A Hanukkah Stories

Today's episode is a Shabbat Replay of our service on December 12th, Rabbi Steven drashed on the Hanukkah story, or, rather its darker side.

Yesterday, Sunday, December 14th, Hanukkah began with news of a deadly terrorist attack in Sydney on innocent people celebrating the holiday. We will kindle lights this week to ensure that their memories will be a blessing and our tradition’s insistence that we persevere through tragedy by cultivating joy will not be smothered or diminished. We are here for you, now and always, if you need someone to speak with.

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Transcript

Transcript

This sermon was delivered at our service on December 12th, 2025. You can listen to this drash on Contact Chai Podcast or watch it on our YouTube channel.
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I want to talk about the Hanukkah story. Well, I want to talk about what happens afterward – but first, it's important to understand our context. In a staggering feat of martial ingenuity, Alexander the Great breaks apart the mighty Persian Empire bringing its lands, including the land of Israel, under Greek rule. Unfortunately for him, he dies shortly after. Civil war breaks out. His generals carve apart his empire. And the Jews – that’s us! – come to live under the Seleucids (named after the general Seleucos I Nicator, in case you were wondering). One of his successors, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, decides that he would like everyone in his empire to be a little more Greek and a little less whatever they happened to be born. In Judea, he bans Jewish practice, puts idols in the Temple, and inadvertently sparks a revolt. This is where we meet the heroes of our story: Mattityahu and his son Yehudah Ha’Macabi (aka Maccabee), priests turned guerilla fighters. And somehow, against one of the greatest military forces of that time, this ragtag group of Jews is victorious. They retake Jerusalem. They rededicate the Temple. And Hanukkah is established in perpetuity as commemoration of this miraculous triumph.

For the first time in centuries, Jews have a chance at self-determination. The Maccabees reestablish the kingdom of Judea, which will last about 100 years before falling to Rome (they were great warriors, but less capable statesmen). But the interim, this brief period of independence, is what I want to talk about. A few decades after the Maccabean Revolt, Yohanan Hurkanos becomes the High Priest. Taking advantage of unrest in the Seleucid Empire, he embarks on a series of wars – first conquering Samaria to the north and then Edom to the south. He enslaves large portions of their populations. He mandates that the Samaritans adopt Jewish practices. He forcibly converts the Edomites to Judaism.

There is a painful irony in the fact that the very Jews who fought against forced assimilation do the exact same thing to the people they conquer. By reading the next chapter of this story, Hanukkah is no longer a holiday that simply celebrates our freedom – but also one that forces us to remember how we used this power once we attained it. It teaches us that we can use our scars as an excuse to inflict similar wounds on other people, despite our aversion to the biblical prescription of an eye for an eye. It’s an ugly part of our history. But I believe it’s part of our history we must acknowledge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH9q4zGs9tg

By knowing what comes after the end of our story, Hanukkah doesn’t just confront the darkness around us but asks us to face the darkness that exists inside of us as well. Illuminated by the light of the menorah, we must take an honest look at ourselves and ask: how do we respond to a world shaped by violence? Do we act in the same way that it harmed us (as they say, hurt people hurt people) – or do we dare find another way forward?

When we open the Torah this week, we meet Joseph. He’s young. He’s sweet. He’s only 17. He is the dancing queen (at least as portrayed by Donny Osmond – although this has rabbinic precedent, the rabbis imagined Joseph to be quite flamboyant). But his most essential quality, what makes him him, is that Joseph is a dreamer. Through his dreams, and the dreams of other people, he is blessed with the ability to glimpse possible futures. Amazed and excited by this gift, he shares it with his family. Yet not everyone is happy with what Joseph sees, a future where they bow to him in deference, and so yosifu od s’no oto – his brothers came to hate him even more. He dreams anyway. This further engenders hatred among his brothers, who throw him into a pit and sell him into slavery. Somehow, he continues to dream. Even as Joseph faces heartbreak and hardship, he embraces this gift. Finally he hits rock bottom. Joseph is thrown into prison with no chance of being released. Yet even in this moment, when he could have responded to the injustice of his life with cynicism and despondency – he reenters the world of dreams, interpreting the visions of his inmates. Eventually, one of them will remember this gift and secure his release.

Joseph refuses to respond to a broken world in kind. He refuses to meet cruelty with malice or dehumanization with apathy – and this refusal is what eventually brings him out of darkness, into a brilliant future.

Sometimes people will teach that there are two Hanukkah stories. Maybe you’ve heard this before. There is the original one about military might, the impossible victory of the Maccabee freedom fighters over the formidable Seleucid Empire. And then another story, created by the rabbis living under Roman occupation. In this story, the focus is not on our martial prowess. It is about holding hope and having faith. Because when the Maccabees reclaimed the Temple, the rabbis teach, they found only one cruse of oil to light the menorah. But instead of lasting a single night, it miraculously lasted eight whole nights – enough time to replenish their supply and keep the fire burning. This tale of divine intervention was more palatable to the rabbis, who had just witnessed a succession of disastrous rebellions against Rome. And to be honest, it is probably more appealing to us as well. It’s a hopeful story, about the power and potency of small miracles.

However, I don’t think these are different stories. I believe that they are one story and should be read that way.

The beginning stays the same: the Maccabees throw off the yoke of the Seleucid Empire, and for the first time in centuries our ancestors are a free people. They are given a choice: how do they respond to a world of conquest and oppression? Some choose to continue on this path, to do exactly to others what has been done to them. This is reflected in the actions of Yohanan Hurkanos and his followers, to subjugate the people around them. The only problem with choosing this path is that it perpetuates the conditions that put us here in the first place. The end of this story is no surprise then, the once victorious Maccabees defeated by the legions of Rome. As a contemporary of the rabbis (whose birth is celebrated this season) observed, “All who take out the sword will perish by the sword.” And it is by the sword that the fighting spirit of the Maccabees is extinguished, their ideological descendants dying en masse at the siege of Masada.

But there is another path. It’s the choice of the people who clean out the Temple, a slow and painstaking process of removing each defiled stone and replacing it with a new one. To the best of their ability, they fix what is broken – and if something can’t be repaired, they figure out another solution. They scrub the floors, they polish the instruments, they clean and consecrate the altar. And then they do something incredible: they find that single cruse of oil, one that would only last the night – and they light it anyway. That’s the miracle. Not that the oil lasted, but that they would even kindle those flames in the first place. What audacious hope, to strike that match. But for them even one sacred and precious night was enough, a quiet counterpoint to the din of war.

We find ourselves in a time of overwhelming darkness. It is one lacking hope, that would demand our hopelessness. It is one bereft of compassion that would require our apathy. It is true, the state of the world is not a choice we can make. But t is also true that we can choose is how we will respond to it.

Thomas Friedman recently proposed that we have entered a new epoch of history: the Polycene. It is one defined by overlapping, often mutually reinforced, problems. For example: climate change leads to water scarcity, leads to crop loss, leads to resource conflict, leads to forced migration, leads to state collapse, leads to an inability to address climate change. It is a butterfly effect of devastating consequences, stuck on repeat. In the polycene we are not confronted by crises, but polycrises. And so solutions have also become more complex. Friedman notes that we are no longer playing a game of tic-tac-toe, but grappling with a Rubik’s Cube.

But the Polycene is also one of ingenuity and risk taking. We are beginning to break apart the binaries that have defined and divided us for so long: yes or no, this or that, one or the other. Whether it is gender, or race, or relationships, or religion – people are increasingly thinking outside of these binaries. We are gender expansive. We are people of multiple heritages. We love in ways that are bold and abundant. We celebrate old traditions and create new ones in conversation with our loved ones. And so when the world plunges into shadow, we know that responding in kind is not our only option – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Like the rabbis who inherited this legal formula, with some creativity (and a little chutzpah) we can push outside of these limitations. And it is because the rabbis refused to see proportionality as the only possible answer to injustice that our ethical system is one of repentance and repair, rather than punitive retribution.

And so when we face darkness, we must not only remember our ability to kindle light – but know that there are countless ways to do so. It is in the match we strike. It is in the blessings we recite. It is in the songs we sing. It is in the open door and the warm embrace.. It is in the helping hand and the listening ear. It is in good food and bellyaching laughter and all the various kinds of love that the human heart is capable of.

The first night of Hanukkah is my favorite. I know the eighth night is the most Instagrammable – and it is beautiful, don’t get me wrong. But there is something powerful about lighting that one candle and watching it illuminate the entire room. In that moment, it is enough. That first candle reminds us that no act is too small, no gift of our time or our resources or our presence too insignificant. That there is no blessing we can offer one another that is too inconsequential. Step by step, we forge a new way forward – lighting a path toward a different future, when we refuse to meet darkness in kind. From spark to flame, from one candle to eight, it is in our power to kindle this light. And on the eighth night, which always happens during the new moon, which this year falls on the winter solstice, making it the darkest and longest night possible – we will find that our small flame has become a blazing fire: a reminder that the miracles can occur when we choose to look past what is, to see the possibility of what might be.