Hanukkah

Hanukkah is the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights. It commemorates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem, and families mark it by lighting candles each evening.

The story is set in the 160s BCE, when Judea was ruled by the Seleucid Greek king Antiochus IV. In 167 BCE he outlawed the Torah, the Sabbath and circumcision, set up an altar to Zeus in the Temple, and killed those who refused. A priest named Mattathias and his five sons rose against him; the third son, Judah, called the Maccabee, led the revolt, and in the winter of 164 BCE his forces retook Jerusalem, cleansed the Temple, built a new altar, and rededicated it on the twenty-fifth of Kislev with eight days of celebration. Hanukkah means dedication ^1,2.

That is the story as the books of Maccabees tell it. Later Jewish tradition remembered a second thing about the same day: that when the Temple was lit again only one small jar of pure oil could be found, enough for one day, and it burned for eight. The two stories, the victory and the oil, are told together every Hanukkah, and this page says where each comes from ^3,4.

Hanukkah commemorates the Temple's rededication. First and Second Maccabees describe that history, while the Talmud tells the account of the oil lasting eight days. These sources have different places in Jewish tradition ^3,5.

The rededication is told twice, in 1 Maccabees 4:36-59 and 2 Maccabees 10:1-8, and a letter at the head of 2 Maccabees asks the Jews of Egypt to keep the days of the purification of the Temple in the month of Kislev (2 Maccabees 1:18). These Jewish writings were transmitted in Greek and received in Christian biblical collections. Catholic and many Orthodox Bibles include 1 and 2 Maccabees, but the contents and terminology of Orthodox collections vary. Their absence from the Tanakh should not be explained by assigning a single early closure date to all Hebrew Scripture. Rabbinic Judaism never received them into the Tanakh, and the Protestant Reformers set them apart as Apocrypha, printed between the Testaments in Luther's Bible and the first King James Bibles and read, in the Church of England's words, for example of life and instruction of manners but not to establish doctrine ^5,1. On this site the Maccabees are read in the World English Bible Catholic Edition; the books of the Bible shelved four ways shows the canons side by side.

The New Testament explicitly names the festival in John 10:22. John 10:22 sets Jesus in the Temple in winter at the Feast of Dedication, walking in Solomon's Colonnade; the Gospel treats the feast as an ordinary fact of the Jerusalem year, and that single verse is the whole of Hanukkah in the New Testament ¹.

Where the Tanakh is silent, the rabbis spoke. The Talmud asks What is Hanukkah? and answers with the oil: when the Greeks entered the Sanctuary they defiled all the oil, and when the Hasmoneans won they found one cruse still sealed by the High Priest, enough for one day, and a miracle let it burn eight days, and the next year the sages established the days as a festival with Hallel and thanksgiving (Talmud Shabbat 21b) ³. The Talmud also records the debate over how to light: the school of Shammai lit eight lights the first night and one fewer each night, the school of Hillel one and then one more, and Jewish law follows Hillel, because one goes up in holiness and not down ³. A Jewish source notes that the rabbis, who lived under Rome and had their own quarrels with the Hasmonean kings, preferred the oil to the battle, and chose for the Sabbath of Hanukkah the prophet's words: not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit (Zechariah 4:6) ⁶.

The Torah does have a dedication, and the synagogue reads it. Numbers 7 tells how the princes of the twelve tribes brought their offerings for the dedication of the Tabernacle's altar, one prince a day, and it is read through the eight days of Hanukkah; Numbers 8, the lighting of the lamps, closes it. Psalm 30, a song at the dedication of the House, is sung each morning. Christian readers sometimes find the persecution of Antiochus in Daniel 8 and Daniel 11:31, the abomination that makes desolate; that is a reading of Daniel and not a mention of the festival ¹.

Who keeps it Observed across Rabbinic Jewish communities, commonly with lights for eight nights and prayers of thanksgiving. Hanukkah itself does not prohibit work, but Shabbat restrictions still apply.

Each night for eight nights a candle is added to the Hanukkah lamp and lit in a window, with a blessing and a song; the days are ordinary working days, with fried food and games in the evenings.

The lamp is a hanukkiah, with eight branches and a ninth, the shamash, that lights the others; it is placed in a window or a doorway so that the miracle is made public, which the Talmud calls the point of the lights. One light is kindled the first night and one more each night after, with two blessings and, on the first night, a third for having reached the season; the hymn Ma'oz Tzur follows in Ashkenazi homes. Because the miracle was one of oil, the foods are fried: latkes, potato pancakes, in Ashkenazi kitchens, and sufganiyot, jam doughnuts, in Israel. Children play dreidel, a spinning top whose four letters stand for A great miracle happened there, and receive gelt, coins of chocolate or money ^4,2.

Hanukkah is not a Yom Tov. Hanukkah itself does not prohibit work, but Shabbat restrictions still apply, and the Talmud's only prohibitions are of fasting and eulogy. In the synagogue Hallel is sung every morning, the paragraph Al HaNissim, for the miracles, is added to the daily prayers and to grace after meals, and the Torah reading from Numbers 7 is read each day; there is no haftarah on weekdays ⁷. The festival is observed across Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist communities, with differences in custom and interpretation. Karaite Jews, who hold the Tanakh alone as Scripture, have historically not kept Hanukkah as a religious festival, since it is not in it; a Karaite writer records that some Karaite families now light candles as a custom rather than a commandment ¹⁰.

A Jewish source observes that Hanukkah was until modern times a fairly minor observance, and that its present size in America grew in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as Jewish families answered the December season around them; the festival's own meaning, religious freedom won against a stronger power, is what its prayers have always said ^8,2.

The synagogue reads the dedication of the Tabernacle's altar, one tribe's gift each day, and sings the psalm for the dedication of the House.

Each morning: Numbers 7:1 to 8:4, divided over the eight days so that each day reads the offering of one prince and the last day reads the rest and the lighting of the lamps. Hallel, Psalms 113 to 118, is sung in full. Psalm 30, the song at the dedication of the House, is said ⁷.

On the Sabbath of Hanukkah the haftarah is Zechariah 2:10 to 4:7 (2:14 in the Hebrew numbering), the vision of the golden lampstand with the words not by might, nor by power; when the festival holds two Sabbaths the second reads 1 Kings 7:40-50, Solomon's lampstands for the Temple ⁶. The books of Maccabees themselves are not read in the synagogue, since they are not in the Tanakh; the Hanukkah story is told at home and in the prayer Al HaNissim, which names Mattathias and his sons, the few against the many, and the eight days of dedication ⁷.

In brief Numbers 7:1 to 8:4, the gifts of the tribal princes at the dedication of the altar, divided over the eight days. Sabbath of Hanukkah: haftarah Zechariah 2:14 to 4:7 (the lampstand vision); a second Sabbath, 1 Kings 7:40-50.

Christians and Hanukkah

Christians meet Hanukkah in two places: in the books of Maccabees, if their Bible has them, and in one verse of John's Gospel.

First and Second Maccabees are Scripture in Catholic and many Orthodox biblical traditions; some Protestant editions include them in a separate Apocrypha section. They are not part of the Tanakh ⁵. The Orthodox Church in America also commemorates the Maccabean martyrs on 1 August, a separate observance from Hanukkah ⁹.

The one New Testament mention is John 10:22-23: the Feast of Dedication took place in Jerusalem, it was winter, and Jesus was in the Temple courts. Some Christian readers hear in the discourse that follows, on Jesus as the one whom the Father sanctified and sent (John 10:36), an echo of the dedication of the Temple; that is a Christian reading of a Jewish festival, and the Gospel itself makes nothing more of the day than its date ¹.

Hanukkah is not a Jewish Christmas: the festivals have distinct histories and religious meanings. Hanukkah is not generally part of mainstream Christian liturgical calendars. The Christmas page explains that festival separately.

Hanukkah begins on 25 Kislev, with the first light kindled on the preceding civil evening, and continues for eight days into Tevet. Candle-lighting times depend on local custom and Shabbat.

The date comes from the books of Maccabees, which set the rededication on the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month, Kislev (1 Maccabees 4:52); the eight days come from the same books, which say the first celebration was kept for eight days in the manner of Sukkot, the festival the Maccabees had been unable to keep that autumn (2 Maccabees 10:6), and the Talmud gives the eight days of oil as the reason ^1,3. Because the Hebrew months follow the moon, Hanukkah moves through late November and December on the Gregorian calendar; in some years, including the festival beginning in 2027, its eighth day falls in January.

Kislev has twenty-nine or thirty days in different years, so the last day of Hanukkah is the second or the third of Tevet. The new moon of Tevet, Rosh Chodesh, always falls inside the festival, with additional readings for the new month ⁴.