Chanukah Revisited: A Festival of Light or a Festival of War?

DECEMBER 15-16, 2006 / 25 KISLEV 5767

By Ari Weiss, YCT '07

In 1967, Leo Strauss, a famous political philosopher gave a lecture on the topic of Jerusalem and Athens. According to Strauss, the forms of life advocated by Jerusalem and Athens are mutually exclusive, they can never be reconciled with each other.

Athens - or philosophy - according to Strauss, sees the beginning of wisdom in wonder, asking the philosophical question, “why is there something rather than nothing?” Jerusalem - or religion based on revelation - understands wisdom as originating in fear of God and His Law. Athens frames ethics by asking the question “what is the good life? what is the best way that I should live?” For Jerusalem, the question becomes “what does God ask from me? How do I best serve God, even if that means I have to kill my son?”

The motto of Athens is “we will hear and we will do.” Meaning, we will subordinate all our actions to the knowledge we have of that action. We will think and we will judge before we do. The motto of Jerusalem is “we will do before we hear.” In other words, we will act before we understand. According to Strauss, a choice has to be made between Athens and Jerusalem. In this telling analogy, Athens and Jerusalem are two competing and totalizing ideologies. You can be for one or the other, but not for both.

The conflict, Strauss says explicitly, is that there is an insurmountable opposition between Judaism and philosophy and between the Jews and all the nations of the world. It is a conflict that animates large portions of Jewish thought and tradition. It seeks to separate the world into two groups: an us and a them, with each group standing in opposition to the other, and with each vision seeking to annihilate the vision of the other. A war of all against all for all.

There is a piece in Meschata Sefer Torah (one of the Meschata’s Katanot ) which speaks to the truth of this position. It relates to the day, in which the seventy elders translated the Bible into Greek, a day in which communication between cultures was attempted. It is considered a hard day for the Jews, as hard as the day when the Jews built the Golden Calf for it is just as sinful to translate the Torah into foreign language as it is to worship a foreign God. Communication between cultures is idolatrous!

From this way of thinking, it follows that the first sustained engagement between Athens and Jerusalem would result in war. Chanukah, according to this understanding, is the first clash of civilizations and the first time that two totalizing ideologies confront each other. Those interpreters, who find the meaning of Chanukah in the symbolism of war, see the victory of the Jews as a vindication of the Jewish ideology and a perceived purity of Judaism.

By emphasizing the symbolism of war, these interpreters maintain the language of war, and therefore set themselves up for further conflict. They have internalized a certain understanding of the verse “Eisav Sonah ais Yaakov” and truth be told, Yaakov also hates Eisav. And if it’s not Eisav then it is Athens, and if not Athens then it is Rome, and if it’s not Rome then its European culture and enlightenment. In its most recent understanding it is Islam, and the list goes on. Each generation imagines an existential enemy to Judaism, and in each generation the imagined purity of Judaism has to be defended. The cycle of war and violence never ends. Is there not another way to understand the meaning of Chanukah?

I think that the beginning of an answer can be found in the other symbol of Chanukah, in the light of the menorah. The menorah gives light and takes away darkness. In this sense, light is the universal symbol for hope. Although we are in dark times, the symbol of the menorah gives us hope for a brighter future. I think that the symbolism of the menorah and of light runs deeper than this. The menorah is not only light and hope. The menorah as light also sheds light; the menorah also illuminates; light also enlightens.

According to this understanding, the miracle and meaning of Chanukah is not found in the battles of the Maccabees, but in the ability of the menorah to shed light on our tradition. Meaning, our ability to illuminate the Torah, translate it, and to make the language of Jerusalem accessible to the language of Athens. The Gemara in Megilla records the opinion of R. Abvu (in the name of Rav Yochanan) that the Halakha is like Rav Shimon ben Gemilal, who says that the only language the Torah can be written in other than Hebrew, is Greek. Instead of trying to conquer the other, the moment of translation seeks to engage the other, add meaning to its life – you can accept it or reject it.

In order for this engagement to be done in good faith, we have to realize that we don’t have all the answers ourselves. We have to entertain the possibility that Athens will help illuminate the way for us. The Gemara asks the question, “Is it ever okay to learn Greek wisdom?” The famous answer is that one can learn Greek and can study in Athens when it is neither day nor night. Emanuel Levinas understands this piece of Gemara as saying that only in a time of uncertainty, when we are unsure if it is day or if it is night, can one study Greek thought. In this telling, Athens translated back into a Jewish context becomes the light and removes darkness. It becomes the guide out of our perplexity!

Therefore, while we have to continue translating the Torah into Greek, we have to open up the possibility of translating Greek thought into the language of Torah!

Instead of understanding the message of Chanukah as a war between competing ideologies, we should understand Chanukah and the symbol of the menorah as the possibility of being nourished and enlightened by two sources. While at times we have to fight wars, and have commitments which life would not be worth living if we could not fulfill them, we have to realize that this is not ideal.

Franz Rosenzweig spoke to the truth of this in naming his last collection of essays “Zweistromland, The Land Between.” Rosenzweig imagined Abraham as developing in a Naharaim - a land between two rivers (Mesopotamia), inbetween two cultures (monotheism and polytheism). Or, in Rosenzweig’s case, understanding his own identity as being nourished by a German culture and by Judaism. While the German – Jewish experiment ended in tragedy, it was the German – Jewish experiment which gave us Modern Orthodoxy.

The question which we have to ask ourselves as Chanukah approaches is what symbol of Chanukah do we see as primary and which symbol do we see as secondary? Do we speak a language of war of a clash of civilization, or of light of enlightenment?