D'var Torah

Kislev 5765

Leveling Lachrymosity

The familiar account of Hanukkah retells the story of the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after its having been defiled. We are told in the Talmudic discussion of Hanukkah (written some 600 years after the fact), that there was not enough oil in the cruse marked with the seal of the High Priest to last for the eight days required to make a new batch of oil. Miraculously, the oil burned foe eight days and we mark that moment with our own lighting of candles.

Not enough oil resonates with what has been called the “Lachrymose theory of Jewish history:” in every generation there have been those who have sought to destroy us. Amidst the gloom and doom of Jewish survival, there have been the pious ones, the Hasidim, who have preserved and maintained the integrity of the Jewish. Following in the footsteps of those first Hasidim, the Maccabees, whose descendants assimilated and acculturated to Roman society to the max, have assured that there will not be a posthumous victory given to those who would have had us cease to exist.

As you will see on December 19, in our special exhibit celebrating the 350th anniversary of the first permanent Jewish settlement in America, over and over again, the secret to Jewish survival has come from our ability to assimilate and acculturate, while remaining vitally and organically connected to text and tradition. The opening chapters of I Maccabees recounts that the upper social classes, the kohanim and the upper aristocracy, longed to build a Hellenistic health and fitness club in Jerusalem. They wanted to give up tribalism for the greater good, to be part of the real world. And then there were those who at first chose not to become like everyone else for the sake of political correctness. There was an amalgam of Jews who united in the Maccabean victory: traditional, acculturating and assimilationist longing for authenticity and distinctiveness, affirming communal obligations and responsibilities.

On the page of the Talmud when the discussion takes place about the miracle of the cruse of oil is also found a discussion about the nature of the wicks that can be used for lighting Hanukkah lights. Even those wicks and oils that are not to be used in the lighting of Shabbat candles, wicks that do not hold a flame well, can be used for lights of Hanukkah. In the 1870’s there was a discussion in Warsaw among assimilated Jews (my maternal great-grandfather’s family) and those who would be identified as part of an observant Hasidic community (my paternal great-grandfather’s family), between Jews who did Hanukkah and Purim as well as Jews who did Shabbat. There was a communal recognition that Judaism is enriched and enhanced by all Jews and that all Jews have a stake in the transmission of Judaism to succeeding generations.

Pessimists will see the cruse as being insufficient and inadequate – there simply is not enough oil; then there are those of us who are more optimistic about Judaism and the Jewish future, those of us who see multiple wicks united in drawing from the perennial sources of text and tradition, custom, ceremony, ritual, Jewish education and dedication, the fuel with which to keep the flame fed.

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