Ominous Hanukkah Resonances

Seasonal worrying about the rise of the most extreme government in Israel's history

Around Hanukkah time, I usually find myself giving one of two “sermons” by way of interpreting the holiday, depending on my mood at the moment. But this year, neither sermon feels quite appropriate.

Both sermons hinge on the connection between Hanukkah and Sukkot, or Tabernacles, the last festival in the biblical pilgrimage cycle, taking place in the early autumn, a commemoration of the wandering in the wilderness known as the “season of our joy.” Sukkot has many attributes, but its major agricultural significance is that it takes place at the start of the rainy season, and ends with prayers for rain.

Those prayers are the basis of a connection with Hanukkah. As readers probably know, Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the Jerusalem Temple after its defilement under Antiochus IV, the Seleucid leader who, in an attempt to pacify his restive Jewish provinces, had erected a statue and altar to Zeus in its precincts. The miracle is that a small amount of oil that remained pure and undefiled—only enough to keep the eternal flame burning for one night—nonetheless lasted for eight nights, which was long enough to press more oil so that the fire could be kept lit. Why, though, was it so urgent to rededicate the temple as quickly as possible? Because while it was defiled, and in the midst of war, it wasn’t possible to celebrate Sukkot in its proper season. Without good winter rains—which they hadn’t yet prayed for—there would be famine the following year. The first Hanukkah, then, may have been a belated observance of Sukkot (also an eight-day holiday, the only one on the biblical calendar), held in the hopes of assuring a good rainy season.

(As an aside: a short primer on the debate about the origin of Hanukkah can be found here. As noted therein, the main source for the theory that Hanukkah started as a belated Sukkot is II Maccabees, which was written in Greek for a diaspora Jewish audience. It’s not mentioned in I Maccabees, which was written in Hebrew as court propaganda for the victorious Hasmonean dynasty. Neither book is canonical Jewish scripture, and, more importantly, neither is unbiased history—but those are the closest historical records we have to the actual events. The story of the miracle of the oil, meanwhile, is first mentioned in passing in the Talmud, centuries later; the Mishnah never mentions Hanukkah and Josephus never mentions miraculous oil when he talks about the holiday.)

So the first sermon—you might call it the conservative one—focuses on continuity. Though the observance of Sukkot was belated, and though the Temple had been defiled, the rains still came. The “old ways” continued to be efficacious, despite the interruption in their observance. Meanwhile, the second sermon—you might call it the liberal one—focuses on universalism. Sukkot, notably, was a festival that all who dwelt in the land were welcome to join in, not only Jews, and it points forward to a messianic era when conflict between peoples will cease, and everyone will acknowledge God’s sovereignty. So even though Hanukkah takes place against the backdrop of a successful nationalist and traditionalist rebellion, understanding the first Hanukkah as a belated Sukkot is one way to bring the universalist themes of that more important festival back into the foreground.

This year, though, Hanukkah coincides with some pretty depressing developments in Israel that resonate more ominously with the history and themes of the holiday, and that make both of my usual sermons feel a little pat.

Israel is about to swear in the most right-wing government of its history, and the signs are already worrisome about its intentions with respect to the independence of the judiciary, the professionalism of the police, the relationship of religion to state and the status of non-Jewish Israeli citizens. Moreover, the incoming government is not merely very right-wing but potentially very stable—provided it keeps its most right-wing members happy. This is unusual. Historically, most Israeli governments have been somewhat diverse coalitions between a major party and a number of minor parties with narrower economic and/or ideological interests who could in theory sit with either major party. But none of Netanyahu’s partners could ever sit in any other government, and Netanyahu has no other plausible partners for himself. They are lashed to one another—but Netanyahu’s Likud has been largely purged of dissenters from his rule (many of the most prominent left to form opposition parties), so the people Netanyahu mainly needs to please are his coalition partners, all of whom sit to his right. That’s why he has been so generous in the distribution of portfolios and in his policy commitments, and the continued stability of the coalition depends on Netanyahu’s continued generosity on that score.

The most distinctive thing about this government, though, isn’t just how right-wing it is, but how eager its members are to view much of Israel’s citizenry not only as political opponents but as enemies. I don’t just mean Israel’s Arab citizens, though the historic inclusion of an independent Arab party in the last coalition and the inter-communal violence between Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews last year were major reasons why the Israeli far-right gained so much support since the last election. The Israeli far right in particular, but increasingly Likud as well, speak about their more centrist opponents (to say nothing of the moribund Israeli left) not as fools or crooks but as outright enemies, traitors who have to be vanquished permanently. And in truth, Netanyahu has always campaigned this way, on the basis of division. Netanyahu has historically been relatively cautious in his most important policy stances, more so in fact than older right-wing leaders like Ariel Sharon or than newer right-wing leaders like Naftali Bennett. But he has never able to do what they did relatively naturally: speak to and for the nation as a whole. He has always preferred to divide the nation into the “real” people and the traitors—and now he has a coalition that both enables him and may require him to back that language up with action.

That’s what I find most alarming about the incoming government, and what I find most ominously resonant with Hanukkah’s themes. The Hasmonean revolt began as a civil war between Jewish factions, and as Matti Friedman points out in his first of eight thoughts on Israel’s political situation, the language of the incoming coalition is the language of civil war by other means. This kind of language is typical of populist nationalism, and as Friedman also acknowledges, Israel is hardly unique in grappling with it; so has France, so has the United States, so have India and Brazil and Hungary and many other states. But Israel, despite its strong military, vibrant economy and robust demographic pyramid, still doesn’t have the luxury of this kind of self-involved politics. A government animated primarily by grievances against domestic opponents and aiming to turn the organs of the state into battlegrounds is one that will progressively weaken both the state and the nation. America or Brazil may be able to afford that; Israel can’t. And in the worst case, extremists not only weaken the state but turn it to suicidal ends. The precedent of the Hasmonean revolt later animated the zealots whose revolt ended with the destruction of the second Temple, and then the even more disastrous revolt by Bar Kokhba, which ended Jewish sovereignty for two millennia.

Maybe that last fear takes the more extreme members of the incoming government too much at their word. The Hasmoneans proclaimed their revolt as a cleansing fire that would sweep away the Hellenized Jewish leadership of the country and establish its independence from foreign domination. But they depended on Roman patronage to take power in the first place and, once they had consolidated their rule, they quickly adopted Hellenistic ways themselves. Moreover, the more enduring movement to entrench religious observance—the rabbis and their predecessors the Pharisees—arose in opposition to corrupt Hasmonean rule and their Roman-sponsored successors. If I want to be cynically optimistic about Hanukkah’s resonances, then, I might predict that this incoming government, too, will be more interested in entrenching its power than in implementing an extreme agenda, and that, ultimately, a form of Judaism that grows up in opposition to such rulers, not as their client, will ultimately replace it, and long outlast it.

But even that kind of cynical optimism is fairly bleak, optimistic only in predicting that the coming darkness won’t be as deep or as long-lasting as some might fear. It’s still darkness though. So my Hanukkah this year has been animated more than usual by the spirit of R. Yekusiel Yehudah Halbertam of Klausenberg: “When you come to a place of darkness, you do not chase out the darkness with a broom. You light a candle.”