The Candles of Holiness
“Happy Hanukah!”
This is the familiar greeting that we extend to one another throughout the eight days of Hanukah, when we celebrate the Jews’ miraculous triumph over the Greeks, who ruthlessly governed the Land of Israel and forbade the Jews from practicing their faith. But not many realize the deeper significance of this greeting.
The Ben Ish Hai (Rav Yosef Haim of Baghdad, 1833-1909) would make a point during the eight days of Hanukah to greet people in Hebrew, “Hanukah sameah – Happy Hanukah,” and explained that the word “sameah” is an acrostic. The three letters that comprise this word (sin, mem, het) represent the words “Shabbat,” “milah,” and “hodesh.” This greeting thus alludes to the three primary decrees issued by the Greek authorities in their attempt to distance the Jews from their religion. They banned Shabbat observance, berit milah, and the declaration of the new Jewish month (Rosh Hodesh).
Some commentators add that this is the reason why the rabbis who instituted the celebration of Hanukah established specifically an eight-day holiday. (Already the Bet Yosef (Rav Yosef Karo, author of the Shulhan Aruch, 1488-1575) raised the famous question of why eight days of celebration were instituted, given that the Hashmonaim discovered enough pure oil for one night of lighting, such that the miracle occurred for only seven days, and not eight.
Other rabbis wondered why a ninth day of festivity is not added in the Diaspora, where an extra day of Yom Tom is added to Pesach, Shavuot, Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret.) One answer given is that an eight-day celebration gives expression to all three decrees. The number 8 is quite obviously associated with berit milah, which is performed on an infant’s eighth day of life, and an eight-day holiday ensures that at least one Shabbat will be included. And, given that the holiday begins on the 25th of Kislev, the establishment of an eight-day celebration results in its including Rosh Hodesh (Tevet), such that all three mitzvot which the Greeks outlawed are alluded to on Hanukah.
The question, of course, arises as to why the Greeks targeted specifically these three mitzvot. What is it about these particular institutions that drew the Greeks’ attention in their effort to do away with Judaism?
The War on Kedushah
The answer, in a word, is kedushah – sanctity.
Shabbat, of course, expresses the notion of sanctity of time. Performing forbidden work on Shabbat not only transgresses Gd’s command, but constitutes an act of desecration, as Shabbat is a sacred entity. Berit milah is rooted in the idea of the sanctity of the human being, which requires that we exercise discipline and self-restraint in regard to physical pleasure, and not allow ourselves to freely indulge and wantonly follow our impulses as animals do. Finally, the declaration of new months is necessary for the establishment of the Yamim Tovim, our holidays, the sacred occasions on the calendar.
In short, the Greeks’ campaign was a war on kedushah, an effort to obliterate the notion of sanctity.
Developing this point more fully, the Greeks accepted and embraced only that which could be seen and observed empirically. They placed great emphasis on physical beauty, on appearances and on aesthetics. And, they championed scientific inquiry and discovery. We, of course, have nothing against physical beauty – and, in fact, aesthetics is even required in the context of mitzvah observance – and we certainly appreciate the value of scientific study and technological advancement. The difference, though, is that for us, these are all means to a loftier end. As Torah Jews, we seek to transcend beyond the physical and the material domains, to utilize our physical world for spiritual achievement, in the service of Hashem. The three mitzvot targeted by the Greeks demonstrate the notion of harnessing nature for sacred purposes, using our time and our physical drives for higher ideals.
This is something that the Greeks could not ever accept. They passionately rejected the entire concept of kedushah, of a spiritual plane, of a dimension of life that transcends that which can be experienced with our five senses. They thus set out to wage war against kedushah, against the very concept of holiness, the ideal of directing our physical beings and our physical reality towards a higher purpose.
Yosef Ha’tzaddik
With this in mind, we can understand the association between Hanukah and the Biblical character of Yosef.
The most obvious evidence of such an association is the Jewish calendar. Every year, without fail, the annual Torah reading cycle reaches the story of Yosef during the time of Hanukah. The account of his being cruelly sold by his brothers, and of his experiences as a slave in Egypt, which is told in Parashat Vayeshev, is always read either on Hanukah itself, or on the Shabbat immediately preceding Hanukah. And the story in Parashat Miketz of Yosef’s rise to the position of Egyptian vizier is almost always read during Hanukah.
But there are also additional, albeit subtler, indications of a link between Yosef and the story of Hanukah.
The Ox’s Horn
The Midrash (Bereshit Rabbah 2:4) tells that the Greek authorities issued an edict to the Jews, commanding, “Write for yourselves on the horn of the ox: We have no share in the Gd of Israel!” They demanded that the Jews explicitly renounce their loyalty to their faith by engraving a pronouncement to this effect “on the horn of the ox.” Why was this inscription to be made specifically there? What significance might there be to the ox’s horn?
One answer I saw is that people in ancient times would remove the horns of their animals and use them as baby bottles, filling them with beverages which the infant would then suck from the bottom end. The Greeks wanted the Jewish children to be indoctrinated from the earliest age to reject Jewish faith.
Others, however, explain that the ox’s horn represented Yosef, whom Moshe likened to an ox in his blessing to Yosef’s tribes just before his passing (“Bechor shoro hadar lo” – Devarim 33:17). The Greeks set out to eradicate Torah tradition by targeting the “ox,” the spiritual power of Yosef.
The Megaleh Amukot (Rav Natan Spira, Poland, 1585–1633) finds an allusion to the Greeks’ “war on Yosef” in that nation’s Hebrew name – “Yavan.” The three letters of this word – yod, vav, and nun – are three of the four letters of Tziyon, the name with which the sacred city of Jerusalem is often referred. The missing letter is tzaddi, which alludes to Yosef, who is often called “Yosef Ha’tzaddik” (“Yosef the righteous one”). The Greeks endeavored to take “Yosef” out of Jerusalem. They aspired to turn Jerusalem into Athens – a bustling, teeming metropolis, a leading center of culture and commerce, but without the piety represented by Yosef. This is alluded to by the name “Yavan” – indicating that they wanted to take the “tzaddi,” the spirituality represented by Yosef, out of “Tziyon.”
Yosef is known a “Yosef Ha’tzaddik” primarily because of his extraordinary self-restraint, his ability to control his physical desires. As a 17-year-old boy forcefully brought into a society that championed promiscuity, he was tempted by his master’s wife, who, consistently, every day, tried luring him into an illicit intimate relationship, and he refused. Yosef embodied the quality of kedushah, the ability we have to restrain our physical drives in the pursuit of a higher spiritual purpose. And this is precisely what the Greek Empire set out to destroy. They ordered the formal renunciation of Jewish faith “on the horn of an ox,” to symbolize the rejection of “Yosef Ha’tzaddik,” of the notion of kedushah that Yosef represented. This was how they hoped to turn “Tziyon” into “Yavan,” to secularize the Jewish People and draw them away from their faith.
Kindling the Holy Lights
Each night of Hanukah, at the time of the candle lighting, we recite a special prayer in which we proclaim the purpose of the Hanukah lights – to commemorate the Hanukah miracle – and also announce, “Hanerot halalu kodesh hem” – “These candles, they are sacred.” We then proceed to explain that due to their status of sanctity, they are forbidden for any sort of personal use, and we are allowed only to look at them (“ve’en lanu reshut lehishtamesh bahem ela lir’otam bilvad”).
The Hanukah candles are “kodesh,” reminding us of our mission to live lives characterized by sanctity. We reflect upon the Hashmonaim’s heroic struggle against the Greek persecution, and gain inspiration from their dedication to the religious ideals which the Greeks fought against. We remember how the Greeks sought to extinguish the flame of sanctity, and commit ourselves to continue the Hashmonaim’s effort to sustain that flame, for all eternity.
Unlike the Hashmonaim, we live in a society that offers us full religious freedom, allowing us to choose how to live and whether and how to practice religion. However, while no government officials are forcing us to abandon our timeless principles of kedushah, we find ourselves subject to powerful cultural currents which threaten to sweep us away from those principles. What the Greek governments’ edicts accomplished during the time of the Hanukah story is being achieved in our time through cultural messaging. Our society shuns and even ridicules kedushah, championing instead unrestrained indulgence and the unbridled pursuit of pleasure.
Pursuit of Holiness
The occasion of Hanukah is the time to reinforce our commitment to the “tzaddi,” to the pursuit of holiness. Of course, we are and always will be physical beings, with physical needs and drives which we are encouraged to satisfy. However, the Torah teaches us to strive for holiness by exercising moderation, to limit our indulgence, to balance our pursuit of physical enjoyment with the pursuit of spiritual excellence. This is the message that the sacred Hanukah candles are teaching us.
If we observe Hanukah as nothing more than a time to have parties and indulge in donuts and the other traditional Hanukah foods, then we are completely missing the point of this holiday. While it is certainly appropriate to celebrate with the special, delectable holiday foods, our observance of Hanukah must be focused primarily on drawing inspiration from the spiritual lights, to resolve to add more kedushah to our lives, and to constantly strive for spiritual excellence.