By Pinchas Goldschmidt
Chairman of Council of European Rabbis and the WJC Envoy to the Russian Orthodox Church
Hanukkah, more than any other Jewish holiday, has been adopted by every part of the Jewish people. Each community uses Hanukkah to validate and celebrate its particular understanding of Judaism.
In the talmudical academies, Hanukkah is celebrated as the festival of the Oral Torah, since this festival is not mentioned in the Scriptures. In Hasidic courts, Hanukkah commemorates the victory of the light of Judaism over the darkness of Hellenistic assimilation. The Zionist movement adopted Hanukkah as a national holiday, an Independence Day celebration of the Maccabean State of Israel, while in the liberal traditions of Judaism and among Jews of the Former Soviet Union, the Hanukkah story was adopted as a festival of religious freedom.
We are all familiar with the famous Jewish anecdote of two men entering the rabbi’s study to resolve a dispute. The rabbi listens to the plaintiff and responds by saying, “You are right.” After listening to the defendant, the rabbi says to him as well, “You are right.” At this time, the rebbetzin interrupts the proceedings and asks the rabbi, “How can they both be right?” To this the rabbi responds, “You are also right.”
As it happens sometimes in the history of civilizations and religions, it is difficult to pinpoint the most authentic narrative of an historical event. The Hanukkah story is no exception. There are few mentions of Hanukkah in rabbinic sources, and each movement within modern Judaism chose to highlight its significance as it corresponds with its own narrative.
This individual adaptive approach would be much more difficult with any other Jewish festival. The major Jewish festivals are defined by their many mentions and verses in the Torah and Scriptures. Most of the Holidays have a large tractate in the Mishnah and in the Talmud dedicated to it, in which the laws and essential ideas are explained and debated.
The question therefore arises, why is Hanukkah different from all the other festivals? Hanukkah does not appear in the Scriptures, as its inception took place after Chazal (the mishnaic sages) canonized the Bible. However, except for a few sporadic mentions in the mishna (tractate Bava Kama in relation to a possible traffic accident which might occur when a camel's load is set aflame by a Hanukkah candle), and the Talmud (tractate Shabbat, which mentions the Hanukah candles in relation to the mitzvah of lighting the Shabbat candles), the Hanukkah story does not appear at all as a separate subject in the entire corpus of Mishnaic, Talmudic and Midrashic literature. Indeed, this enigma is discussed by rabbinic and academic scholars alike.
In a letter written by the son of the Gaon of Vilna, he states in the name of his father that there actually was a Hanukkah tractate in the collection of the Masechtot Ketanot, the small late tractates, but that this tractate was lost to us.
There are three approaches, which attempt to resolve this omission of the Hanukkah festival from the Oral law. The most famous answer is that of Rabbi Moses Schreiber of Frankfurt and Pressburg (today’s Bratislava). He argues that the silence of the rabbis was intentional and was quasi equal to a rabbinical taboo. Why a taboo? The Hasmonean dynasty of the High Priest, which re-established Jewish statehood in the land of Israel, did so by disregarding the historic and religious mandate of the descendants of the house of David to the throne of Judea. Rabbi Yehudah Hanassi, the codifier of the Mishna, was himself a descendant of the House of David. To highlight the problematic issue of the usurpation of the Davidic crown by the Hasmoneans, the Mishnah minimized the importance of the festival of lights by engulfing it in rabbinic silence. 
In a modern context we can identify with the rabbinic criticism of the Hasmonean Kings. They abandoned a long tradition of separation of powers, where the power of the King, the High Priest and the Judiciary (Sanhedrin) remained distinct, as recorded in the Mishnah. This separation of power is the basis of the modern state, where power is not vested in one man or institution alone.
The Hasmonean dynasty, which gloriously returned independence to the Jews after hundreds of years of living as a vassal of Babylon and Persia, itself vanished in the times of Herod, when Judea once again became a forlorn province of the Roman Empire ruled by a foreign despot.
The second approach is based on a text in the Jerusalem Talmud. This text (Sukkah, Chapter VI) suggests that since Hanukkah was a celebration of the independence of the Jewish state, once Judea was conquered by the Roman Empire, it became politically incorrect to celebrate this spirit of Independence. In order to safeguard the festival within our calendar, our sages downplayed the political nature of the victory, while maintaining the symbols of the menorah and dedication of the Holy Temple in the religious literature. Good relations between the leader of the Jewish autonomy, Rabbi Yehuda Hanassi and the Roman authorities allowed for a flourishing period of jewish learning during this time.
The third approach is religious - spiritual. As Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner and other rabbis explained, the Festival of Hanukkah, by virtue of not having been mentioned in the scriptures, has become the symbol of the oral tradition, and as such has been kept off the books. According to this explanation, the Hanukkah festival was maintained purely in its oral form, passed from generation to generation without being codified in written form. This holiday was the exception to the rest of the oral law, which the Rabbis deemed necessary to commit to writing, in order to guarantee its survival.
Hanukkah today is celebrated in a much more festive and public way than in the past. Therefore its celebratory message to the Jews in Israel and around the world has gained in importance.
As we celebrate Hanukkah as the independence day of the Maccabean Jewish State, we should reflect on the challenges facing the modern Jewish State. We know that we need to cherish and nurture the liberties and institutions, which are the pillars of the Israeli democracy. We need to preserve the separation of power between the different branches of the government, which protect the nature of the Jewish State.
The modern Hanukkah story
But we also have a modern day Hanukkah story. On this Holiday, we should remember and be inspired by the great heroes of Soviet Jewry. We tend to mention the famous Refuseniks and the prisoners of Zion who led the Jewish renaissance movement within the Soviet Union. But we must remember as well the forgotten heroes, the thousands of Soviet Jews who by assembling during the festival of Simchat Torah in front of the Soviet Synagogues, defied the Soviet State. We should cherish the hundreds of thousands of Jews who under fear of the Gulag circumcised their children and bought Matza before Pesach. The great majority of Jews refused to succumb to state anti-Semitism by changing their nationality and family names in the internal passport, and paid a steep price for being Jews. This quiet heroism and civil disobedience of so many of our brothers and sisters in the Soviet Union, the refusal to have their spirit crushed by the Empire, this is the Hanukkah story of our generation.
Today, Soviet Jews have reconnected with the Jewish world and are part and parcel of the State of Israel, as well as the Jewish communities of Germany, the US and Australia. The Jewish communities in Russia itself have seen a miraculous renaissance and contribute immensely to our Jewish landscape, both now and in the future.
As we light the Hanukkah candles this year we are entering a new world order and a very uncertain one. Constants which were part of our world in the past have become variables of the future, truth has become relative and many of our values have become subject to reinterpretation.
As we light the flames of Hanukkah we are making a statement not only to ourselves but to the whole world. The Hanukkah candles should be seen by all those who are in the public domain, by Jew and gentile alike.
We as Jews never remained silent. Our lights, as well, do not remain silent. The blessing on the Hanukkah lights breaks the silence. It states our belief in miracles in those and our times. Jews were never stopped by the realm of the possible, we always seek the next frontier and the seeming impossible surviving against all odds and being a blessing to the nations of the world. As Ben Gurion said, a Jew who doesn't believe in miracles is not a realist.
Hanukkah is largely absent from scriptures and written sources. Still, the power of our tradition, passed from mouth to mouth and from generation to generation, has enabled us to celebrate these nights and these holy lights in many different ways, in our homes and in our synagogues, in our schools and in our shops, in the public square and most important, in our hearts.
