By Todd Hatton
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-875359.mp3
Paducah, KY – Tonight, Jewish people all over the world will kindle the first candle of Hanukkah, a holiday that in spite of its increasing profile in the U.S. and Israel is still a fairly elusive holiday. It celebrates a successful 2nd century BCE Jewish revolt against an oppressive Greek regime. On the surface at least.
Think about it. Does a day's worth of olive oil burning for eight really explain Hanukkah's resonance for Jews throughout the centuries? Or is the real significance the fact that there have been Jews throughout the centuries to remember the holiday?
For questions like that, you go to your rabbi, and I spoke with one uniquely positioned to consider them. Rabbi Marshal Klaven is head of Rabbinic Services for the Goldring/ Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life. The Institute's primary mission is the preservation of southern American Jewish culture and support for smaller congregations from Oklahoma to Virginia.
It's December, and we're staring down the barrel of the Christmas season. And it makes me wonder about, about Hanukkah, is in the Jewish calendar is not so big of a holiday...
Right.
Um, but it has become, it has increased in significance, it just seems as though that Hanukkah is that piece of driftwood that we hang onto, to survive the wave...that has led us to really dig a little deeper into Hanukkah, probably more so than we have before, if only because of what happens here in the United States.
One could say that it's been a growing...Hanukkah has been growing in its dominance in the Jewish culture for quite a while. I mean, one could make the argument, we don't even have the story of the Maccabees in...it didn't get codified in the Hebrew bible. So obviously, it was really considered non-essential at that point when it was codified, and it's not until the Talmud in Tractate Shabbat that the story of Hanukkah comes up in the codified text of Judaism. I think there's a sparse comment made about it in the Mishnah which, you know, gets codified around the year 200 CE, but it's not until the Talmud, which is codified, you know, somewhere around the year 800 CE so, a good 5, 6 hundred years later, all of a sudden the story comes up. And this is, we have to understand the historical context is happening around the year 200 BCE. So, we're looking at the story of Hanukkah doesn't arise in Judaism, at least in the codified literature, until a thousand years after it happened. So, to say that it's now that it's becoming... it's been a growing, I think, trend to have it included and start delving into the wonderful spirit and messages that come from Hanukkah.
It does seem to me that there is a one great theme, and it's a fairly broad theme...it seems to me that it is a celebration, not necessarily a commemoration, but also a celebration of cultural and religious survival.
Right, so you go to the two elements. Most holidays will have this, right? It's obviously recalling some memory or experience in the past, but all of Judaism is a continual chain which links both now the present moment and which we're commemorating that moment, and recalling and giving testimony to that moment, but at the same time, it's also supposed to inspire us toward some future. What lesson are we supposed to glean from this...it's not simply not to remember the past, but it's also to help us affect the future. So Hanukkah has both of these going.
(interview continues...)