Chanukkah THREAD:
We are familiar with TWO radically competing grand narratives concerning what Chanukkah commemorates; on the one hand, the defeat of the Greeks by the Maccabees, and on the other, the preservation of the oil for 8 days, despite a besieged Temple 2/
It's easy to look at these two narratives as a contest between two visions of Jewish power 3/
On one account, it's a militaristic (proto-Zionist) story of opposing (Greek) fire with (Greek) fire; there is nothing remarkable per se about the victory; the miracle is winning a war, having better weapons, better strategy, and yes, perhaps, some small help from God 4/
But it's ultimately a secular story about how we Jews out-Greeked the Greeks 5/
The other story--the one popularized by the rabbis--and which we today commemorate by lighting the menorah is not about celebrating a military victory, but about persevering in the face of loss 6/
It's a story of hope in the indestructible despite empirical evidence of beleaguerment; it's a story, in a way, that's not really about the Temple being saved at all, but about the holy being something unprofanable 7/
It presages the Exile of the Jews, the notion that even without a Temple they can still maintain their relationship to the divine 8/
The small canister that lasts 8 days is a synecdoche, a symbol, for the Jewish people who, despite being quantitatively small remain qualitatively strong 9/
This is somewhat common knowledge 10/
Some are aware of a more complicated picture 11/
For instance, the profound irony that the Maccabees, who were ideologically anti-Hellenistic are commemorated in Jewish memory in Hellenistic-martial terms 12/
While the rabbis, who in a way were more amenable to many aspects of Hellenistic culture and thought, precisely reject framing Chanukkah as a story about militarism 13/
In other words, and this is often one of the great jokes history plays, the official anti-Greek camp was very Greek in the way they constructed their identity, while the camp that could afford to be less threatened by Greek culture had a strong identity of its own 14/
But this is prelude to what I think the real conflict was and is between Jew and Greek, or really, between the two internal warring voices within the Jew, who is, let's face it, a child of both Athens and Jerusalem. 15/
The conflict is about history and the meaning of history itself! 16/
You see the question is about the relationship between history and festival, between the historicity of the historical past and the memory of it (a distinction made famous by Yerushalmi in his book Zakhor) 17/
To celebrate Channukah with the Maccabees at the center is to be a historicist, that is, to relate to the past as "what happened" (Ranke) 18/
Whereas to celebrate Chanukkah with the canister of oil at the center is to understand that the meaning of Chanukkah is ahistorical or transhistorical, in other words, eternal 19/
It's not a coincidence that the miracle we focus on is the endurance of the ner tamid, the eternal flame, a symbol of the transhistoric, of that which no paradigm shift can erase 20/
Were Channukah only about the past and not about the endurance of an eternal principle there would be no need to celebrate it as a specifically religious holiday (though it might be a civil holiday or a holiday of a Jewish state) 21/
Certainly, lighting the menorah would not be a "d'oraita commandment (i.e., a commandment whose origin dates to the Torah given at Sinai); that would be a historical absurdity!! 22/
How can we be commanded to commemorate a historical event from a time that preceded that event!? 23/
It only makes sense once we appreciate that the moment Channukah commemorates is precisely a historical moment when we came to understand the narrowness of historicism, of the historical frame, for the religious consciousness 24/
This isn't to denigrate history, which I love, by the way! 25/
It's to understand, though, that the study of history cannot be a value in and of itself 26/
Shoutout here to Leo Strauss who argues (persuasively) that the social sciences make no CENTS unless they are secretly motivated by a normative concern (a concern that has to remain secret as long as the social sciences claim to be "sciences," a term that is morally neutral) 27/
So here's the funny thing! Chanukkah is not about our beating the Greeks by having a better army! To do so would be the ultimate form of assimilation and a great loss of our self-understanding 28/
It would, in a way, be the reduction of religion to politics, which is the boldest form (and the real 'nafkamina' [practical consequence]) of atheism 29/
Rather, Chanukkah was the moment we beat ourselves! 30/
When we realized that being Jewish is about not bending at the altar of historical time 31/
This is an aside but 1 of the most tragic elements of Wissenschaftes Judentums (the 19th c. project of studying Jewish thought and culture through a historicist lens) is that, in the name of saving Judaism from intellectual embarrassment they exiled it from its spiritual home 32/
It is thanks to the great historians of Judaism that we now better understand the history of Chanukkah's development, and the way that the rabbis constructed the meaning of Chanukkah in opposition to the "zealots" (anti-Hellenizers) 33/
yet, ironically enough, it is historicism--the study of Judaism as a mere historical development, different in each age--that is the ultimate Maccabean move, the reduction of Judaism to culture or politics and the replacement of divine power by total human power and agency 34/
A maskil ("enlightened Jew") will say that the miracle of the oil lasting 8 days lacks historicity 35/
And this, actually is the point! 36/
You see, back in the day (or if you will, the mythic day), skeptics and doubters wondered how can the light last for 8 days that's impossible!!! 37/
Now, doubters and skeptics ask, how can the light last for 8 days that's impossible!!! 38/
The form of skepticism is different; in one, it was sensual observation (induction) vs faith; but for us, it's historical observation (induction) vs. faith /38
But here's the rub! We don't fight empiricism with empiricism! We don't say to the skeptic that they're wrong, the empirical light will actually come, will actually last. 39/
We don't necessarily care whether it will or not, because ultimately the light we commemorate on Chanukkah is a different kind of light, and the oil a different kind of oil 40/
Ecclesiastes 7:1 says, "shem tov mi shemen tov" (a good name is better than good oil) 41/
But the Zohar understands the verse in reverse: "a good name comes from good oil", meaning, as William Carlos Williams says, "no ideas but in things"; ideas, names derive from the material, not the other way around 42/
Regardless, the idea is that the name and the oil are inseperable; but what is the name?
The name could be the divine name, or our own name, or the name we give to our holidays 44/
The point is that our faith confirms reality and our reality confirms our faith 45/
Do we choose to believe only in the might of swords and spears? Or do we believe in something which flickers between the visible and the invisible, the empirical and the transcendental, the historical and the transhistorical? 46/
On Chanukkah we have much to celebrate (and as always, much to yearn for) 47/
But one thing we can celebrate is not only our survival, not only our freedom and autonomy, not only our power (however constrained), but also our awe that we are here celebrating, lighting a candle in remembrance and in continuation of the light that was already lit for us 48/
It is as old as the world, and as softly luminous as the light reaching towards us from the farthest galaxies 49/
Blessed are you, Master of the Universe, who allowed us to reach this moment and allowed us to finish writing (reading) this thread.
