I was watching the news the other morning and was impressed by a brief commercial inviting Israelis to celebrate Hanukkah in Jerusalem. Having just returned from a four-week speaking tour in the US, Chanukah came up a lot, though not in the way you might think.
Chanukah is front and center in Jewish and Israeli life this season, as it has been for more than 2,000 years. Many Christians asked what we are celebrating. It’s a holiday related to the military victory of the Maccabees over the Syrian-Greeks. It’s the holiday on which we celebrate the miracle of one day’s worth of pure oil found in the ruins of the Temple in Jerusalem that lasted eight days when the Temple was rededicated after being desecrated.
The military victory is all the more relevant now, two years into a horrific war thrust on us, and after the announcement of a recent discovery, providing additional archaeological and historic evidence of the Chanukah story and a fierce battle between the Maccabees and the Greeks some 2200 years ago.
The recent archaeological discovery took place just a few miles from my home in the Judean mountains, the site of one of the major battles during which Elazar, the son of Judah Maccabee, was crushed to death by an elephant on the main road between Jerusalem and Hebron.
When I look out my window, I see that road, albeit that today it’s a paved four-lane highway. Across the valley from my house is a community called Elazar, named in memory of Jewish heroes who died defending the land and our people from foreign occupiers. Its name remains relevant today and serves as historic evidence that we are not the foreign occupiers in the Land of Israel.
In honor of the miracle of the oil, we eat a variety of fried foods that are yummy. if not so healthy.
When I am speaking to Christian groups, and questions about Chanukah come up, I often ask them a question. Other than the Book of Maccabees as part of the Catholic bible, where is the only reference to Chanukah in either the Old Testament or the Christian New Testament? Are you stumped? The answer is John 10 recounting Jesus coming to Jerusalem to celebrate the “Feast of the Dedication.”
Amazing, right? The only mention is Jesus coming to Jerusalem to celebrate Chanukah, a relatively new holiday at the time, commemorating events from roughly 200 years earlier. He didn’t need a commercial from the Jerusalem tourism authority to know that Jerusalem was the place to be for Chanukah. How puzzling that it’s one of the Jewish holidays to which Christians are least connected.
Another recent discovery was released, connecting us to this war, Chanukah, and the eternal traditions of the Jewish people. On the first night of Chanukah two years ago, Hamas terrorists filmed six of the hostages they had been holding in captivity, underground. On the surface, it’s easy to see the heartwarming aspects, that even as hostages, they were able to celebrate Chanukah, even underground in terrorist tunnels.
How do we know this?
Hours of videos were found and released recently. They show staged scenes of six young Israelis interacting and lighting candles for the holiday. With other clips of the video released showing the male hostages being forced to shave one another’s heads, one quipped that it was like the Holocaust. Indeed. As were these staged videos and props, like the Nazis using the Terezin concentration camp to let the Red Cross and the rest of the world fool themselves in believing that the concentration camps were not so bad.
In the video of hostages lighting Chanukah candles, one states that there’s not enough oxygen for the flame. Snacks are provided as props, which some of the hostages wait to eat, already showing signs of starvation. Another clip showed one of the women hostages telling the terrorist captors that two of the men needed medical care. And Hirsh Godlberg Polin, with his arm blown off from below the elbow as a result of a grenade that terrorists threw into the crowded bus shelter in which he and many others took shelter the day they were kidnapped.
Why did the terrorists film all this? What evil propaganda or psychological terror agenda did they have in mind? Since it was Israelis who found the raw footage, we’ll never know. Several months later, suffering the cumulative effect of being hostages underground, Hamas terrorists executed the six young Israelis in the very tunnel in which they had been in captivity. It was just days before IDF troops arrived in the area, and would have been able to rescue them.
On the holiday when we celebrate multiple miracles, it’s a miracle that all of this film was found, and hopefully provides comfort to their families to some degree.
It is also remarkable watching the hostages reciting the prayers as they struggled to light the candles underground. In one of the prayers, Shechiyanu, recited only on the first night, we sanctify God with the words, “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion.”
Harrowing. Six young Israelis in captivity, hopeful that they would be released but in inhuman conditions, praying for peace, sending love to their families, thanking God for enabling them to reach this occasion.
Even though the props were provided (and filmed) by the terrorists holding them, rather than displaying anger or fear, they displayed fortitude and faith. They did so in a Hamas terrorist tunnel. They did so painstakingly, creating their own Hanukkah Menorah using paper cups.
While they were no doubt victims, executed several months later, in one of the most vivid of many signs amid the Hamas cruelty, they were also heroes.
There’s a tradition that we light our Chanukah candles in public, for all people to see, to publicize the miracles. Though filmed in a dark cave with no air, windows, or light, the Islamic terrorists who murdered these six people unintentionally created another way for the world to witness our resilience and the truth: the Jewish people are indigenous to the Land of Israel, where these miracles took place then and continue in our day.
And that God has not and never will forsake us.
