The festival of Chanukah commemorates the Maccabees’ victory over the Syrian tyrant Antiochus IV, who had conquered Jerusalem and seized the Temple in his efforts to Hellenize Judea. Resisting assimilation, the Maccabees defeated the Syrian army, and reclaiming the Temple, they kindled again its holy lamps with only a small cruse of oil. According to the Talmud , Chanukah celebrates the miracle of that oil lasting eight days.
But the greater significance remains the Jewish community’s refusal to bend and disappear, or to hide. Last December, a congregant emailed me a photograph of her living room window decorated with an Israeli flag and a Chanukah menorah. “In my window like you said we’re supposed to do,” she wrote.
“I was surprised that some Jews said they were afraid to put the menorah in the window, afraid somebody would smash it. But I am a Michigan Wolverine and we’re fearless.” During those early weeks of Israel’s war in Gaza , as posters of the hostages were being torn down and Jews whose dress so identified them were being assaulted, the Jewish community awakened to a reality we should have anticipated because we had seen it before: how hatred of Israel is intertwined with hatred of Jews, anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
While I admired this congregant’s courage, I understood why others were afraid. A decade ago, the Jew-hatred we feared most came from the far right, from white nationalists and replacement theorists like Robert Bowers who murdered.
