by Pinchus Klahr

Pinchus Klahr was a graduate student at New York University in 1985, and one of the most regular and substantive contributors to net.religion.jewish on the early UTZOO Usenet. His weekly D'var Torah essays — on Chayei Sarah, Yom Kippur, Bereshit, and here on Chanukah — are among the finest pieces of lay Jewish scholarship preserved in the archive.

In this essay, posted during Chanukah 1985, Klahr addresses a question that every thinking Jew must eventually face: why does the Chanukah miracle involve oil? Of all the ways a divine presence could manifest in the rededicated Temple, why specifically the Menorah, and why specifically a seven-day extension of one day's oil? His answer draws on a deep structure he finds in the Chanukah story: that the two miracles — military and ritual — are not separate events but two aspects of a single theological truth. Nature and miracle are not opposites. They are different manifestations of the same divine hand.

The essay closes with a restatement of the holiday's name: Chanukah means "dedication." What the Maccabees rededicated was not just a Temple, but a way of understanding the world.

Historically, the holiday of Chanukah commemorates two events: first, the military victory, in 165 B.C.E., of a small Jewish army, the Maccabees, against the vast array of forces of the Syrian-Macedonian empire. The ruling Syrian-Greeks attempted to suppress Judaism and the study and practice of the Torah. They defiled the Temple and promoted the worship of the Hellenistic deities. The Maccabean victory restored the free practice of Judaism and regained a measure of political independence for the Jews. Second, a symbolic ritual miracle accompanied the military miracle. Eager to resume the Temple service, the Maccabees wished to rekindle the lamps of the Temple Menorah. A search of the Temple revealed only one intact flask of ritually pure oil, enough to keep the Menorah lit for only one day. However, the oil miraculously burned for eight days, until new pure oil could be prepared.

In remembrance of these events, we light Menorahs each of the eight nights of Chanukah, lighting one candle the first night and adding an additional candle each successive night.

To be sure, these miracles were both highly significant during the period in which they occurred. But what is their relevance to us?

Perhaps some questions about the Chanukah story itself can be of help. What is the connection between these two apparently very different miracles? And why were the Maccabees particularly preoccupied with the lighting of the Menorah? Many types of ceremonial services were done in the Temple and had been stopped when the Temple was defiled. If a miracle was to occur in connection with the Temple, why did the miracle have to take place with the lighting of the Menorah?

Unlike the Jews of many other eras, the Jews in the time of Chanukah were not physically threatened. Chanukah was unique in that the threat was one of spiritual and moral extinction. The Syrian-Greeks, and their Hellenized Jewish cohorts, wanted the Jews to abandon their religion and assimilate into the mainstream of Greek civilization. While Greek culture, in its science, art, and philosophy, demonstrated much of the physical and intellectual beauty of nature and the world, it viewed nature and the world as ends unto themselves. Rather than looking at man as being created in the image of G-d, it worshipped anthropomorphic deities that were only reflections of man himself. A picture of a world operating solely in accord with mechanistic laws was offended by the entire concept of a Torah given by G-d. The idea that man and his world must be in harmony with a higher set of morals and values was one that the Hellenists would not tolerate.

After emerging from battle victorious, the Maccabees were eager to light the Menorah. Light in general is a universal symbol of knowledge and understanding. By lighting the Temple Menorah, the Maccabees wished to reaffirm the centrality of G-d's word, as expressed by the Torah, to all human endeavors. Quite central to the Hellenistic argument was a denial of the possibility of a miracle, with its implication of a non-material G-d revealing Himself by intervening in nature. It was therefore appropriate that a miracle occur in the lighting of the Menorah — the expression of the need for G-dly illumination of our actions.

The two miracles therefore form complementary parts of one whole. One could look at the military victory as an ostensibly natural event, much like many other military "upsets" throughout history. One could attribute the victory to clever strategy on one side, miscalculations on the other side, with a hefty dose of "luck" mixed into the middle, and deny any supernatural component in it. But the clearly miraculous burning of the oil reveals G-d's guiding presence even in the supposedly "natural" occurrences that we see. Miracle and nature are not two contradictory concepts — they are merely different manifestations of the same principle. G-d's hand, so often hidden in the daily wonders we call nature simply because we are so used to seeing them, is the same hand that produces miracles — both of a material sort and those in which man plays a key part.

The answer to our original question is clear. Chanukah is extremely relevant to us. It emphasizes G-d's presence in our normal, everyday world — that "nature, too, is miraculous." Rather than being the secularizing forces they are traditionally considered, the sciences, mathematics, and the arts can, to the properly trained eye, provide man with as breathtaking a view, and as intimate an encounter with G-d, as all the razzle-dazzle and fire and brimstone that one could imagine, if not more. Chanukah stresses the overriding importance of the laws and values of the Torah to everything we can hope to accomplish in our civilization. The word Chanukah means a dedication. On Chanukah, the Maccabees rededicated themselves to the study and practice of the values of the Torah and its commandments. So can we.

Colophon

Pinchus Klahr posted this to net.religion.jewish on 3 December 1985 from New York University. Klahr was one of the most prolific and substantive contributors to early Usenet's Jewish theology discussion — his essays on Yom Kippur (Kol Nidray), Parshat Chayei Sarah (the well motif through Eliezer and Rebecca), and this essay on Chanukah represent some of the most sustained Torah commentary in the UTZOO archive. Other essays by Klahr archived in the Good Work Library include "Yom Kippur and Kol Nidray" and "When There's a Well, There's a Way."

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

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