Chanukah 5773
by Rabbi Avi Billet
Chanukah is very unlike Purim, the other major Rabbinic holiday. Purim has an entire tractate of the Talmud (Megillah) dedicated to it. An entire book of the Bible (Esther) tells the story behind the holiday. And it has 4 different commandments which nowadays take up a significant percentage of a person's one-day Purim experience.
Chanukah has a few pages dedicated to it within Tractate Shabbos, with several brief references to it in other tractates. There are "hints" to the holiday in the Bible (see Chagai 2:18-23) , but the canon of the Bible was sealed close to 300 years before the Chanukah story. Chanukah has one commandment, which is repeated for eight nights, which takes up very little of one's Chanukah time – and one may not derive any benefit from its fulfillment!
Other than the number of days of celebration being greater on Chanukah, the other factors would seem to indicate greater coverage in the Shulchan Arukh going to Purim. But Purim only has 12 Simanim (sections) compared to Chanukah's 16.
If we don't count the sections in both holidays that refer to customs of eulogizing and fasting, as well as the order of the davening, we are left with eleven Simanim dedicated to Chanukah's lights versus nine Simanim dedicated to Purim's mitzvos. Strangely, the final Siman in "The Laws of Chanukah" has more to do with Purim than Chanukah as it describes the 4 Parshas that surround Purim in the month of Adar - yet it's included in "Chanukah's Laws."
The numbers still don't compare in a way that makes sense. Why is so much more attention given to Chanukah's lights than to all of the mitzvos of Purim combined?
While both holidays contain a strong element of what we call "Pirsumei Nisa" – publicizing the miracle – the difference between the methods is that Purim has an internal "Pirsum" through reading the Megillah in the synagogue, while Chanukah's "pirsum" is public – not just for "insiders." Most people put their candles in a place where they can be seen by passers-by, who have eight nights to notice the candles as they increase by one each night. Unlike in the shul, where only those who attend hear the Megillah, anyone - Jew or non-Jew - can see the Chanukah lights.
Let the irony not be lost upon us. The miracle of the Purim story was the overcoming of the external plot to physically annihilate the Jewish people. We call the miracle a "nes nistar" – a hidden miracle that guided the "natural" chain of events that put Esther in a position of influence to save her people. Our "internal" publicizing of the miracle seems to reflect the hidden miracle of Esther's rise to prominence more than it reflects the public nature of the threat to our people.
The Chanukah threat was more of a hidden threat. The Greeks had successfully assimilated many cultures into their own, and, according to our tradition, had been wildly successful doing the same with many Jews. The threat was to the souls of the Jewish people, to rid Judaism from the Jewish people. The miracle of the military victory, which is the primary focus of "Al Hanissim," was a public one – as the "many" fell to the might of the "few." As Purim's "publicizing of the miracle" takes its tone from the nature of the miracles (in that case internal), on Chanukah the method of "publicizing" seems to reflect the nature of Chanukah's miracle – the very out-in-the-open military victory, as opposed to the internal threat of spiritual annihilation that came under the guise of assimilation to Greek culture, paganism and hedonism.
And yet, we can still debate which was a more important achievement – being saved from genocide or from spiritual annihilation.
It's not my line, and I will surely not be the last to point out that the number of Jewish souls that have been lost since World War II has surpassed the number murdered by the Nazi Genocide Machine.
I don't want to be misunderstood. Both numbers are devastating. Yet while the comparison seems almost heretical, I tend to wonder which will be viewed as more of a loss one hundred years from now. Many who look back at the Holocaust say "we need to replace as many as Hitler took." How many look at the last sixty five years saying "We need to replace those who were lost to assimilation, whose children or grandchildren don't know they are Jewish, who support anti-Jewish and anti-Israel notions in the media, on college campuses and on the street…"?
Preventing genocide or spiritual deaths are both worthy of celebration. But survivors can rebuild after even the most devastating war. When your Jewish soul is dead, on the other hand, there's no survivor left who knows how to rebuild, or that something even needs rebuilding.
From this perspective, Chanukah needs a lot more time (8 days instead of 1), and a lot more coverage in the Shulchan Arukh than Purim needs. As we publicize the miracle of the preservation of the Yiddishe neshamas – correctly, following the minutest details of the Shulchan Arukh – through lighting candles for all to see, we pray that the souls who are lost or wandering can touch the spark that will bring them back to our people.
Only then we will be able to proclaim in our own times, "A great miracle happened here."
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