Hanukkah

Based on Wikipedia: Hanukkah

In 167 BCE, a king ordered pigs sacrificed on the altar of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. He banned circumcision. He erected a statue of Zeus in the holiest site of Jewish worship. And then, remarkably, a small band of rebels won.

This is the story behind Hanukkah—not primarily a story about oil lasting eight days, but about a successful guerrilla uprising against one of the great empires of the ancient world. The miracle of the oil came later, added to the tradition centuries after the events themselves. The original miracle was military and political: a priestly family leading farmers and villagers to defeat professional soldiers of the Seleucid Empire.

The World Before the Revolt

To understand what happened, we need to go back about 150 years before the revolt, to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE.

When Alexander died, his generals carved up his empire. Judea—the region around Jerusalem—initially fell under the control of the Ptolemaic Kingdom based in Egypt. For over a century, the Ptolemies let the Jews practice their religion freely.

Then, in 200 BCE, everything changed. Antiochus III, king of the Seleucid Empire based in Syria, defeated the Egyptian forces at the Battle of Panium and took control of Judea. At first, this didn't matter much to ordinary Jews. Antiochus III promised they could continue living "according to their ancestral customs." The Temple kept operating. Jewish life continued.

The trouble came with his son.

Antiochus IV and the Crisis

Antiochus IV Epiphanes—that last word means "God Manifest," a title he gave himself—reversed everything his father had promised. Historians still debate exactly what triggered his hostility. Was it a power struggle over who would be High Priest? A revolt that got out of hand? A combination of internal Jewish politics and royal overreach?

What we know for certain is the result.

In 175 BCE, Antiochus invaded Judea. According to the ancient historian Josephus, he "took their city by force, and slew a great multitude" and "spoiled the temple, and put a stop to the constant practice of offering a daily sacrifice."

Then came the religious persecution. Judaism itself was outlawed. The practice of brit milah—circumcision, the foundational covenant between God and Abraham—became a capital offense. Antiochus ordered that pigs, considered unclean in Jewish law, be sacrificed at the Temple altar. A statue of Zeus was installed in the sanctuary.

This wasn't just political oppression. This was an attempt to erase a religion.

The Hammer

In a village called Modi'in, a priest named Mattathias refused.

When a Greek official came to enforce the new laws—specifically, to make the villagers sacrifice to Greek gods—Mattathias killed not only the official but also a Jewish man who had stepped forward to comply. Then he fled into the hills with his five sons and began organizing resistance.

Mattathias died soon after, but one of his sons emerged as a military leader. His name was Judah, but history remembers him by his nickname: Maccabee. The word probably comes from the Hebrew for "hammer."

Judah the Hammer.

Against all reasonable expectation, the rebels won. By 164 BCE, just three years after the fighting began, the Maccabees had driven the Seleucid forces out of Jerusalem and retaken the Temple.

The Rededication

The Temple was a wreck. Defiled by pagan sacrifice, its sacred objects looted or destroyed, it needed to be completely cleansed and rededicated before Jewish worship could resume.

This is where the holiday gets its name. Hanukkah comes from the Hebrew word meaning "dedication"—specifically, the rededication of the Temple after its desecration.

According to the earliest sources, the celebration lasted eight days because the victorious Maccabees modeled it on Sukkot, the autumn harvest festival they had been unable to observe while fighting. Sukkot lasts eight days. So did the celebration of victory and rededication.

The earliest account, in the Book of First Maccabees, makes no mention of miraculous oil. Neither does Josephus, writing in the first century of the common era. He calls it the "Festival of Lights" and explains the name this way: "I suppose the reason was that such a freedom came to us beyond our hopes."

The light wasn't magical. It was metaphorical. After darkness, light.

The Miracle of the Oil

So where does the oil come in?

The story appears in the Talmud, the massive compilation of Jewish law and commentary that was written down around 600 years after the Maccabean revolt. By then, the political situation had changed dramatically. The rabbis who compiled the Talmud lived under Roman rule—and Rome had crushed two major Jewish revolts with catastrophic consequences, including the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.

Celebrating a military victory against a foreign empire? That was dangerous territory.

But celebrating a miracle? That was safe. That was religious, not political.

The Talmud tells it this way: When the Maccabees retook the Temple, they searched for ritually pure olive oil to light the menorah, the seven-branched candelabrum that was supposed to burn continuously in the sanctuary. They found only one small container, sealed with the High Priest's signet ring, containing enough oil for a single day.

They lit it anyway.

And it burned for eight days—exactly the time needed to prepare a fresh supply of pure oil.

This is the miracle most people associate with Hanukkah today. But notice the shift: the story is no longer about defeating an empire. It's about faith, about lighting a lamp even when you don't have enough fuel, about divine providence rewarding that act of trust.

The Candles

The central ritual of Hanukkah is lighting the menorah—though technically, the Hanukkah menorah is called a hanukkiah and has nine branches, not seven like the Temple menorah.

Eight branches represent the eight nights of the holiday. The ninth holds the shamash, which means "attendant" or "helper"—the candle used to light the others.

Here's something fascinating: the ancient rabbis disagreed about how to light the candles.

The school of Shammai argued that you should start with eight candles on the first night and work down to one, because the miracle was at its greatest on the first day when the oil that should have burned for only a single day kept burning.

The school of Hillel argued the opposite: start with one candle and add one each night, because the miracle grew greater as the days passed. Also, Hillel said, in sacred matters we should always increase, never decrease.

Hillel won. Today, Jews around the world light one candle on the first night, two on the second, and so on until all eight blaze on the final night.

The candles are supposed to be visible—placed in a window or outside the door, on the opposite side from the mezuzah. The whole point, the Talmud says, is "publicizing the miracle." This is a holiday meant to be seen.

The Food

If you're cooking in December and wondering about Hanukkah food, here's the principle: oil.

To commemorate the miracle of the oil, traditional Hanukkah foods are fried. Latkes—potato pancakes—are the most famous, especially in Ashkenazi Jewish communities from Eastern Europe. You grate potatoes and onions, mix them with egg and a little flour or matzo meal, form them into patties, and fry them until golden and crispy.

The debate over toppings is fierce. Sour cream or applesauce? Some families insist on one, some on the other, some put both on the table and let everyone choose.

Sufganiyot—jelly doughnuts—are the traditional Hanukkah treat in Israel and among Sephardic Jews. They're fried, filled with jam, and dusted with powdered sugar. In Israeli bakeries during Hanukkah season, you'll find dozens of varieties with different fillings and toppings.

There's also a tradition of eating dairy foods on Hanukkah, connected to a story from the Book of Judith about a Jewish woman who fed salty cheese to an enemy general, made him thirsty, gave him wine until he passed out, and then killed him with his own sword. Cheese blintzes are popular for this reason.

The Game

Dreidel is a spinning top with four Hebrew letters on its sides: Nun, Gimel, Hey, and Shin. These are said to stand for the phrase "Nes Gadol Haya Sham"—"A great miracle happened there."

In Israel, the shin is replaced with a pey, changing the phrase to "A great miracle happened here."

The game itself is simple: players put tokens (chocolate coins, nuts, or pennies) into a pot, take turns spinning, and win or lose tokens depending on which letter comes up. Nun means nothing happens. Gimel means you take the whole pot. Hey means you take half. Shin means you put one in.

The game may have much older origins than Hanukkah itself—similar spinning-top games existed in medieval Europe—but it's become so associated with the holiday that dreidels are now one of the defining symbols of Hanukkah.

A Minor Holiday That Became Major

Here's something that might surprise you: in strictly religious terms, Hanukkah is a minor holiday.

Unlike the biblically mandated festivals—Passover, Shavuot, Sukkot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur—Hanukkah carries no restrictions on work, no special prayer services beyond the candle lighting, no elaborate ritual obligations. You can go to work, drive a car, use electricity, do everything you'd do on an ordinary day.

The original holiday was explicitly modeled as "like Sukkot"—a celebration, not a sacred assembly. The Book of Maccabees treats it almost as a makeup date for the Sukkot celebration the rebels had missed while fighting.

So how did this minor festival become one of the most widely observed Jewish holidays in the Western world?

Christmas.

Not religiously, of course. But culturally, Hanukkah's proximity to Christmas transformed it. The Hebrew calendar is lunar, so Hanukkah floats around the late November through late December range. It often overlaps with Christmas season.

For Jewish families in majority-Christian countries—especially America—Hanukkah became a way to give children something to celebrate while their neighbors were decorating trees and opening presents. The gift-giving tradition that's now central to American Hanukkah observance is largely a twentieth-century development.

This creates an interesting tension. On one hand, Hanukkah commemorates resistance to cultural assimilation—the Maccabees fighting against Jews who wanted to adopt Greek customs. On the other hand, the modern prominence of Hanukkah is itself a kind of cultural adaptation, making a minor Jewish holiday mirror the major Christian holiday next to it.

Public Menorahs

Since the 1970s, the Chabad movement—a branch of Hasidic Judaism known for outreach to secular Jews—has organized public menorah lightings around the world. Giant menorahs now appear in public squares, shopping centers, and government buildings from New York to Moscow to Melbourne.

This practice connects back to that Talmudic principle of publicizing the miracle. The candles are meant to be seen. A twenty-foot menorah in a public plaza takes that principle to its logical extreme.

These public displays have occasionally sparked legal debates about the separation of church and state, particularly in the United States. Courts have generally ruled that menorahs in public spaces are constitutional, especially when displayed alongside secular holiday decorations, because they've taken on cultural as well as religious significance.

The Spelling

You've probably seen it written different ways: Hanukkah, Chanukah, Hanukah, and other variations. This is because the Hebrew word starts with a sound that doesn't exist in English.

The first letter is chet (ח), which is pronounced as a guttural sound from the back of the throat—similar to the "ch" in the Scottish word "loch" or the German "Bach." If you don't speak a language with this sound, you probably just say it like an English "H."

Different transliteration systems try to capture this sound differently. "Ch" suggests the guttural quality but can confuse English speakers into pronouncing it like "church." Plain "H" is simpler but loses the distinctive sound. The double "k" in "Hanukkah" reflects the fact that in classical Hebrew, this consonant was pronounced long (what linguists call "geminate").

Merriam-Webster, the New York Times, and most major style guides prefer "Hanukkah." But "Chanukah" remains popular, especially among people who want to signal the correct pronunciation. Either spelling is acceptable. Neither is wrong.

The Books That Didn't Make It

The detailed historical accounts of the Maccabean revolt appear in the Books of First and Second Maccabees. If you're Jewish, you've probably never read them, because they're not in the Jewish Bible.

How can the books describing Hanukkah not be part of the Jewish scriptural canon? It comes down to timing and language.

The Jewish canon—what Christians call the Old Testament—was largely fixed by the early centuries of the common era. The Books of Maccabees were written too late to be included. They were also written in Greek (or at least, the only surviving versions are Greek), while the accepted Jewish scriptures were in Hebrew and Aramaic.

Catholic and Orthodox Christians do include the Books of Maccabees in their Bibles, classifying them as deuterocanonical—literally "second canon." Protestants generally don't.

So the primary historical sources for the holiday come from books that observant Jews don't read as scripture. The religious significance of Hanukkah instead comes from the Talmud, from prayers like Al HaNissim (which recounts the history), and from centuries of tradition.

In Other Religions

There's a curious footnote in the Christian New Testament. The Gospel of John mentions Jesus walking in the Temple during "the Festival of Dedication" in winter. This is almost certainly a reference to Hanukkah—the timing is right, and the Greek word used (ta enkainia, meaning "the consecrations" or "renewals") corresponds to the Hebrew meaning of Hanukkah.

Jesus, being a first-century Jew in Jerusalem, would have observed the festival. John places a significant teaching in this setting, with Jesus declaring his unity with God. The passage doesn't say much about Hanukkah itself, but it confirms that the festival was established and widely observed by that time.

What Remains

Strip away the gift wrap and the proximity to Christmas, and what's at the core of Hanukkah?

A story about refusing to let your identity be erased.

The Maccabees didn't fight because they were persecuted for fun. They fought because Antiochus told them to stop being Jewish—to abandon the practices that defined them, to worship foreign gods in their holiest place, to become something other than what they were.

They said no. Against overwhelming odds, they said no and meant it.

The oil that lasted eight days, whether you take it literally or as a later embellishment, points at something true: sometimes you light the lamp even when you don't have enough to keep it burning. Sometimes faith means acting as if the impossible might happen.

That's what the candles are for. Each night in December (or late November, depending on the lunar calendar), Jewish families around the world place a hanukkiah in the window and add another flame. The light is visible from the street. It's supposed to be.

Here we are, the candles say. Still here. Still lighting the lamps. Still refusing to disappear.