c. 1997 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ Some call it a”Hallmark holiday”that has lost much of its meaning as an authentic Jewish celebration.

Still, American Jews who have immigrated to Israel say their celebration of Hanukkah continued in high-gear after their arrival but often with a deeper emotional and spiritual commitment.

Known as the”Festival of Lights”because of the eight-branched candleabra called a menorah that is lit each day of the holiday, Hanukkah was traditionally a relatively minor holiday on the Jewish calendar. Theologically, the fall celebration of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and the spring festival of Passover are the calendar’s high points.

Yet Hanukkah American-style has expanded to compete with Christmas _ or more precisely the constantly increasing commercial hype of the Christian holiday season _ when Santas, Christmas trees and gifts dominate the awareness of millions of American children, including Jewish youngsters.

Even the ultra-Orthodox, Lubavitch-Chabad Hasidic group _ known for its public lightings of Hanukkah menorahs _ has taken to pushing the eight-day holiday as a Jewish antidote to the assimilating lure of Christmas.”Hanukkah in America is mostly a sort of competition to Christmas. You have Hanukkah cards and Christmas cards, and much emphasis is on materialism and consumerism,”said Reform Rabbi Ron Kronish, director of the InterCoordinating Council in Israel, an inter-faith organization based in Jerusalem.”In Israel, however, Hanukkah is more of a national holiday having more to do with the victory of the Maccabees and the resurgence of the modern Jewish state,”said Kronish.”Zionists are called the modern Maccabees. We didn’t fight to light a candle, we fought to regain Jewish independence.” Hanukkah, which begins this year at sundown on Tuesday (Dec. 23), celebrates the victory of the Jewish nationalist rebel leader Judah the Maccabee in 165 B.C.E. against the Hellenized Syrians who occupied the Jewish homeland at the time.

According to tradition, when the Maccabees, as the Jewish rebels were known, captured Jerusalem and sought to rededicate the Jewish temple, they found only enough oil to burn in the temple for one day. Miraculously,tradition adds, that vial of oil lasted for eight days and nights until new oil could be pressed from freshly harvested olives.

For American Jews, Hanukkah is primarily a family holiday celebrated in the home, where the only ritual performed in connection with the holiday is the lighting of a menorah preceded by short prayers and followed by traditional songs.

The home celebration also occurs in Israel. But in the Jewish state, Hanukkah also has a public side that goes beyond the hanging of papier-mache menorahs next to Christmas decorations in retail outlets.”Traditional Hanukkah prayers focus on the miracle of the oil, the re-establishment of the temple and God’s saving power. In American society, where Jews are religious subgroups, these are themes that are stressed,”said Kronish, who was a Hebrew school director in Worcester, Mass., prior to immigrating to Israel in 1979.”In Israel, it’s not just a holiday that is observed in the home, but by the whole country. Schools are out on vacation and even non-religious Jews light Hanukkah candles and sing Hanukkah songs,”he said.

In a country where a simple visit to an archaeological site can conjure up vivid images of distant historical events, the struggle of the ancient Maccabees against Syrian-Greek culture and foreign occupation seems more immediate, said Debby Sullum, a ceramic artist who makes menorahs for a livelihood. Sullum immigrated to Israel two years ago from Allentown, Pa.

Sullum recalled visiting the caves about 20 miles northwest of Jerusalem where the Maccabees are believed to have hidden during their struggle against the Syrian-Greeks when her family celebrated its first Hanukkah in Israel.”You could just imagine the Maccabees hiding out, and the Greek-Syrians smoking them out. Modi’in was the town they lived in, and its just a half hour’s drive from Jerusalem,”she marveled.”It all has more meaning here, in a Jewish state which is still struggling to guarantee its survival.” Similarly, the dreidels, the spinning tops that are a popular Hanukkah toy, have acquired a deeper symbolism for Sullum’s four daughters since they came to Israel.”In the diaspora, dreidels are etched with the first letters of the Hebrew words `A Great Miracle Happened There’ _ In Israel, the dreidel says `A Great Miracle Happened Here,”said Sullum.

Amy Lederman, a Jewish educator from Tucson, Ariz., in Jerusalem for a year’s sabbatical, believes the essence of Hanukkah is the triumph of the Maccabees and their Jewish culture over the dominant Greek-Syrian culture. Greek culture stressed physical prowess over spiritual pursuits and preferred idol worship to the unseen God of the Jews.

Surprisingly, that motif of cultural struggle by a minority has been lost in many modern American Jewish communities _ perhaps because American Jews have been so successfully assimilated, Lederman said. “It’s ironic that the whole essence of the holiday is the struggle against assimilation,”she said.”Yet I think that the experience of Hanukkah in many midwestern and southwestern (American) communities like the one I live in is of a `Hallmark holiday,’ which is totally absorbed into the commercial culture of Christmas. “This is a time when we are supposed to have established our cultural independence and yet instead, we have merged into the mainstream,”Lederman lamented.

But Lederman does not blame greeting card companies for transforming Hanukkah into a pale companion of Christmas.”Really, the onus should be on the Jewish community to create something special,”she said.”Hanukkah has so many rich access points. It’s a holiday which talks about the triumph of light over dark, as well as national divisiveness and unity,”she said.”These themes should be stressed more _ along with the latkes (the potato pancakes traditionally eaten during Hanukkah), dreidels and gift exchanges.” Ironically, Israeli Jews are also beginning to face a growing challenge to their traditional celebration of Hanukkah.

As modern Israel embraces more of American culture, some stores and restaurants in Tel Aviv, the coastal city that is the hub of secular Jewish life in Israel, have begun to display Christmas decorations.”The central problem facing Israeli culture is the same that faced Jewish culture in the days of the Maccabees,”said Kronish, the Reform rabbi.”In antiquity, the problem was how to combine Judaism and Hellenism. Today, the challenge is how to combine Judaism and modernism.”What we need to do is find a healthier balance between Jewish identity and universal values. Hanukkah is a kind of historical reminder of a need to find a synthesis.”

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