The family’s favourite festival
Someone
asked if we were having a service for the first night of Chanukah – no we’re
not. Because there is no such special
service. It would simply be a weekday
evening service, with the candle lighting.
And though the kids would enjoy the candles, they wouldn’t be thrilled
by the service!
Chanukah is
a minor festival – at least technically.
It is a home festival. In Britain
it was, of course, a midwinter festival of lights – as it is in Israel - when it
got dark early and the nights were long and cold, lots of light, and lots of
fund, presents, laughter – and hot, sticky, sugary, jammy doughnuts were just
the thing!
It is a bit
different here. We can have the lights to light up the dark – or the young kids
– but not really both, since it is mid-summer (though admittedly it is a bit
earlier than usual this year – as I have pointed out, Chanukah in November is a
relative rarity, and 27th November is absolutely the earliest it can
ever start. Next year is a leap year –
the whole extra month of Adar Sheni – Second Adar – being inserted, so that
Chanukah will be back in late December again in 2014).
We’re
planning a mid-December Chanukah in Myanmar trip next year, so please let the
office know ASAP if you’re interested in finding out more about this nine day visit
to Myanmar, including its capital Yangon, and its unexpected Jewish history –
we’ll be lighting the candles with and meeting this small but fascinating
Jewish community.
It’s a great
example of the Chanukah story – one of Jewish survival against the odds – of keeping
the delicate balance by integrating somewhat to be part of the wider community,
but not assimilating and disappearing entirely.
Indeed,
this can be demonstrated by looking at the destruction of the Northern Kingdom,
the first ‘State of Israel’, some 200 years after it was established following
the death of King Solomon. The Assyrians
managed to resettle the people who then assimilated to the extent that the Israelite
traditions were practically obliterated, so that we still talk of ‘The Ten Lost
Tribes’. From time to time groups are
discovered who seem to have maintained some scattered remnants of biblical traditions
and who may trace themselves back to these tribes over 2700 years ago, but all
in all the assimilation was pretty thorough.
Perhaps
because of this painful history, the response to the Babylonian exile was
different when Judah was conquered 136 years later. Uniquely, the Judean exiles did not
disappear, but instead gathered to pray and remember their land and develop a
new identify as a people, exiled from their land – not because the Babylonian gods
were stronger than their God, but specifically because their God was punishing
them for their backsliding – but would return them to their land. In other words,
rather than demonstrating the weakness of their God, it showed the strength and
power and capability of God to fulfil the threats and warnings, even outside
their own land, by utilising the Babylonian non-gods! It was from this response and this experience
that the Judaism of the synagogue and prayer and rabbis developed from the cult
of Temple, sacrifice and priests. Yet
the integration worked so well, that when only 50 years later the Persians conquered
Babylon and the prophesy came true, and King Cyrus offered them the chance to
return, most Judeans decided they were quite happy being Babylonian Judeans,
thanks! Yet the fact that they had
successfully integrated without assimilating is proven by the fact that this
became the strongest and most influential Jewish community in the world, which
produced the Talmud and generations of Jewish leadership, which continued right
up to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, and which struggles on,
as just a remnant, in today’s Iraq.
Perhaps,
therefore, those families who think it is the most important festival are
right, in a sense, despite its official designation as a post-biblical and thus
‘minor’ one, without a service of its own!
When we light the menorah and put it in the window to advertise the miracle
of Jewish survival, we are demonstrating the power and wisdom of contributing
to, learning from and being a part of the wider community, neither standing
entirely separate from, nor completely assimilating into it.
Chag Urim
Sameiach – A Happy Festival of Lights!
