Why is the story of Hanukkah universal? 

Jews celebrate Hanukkah to remember two things—the victory of the Jewish resistance fighters over the Syrian/Greek government and the miracle of the oil that burned for eight days when the Temple in Jerusalem was rededicated.  There is a message in this celebration that transcends the period of history during which the events of Hanukkah occurred.  It is a message that has repeated itself many times in Jewish history—one that Jews need constantly to be reminded of.

The story of Hanukkah is also universal, transcending its Jewish particularity to inspire and empower members of every oppressed minority community to assert its right to freedom and equality.

Hanukkah commemorates events that took place between 167 and 165 B.C.E.  In the Fourth Century B.C.E. Alexander the Great and his army conquered and occupied the entire Near East, establishing the Greek Empire.

After Alexander died, his territories were divided into three parts.  Israel, then known as Judea, fell under Seleucid or Syrian/Greek rule.  The Jews of Judea were the only monotheistic community within the Greek Empire.  In 167 B.C.E. the Syrian/Greek king, Antiochus Epiphanes, decided to force everyone who lived under his rule to accept Greek paganism and to worship Greek gods and goddesses.  All Jewish rituals, including observance of the Sabbath, dietary laws, sacrifice in the Temple, and male circumcision were outlawed.  Jewish religious worship went underground and Jews who wished to practice their traditions had to do so in secret.  One day the Syrian/Greeks came to the Judean village of Modi’in and commanded the Jews there to bring a pig to sacrifice and demonstrate their obedience to Antiochus’ decree.  Matityahu, the Jewish priest in Modi’in, and his five sons organized a rebellion and began guerilla warfare against the Syrian Greek army.  The Hebrew army succeeded in routing the Syrian Greek army and re-establishing Jewish control over Jerusalem and the Temple.  The Temple, which had been defiled by worship of pagan gods, had to be rededicated to the One God of Israel.  In the Temple, an eternal flame had been lit that never was extinguished.  The flame symbolized the eternity of God.  There was only enough pure oil to keep the eternal flame lit for one day.  A miracle occurred that allowed the oil to burn for eight days until new olive oil could be pressed.

Although Hanukkah was established as a holiday to commemorate these specific events, remembering what occurred in Judea raises issues that are far more contemporary. 

The Syrian/Greeks attacked Jews because of their desire to eradicate the Jewish religion.  The Nazis attacked Jews because of their belief that Jews were biologically undesirable in the racist and racially stratified society they were trying to establish.  The Nazis and their collaborators murdered Jews because they wanted to remove Jews entirely from the human family.  Jews were the primary victims but not the only victims of Nazi terror.  Other victims included Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), the physically and mentally challenged, homosexuals, Jehovah’s witnesses, Eastern Europeans (especially Poles and Soviet prisoners-of-war), people of color, and political opponents who spoke out against the Nazi regime. 

Jewish uprisings in Nazi-occupied Europe were far more widespread and common than is traditionally believed.
The Warsaw Ghetto uprising is well known but there were also uprisings in other ghettos including Bialystock, Kletsk, Kremenetz, Nesvizh, Marcinkonis, Mir, and Tuchin.  Jewish resistance fighters also carried out resistance activities in Kovno, Czestochowa, Krakow, Vilna, and Minsk.  Jewish uprisings caused the shut-down of Treblinka and Sobibor, two of the six Killing Centers in which the Nazis gassed hundreds of thousands of Jews.  At Auschwitz/Birkenau, the largest of the Nazi killing Centers, an uprising by Jewish inmates was attempted in October, 1944, although it failed and all of the organizers were captured by the Nazis and killed.  These uprisings all took place under conditions in which organized, armed resistance was almost a virtual impossibility.  There were all kinds of obstacles and problems-- obtaining arms and smuggling them into the ghettos and concentration camps as well as training the fighters under the nose of the Nazis where people were sick, starving, and physically debilitated.  The resistance fighters also had to keep themselves on alert and maintain the secrecy of their operations.  The Nazis used the principle of “collective responsibility”, punishing groups of Jews under their control for the acts of one or of a few individuals.  In this way, people were sometimes used against each other in order to undermine resistance efforts.  Organized, armed resistance activities were acts of tremendous courage and defiance.  Although they were at best stop-gap measures that inflicted some casualties and losses on the Nazis, the resistance activities allowed the freedom fighters to maintain their dignity and, if necessary, go to their deaths proudly and with their humanity intact.

It is not a stretch to imagine that Jews who chose to resist the powerful army of the Syrian/Greeks in Judea, fighting for the freedom of their people to worship God and to observe their traditions as they had done for centuries, faced obstacles similar to those faced by the Jewish resistance fighters during the Holocaust.  The struggle against oppression is universal—it is not just a Jewish story.  Those who fought against slavery in the United States, against Apartheid in South Africa, or against oppressive regimes in Armenia, Cambodia, Tibet, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, and every other part of the world in which people have been oppressed has struggled against similar obstacles.  The story of Hanukkah is an inspiration to anyone who is a victim of human rights violations, be it because of religion, race, ethnic origin, gender, or sexual orientation.  It is the story of the ultimate triumph of good over evil as well as the victory of any person who takes power into their own hands and resists their oppressors. 

In an article in Mysl Panstowa (“State Thought”), a Polish underground newspaper written and circulated in Nazi-occupied Poland, an unknown Polish journalist wrote the following on April 30, 1943 in the aftermath of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising:  “Now that Warsaw has witnessed the last bestial German action, we cannot simply pass over the change in attitude of the victims who, being unable to change their fate, decided to fall with arms in their hands.  This stand of theirs, understood by every Pole, changes the picture significantly.  From a people without hope, a herd slaughtered by German murderers, the Jews rose to the heights of a fighting people.  And if it could not fight for its existence—a thing made impossible by the overwhelming advantage in numbers of the enemy—it did demonstrate its right to life as a nation…. The Polish public looks upon this happening with great respect, gives its moral support, and hopes that its resistance will continue for as long as possible….”

The story of Hanukkah empowers every person who is a member of an oppressed minority to self-actualize and to stand up for the freedom and equality they rightfully deserve.  It also reminds each of us of our responsibility to stand united for the freedom and equal opportunity of every human being.  As the American author John Dos Passos said in 1940, “Our only hope will lie in that frail web of understanding of one human being for the pain of another.”