Sermon Vayeshev Chanukah “The Power of Symbols”
Written by Rabbi Colin Eimer — 21 December 2024
You can tell how long ago it was from the fact that I could fly direct from Tel Aviv to Teheran. Back then it was still Persia. I was at Leo Baeck College and on my way to Australia to do a stint as student rabbi in Melbourne. In Teheran I visited a medersa, the Moslem equivalent of Leo Baeck College. It was finely decorated with that beautiful Arabic calligraphy. One part of the building had a dome and at the very top of the dome was a magen david. I was a shallow, ignorant youth then, so was surprised to see what I imagined to be a uniquely Jewish symbol in such a place. Much of that has changed. Hopefully slightly less-ignorant, certainly no longer a youth, sadly still shallow, but no longer surprised at seeing a magen david in unexpected places. Later, in India I saw swastikas among the carvings on Hindu Temples. Several hundred years old, they obviously had nothing to do with the Nazis who, sometime in the early 1920s had simply appropriated – or misappropriated it – as their symbol. Until then, of course, it would have had no negative vibes for Jews. Indeed the swastika is ubiquitous in many Eastern religions because for them it’s a good luck symbol.
Sometime in the 1980s, now rabbi at Southgate Reform Synagogue, we were looking for a larger venue for our High Holyday services. A new Hindu Temple in Potters Bar had a big hall which we went to see. Ideal in every respect apart from a decorative frieze around the walls with swastikas – once again, no Nazi connotations, but imagine having to look at that throughout High Holyday services!
All this is merely to attest to the power of a symbol to encapsulate so many different levels of meaning and how context can make such a difference.
Around the same time we were looking at alternative High Holyday venues, the synagogue was embroiled in heated discussion about women wearing tallit. There we saw the power of a couple of yards of cloth to arouse deep emotions. It became clear that the tallit had a symbolic meaning way beyond what the tallit actually was. It raised questions about tradition, who holds and exercises power and control and so on. How appropriate for this Shabbat, too, given that we read about how a few yards of Joseph’s coloured tunic evoked such murderous feelings in his brothers.
It’s what differentiates a symbol from an emblem or logo. A symbol is like the exposed tip of an iceberg, suggesting a hinterland of meaning below the surface. An emblem just identifies a product but carries little emotional valence; though adverts try to persuade us that the logo has symbolic value of something life-changing. That ad for McDonald’s, for example, showing a tired, hungry driver perking up on seeing the yellow letter M arch of McDonald’s in the distance. It suggests that something more than simply food can be found there: companionship, maybe, perhaps something almost life-restoring.
In 1998, all rabbis were given a Chanukah present by the Zionist Federation of Great Britain. It was a card and a book of matches. The card told us that world leaders – Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and others -would be using similar books of matches to light a chanukiyah. And it was 1998 because on the book of matches was “1948-1998 – Israel’s 50th anniversary.” In other words, it was suggesting some connection between Chanukah and Israel’s 50th.
We know, from lighting yahrzeit lights, for example, that lighting a candle is an age-old way of investing a particular moment with significance. It’s actually a custom Jews adopted from the Catholic Church sometime – depending on which historian you read – between the 13th and 17th centuries(Alfred Kolatch, The Jewish Mourners Book of Why, Jonathan David, New York 1993, page 256 or Michael Hilton, The Christian Effect on Jewish Life, SCM Press, London 1994, page 170.) Whenever, until then Jews were averse to lighting candles to memorialise the dead precisely because it was a common Christian practice. But maybe because it was a way of memorialising the dead, an originally Christian practice was able to become a Jewish one.
Rabbis Josh Levy and Charley Baginsky were at 10 Downing Street this week lighting a chanukiyah. Totally appropriate that they do so and good that our political leaders want to recognise the role that Jews play in society.
But why would those world leaders in 1988, none of them Jewish, be lighting a chanukiyah using matches with “Israel 1948-1998” on them?
Now it would have been one thing had they been asked to light a candle and call it a “candle for peace”; having them light that same candle, however, but now in a chanukiyah, with that book of matches, instantly put it in a different context and gave it a very different symbolic meaning and resonance.
I was trying to think of some way of looking at it the other way around. Would this be it? Imagine if this week’s Alyth email told you that, because Chanukah and Christmas coincide this year, there’ll be a Christmas tree in our lobby, complete with baubles, tinsel, twinkling lights and maybe a fairy at the top? It would add that Christmas trees have little or nothing to do with the religious story of Christmas; and, anyway, wouldn’t it be a lovely act of solidarity with our Christian neighbours? I can imagine the reaction.
Der Schlemiel was a Zionist satirical magazine published in Berlin in the first couple of decades of the 20thC – a sort of Jewish version of ‘Punch’ and ‘Private Eye.’ Two cartoons in particular are relevant here. One, from 1904, shows a chanukiyah where the arms with the candles sort of evolve so that the chanukiyah morphs into a Christmas tree. A one-word caption: ‘Darwinistics.’ The point being made was, presumably, something about Jews copying Christian practice. Another one, from 1919, more-pointedly shows a heavily-decorated Christmas tree with mother, father and their young son standing before a large Christmas tree. The son is a member of ‘Blau-Weiss,’ the Blue and White Zionist youth group. As dad looks on contentedly, the mother is giving her son a chanukiyah and saying, “and for you, as a blue-whiter, Father Christmas has brought you a menorah.”
Both cartoons were playing around with what seems the fundamental question of Chanukah – for what were the Maccabees fighting?
It doesn’t seem as if they were fighting for political independence – if such a concept existed at that time. The 2nd Jewish Commonwealth did come into being after the Maccabee victory but probably as an unintended consequence. They weren’t fighting against some threat of actual physical genocide – there’s no evidence that the Greeks wanted to wipe out the Jewish people. Clearly there was a spiritual genocide in the offing with the Greek desire to establish pagan religion. Perhaps that’s what the Maccabees were fighting for.
There’s very little discussion in the Talmud about Chanukah. Neither Mishnah nor Gemara have a tractate devoted to it like the other festivals. What little discussion there is focusses on how it is to be marked, which was still not well-established. Hillel and Shammai differ about it. Shammai argues that you start with 8 lights and remove one each night; Hillel’s argument prevailed, so that we start with one and build up to eight. The so-called miracle of the oil only appears in the literature some 200 years or more after Chanukah was already being celebrated. So the Talmud asks the question mai chanukah. The Aramaic mai is like the Hebrew mah “what?” “what” it asks, “is Chanukah?” (Shabbat 21a)
What we are enjoined to do, having lit the chanukiyah, is l’pirsom et ha-nes, to advertise the miracle, to put the chanukiyah where the outside world can see it. Hence the Lubavitch chanukiyot in public places. But just what is the miracle that we should be advertising?
Symbols are very powerful and not to be used for some cheap political end. No doubt there will be groups in Israel, particularly this Chanukah, for whom the military victory of the Maccabees is what they want to emphasise.
But it’s not “Mai Chanukah,” but “my Chanukah.” My Chanukah focusses on those two cartoons in Der Schlemiel because they are saying something about how we maintain our identity as a minority in the world – being part of the world but not submerged by it. Making sure our chanukiyah doesn’t morph into a Christmas tree.
So that’s “my Chanukah.” What’s your Chanukah?