moments
Ihave a little cartoon on my office door with an illustration of a family, in which a parent is saying, “The cellphone only had enough power for one day, but it lasted eight whole days!” The caption reads, “The Miracle of Hanukkah: Updated.” I love this comic because it brilliantly and hilariously places the “miracle” of the oil in a modern context. I also love it because it makes us think about miracles in a new way.
The truth is, the story of the miracle of the oil, which is so well known and associated with Hanukkah, may not have occurred historically.
If you read the historical account of the creation of Hanukkah, which is only found in the books of Maccabees in the Christian books of the Apocrypha (the original Hebrew having long been lost and preserved only in Greek), you will read about the SyrioGreeks and Antiochus attempting religious suppression of the Jews. You will read about how the Jews were forced to eat pork and bow down to Zeus. You will read about how the ancient Temple was desecrated. You will read about the Jewish priest Mattathias and his sons, including the brave Judah, who started a guerilla rebellion against these religious suppressors and who eventually won. You will read about how, when they finally rededicated the Temple to God, they celebrated the festivals of Sukkot and Shmini Atzeret — celebrations that lasted eight days — because these ancient pilgrimage festivals were delayed during the war. You will read about how the Maccabean victors declared those eight days of celebration, beginning of the 25th of Kislev, should be celebrated in perpetuity as a remembrance of the great military victory. One thing
you will not read at all is anything about oil. There is not one mention of one container of oil lasting eight days in the entire books of Maccabees.
I was shocked the first time I learned this in an Ancient Jewish Civilization course in college. I was also shocked when I learned that the first recording of the story of the oil is a Talmudic story — and dates from 400 years after the events it describes.
The rabbis of the time (around the first century CE) were dealing with a very different set of circumstances from the one in the story about which they write: They and their brethren were fighting the Romans, and much like the Texans who rallied around the cry of “Remember the Alamo!,” the ancient Jews would rally around the cry of “Remember the Maccabees!”
The Jews fighting the Romans, however, were not as successful as the Jews fighting the SyrioGreeks. Though their revolt enjoyed short-lived success, the leaders of their revolution — mostly rabbis — were publicly tortured, flayed and burned to death surrounded by a Torah scroll. The result of these public tortures and deaths left the remaining rabbis stunned and quick to tamp down any remaining revolutionary fervor. Rather than focusing on the strength of the Maccabees, the rabbis wanted the Jews to focus on the strength of God and God’s redemptive power. The story of the miracle of oil — that just one sanctified bottle was found in the desecrated remains of the Temple, containing just enough oil to light the famed Temple Menorah for one night but which nonetheless lasted for eight nights, long enough for more oil to be properly made to keep that Menorah eternally lit — fit the bill perfectly. The rabbis of the time ensured that the story of Hanukkah was not about the Maccabees at all; it was about the oil and God’s miraculous saving power.
I make it a point to tell this story to my confirmation class every year. At first, our ninthand 10th-graders seem a bit horrified. “You mean my entire childhood is a lie?!” I have heard them say.
The truth is that it is not a lie, of course not. Every children’s book about Hanukkah contains both stories, and in a way, both stories are true. It is true, historically, that the Maccabees fought the Syrio-Greeks and preserved religious freedom. (It is also true that within a couple of generations they had adopted most Greek customs and their children all had Greek names, but that is a story for another time.) The story of the oil is also true because it is not a story about history; it is a story about meaning. The rabbis were trying to teach us that we can make meaning out of the events that happen to us today and that have happened to us in the past.
They were telling us that sometimes a miracle is a single container of oil lasting eight days, and sometimes it is ensuring the survival of a people and their faith against the world’s most powerful army. They were telling us that miracles come in all shapes and sizes, and — in one of my favorite prayers about miracles, which those same rabbis wrote — they occur at all times, evening, morning and afternoon.
Miracles are not necessarily the splitting of the Sea of Reeds; miracles are seeing my children laugh together when they play a game or are just being silly, or watching a student do something she didn’t think she could, or seeing an adult hold Torah for the very first time, or see a community come together in celebration, or mourning, or prayer, or justice, or just everyday life (evening, morning, and afternoon). The Miracle of Hanukkah may be symbolized in the lighting of the menorah; the real miracle, however, is that it reminds us to look for them in every single moment.