Chanukah Around the World, 5th Night, Ancient Israel
Tonight at our Chanukah Chappening we had the traditional latkes. We also had Scottish shortbread, French macaroons, Italian canolis, Israeli tabbuleh and wine, mandlebrot, ruggelach, and American Apple pie! Everything was delicious. The conversation was good. The house was pretty. The light was dazzling—both from the Havdalah candle and from the three Chanukiot we lit in the dining room.
Chanukah is about miracles. The miracle of the oil. The miracle of the victory over the Assyrians. Our students had an interesting discussion about miracles this week as we celebrated Chanukah by eating latkes and ice cream at a local ice cream parlor. Ice cream always seems to go with Chanukah—ever since standing on line at Steve’s Ice Cream when it was well below zero, after lighting a very unsafe menorah but beautiful made of number ten tin cans and some combustible fuel on Tufts’ Library Roof.
The dictionary definition of a miracle is an unexpected event not explicable by natural of scientific laws Sometimes it is seen as divine in origin. We looked for examples in the Bible. We thought the angel stopping the action so that Isaac was not sacrificed might be but that Jacob’s dream of a ladder with angels ascending and descending was not. Neither was the burning bush or the giving of the 10 Commandments. Those were “just” G-d communicating. On the other hand, the parting of the Red Sea was. So was manna. And water in the desert. So was the oil lasting for eight days.
We looked for modern miracles. Surviving surgery when you code out twice counts. Surviving a car accident counts. Birth counts. Sunrises and sunsets not so much since they are part of the natural order. We talked about 9/11 and the Holocaust. We talked about why some people deserve a miracle and others seem not to. How do we explain that some people didn’t go to work on 9/11 and were spared and yet 3000 people died? We decided we couldn’t answer that one.
Tonight’s story is another take on the miracle of the oil. From Hanukkah Lights, Stories of the Seasons, from NPR. This story is by Simone Zelitch.
“Once in the age of the Maccabees, there lived an old Jew named Eleazar, who guarded the courtyard of the Holy Temple, while a single flask of oil burned for eight days. Because he had stood watch while the miracle took place, there were some who believed he had taken on a little of its glory and a little of its light. After a while, in spite of his good sense, Eleazar began to believe in himself.
Then one day, Eleazar had a visitor. A lamp-maker knocked on his door, and said, ‘I need to make peace with you, Eleazar. When I heard we only had one flask of oil for the rededication, I found a little in my shop, and I slipped past you into the sanctuary and fed the flame.’
Eleazar was stunned. The fire burned in a holy place, and only the High Priest was permitted there. It stood to reason that the lamp-maker should have been struck dea. But clearly, he’d meant no hard. So Eleazer said, ‘The Lord works through plain and honest Jews like you. Go in peace.’
So Eleazar made peace with the knowledge that G-d worked a wonder through an ordinary man. But then one day, he had another visitor, a woman. Her hair was white, and her expression haunted. Eleazar greeted her with courtesy, for she was Hannah, the heroine who’d lost her seven sons because they wouldn’t bow down to a pagan god.
Hannah said, ‘Something lays on my heart and I must make peace with you, old Eleazar.’ Eleazar said, ‘No one deserves peace more than you.’
‘Then I will speak,’ said Hannah. ‘When I heard there was only a single flask of oil for the rededication, I couldn’t bear to think that the flame would go out. I had a flask I’d once used to comb through the hair of my seven sons. It was good oil, and now I had no need of it, so I slipped past you, Eleazar, and into the sanctuary.’
Eleazar caught his breath. Women defiled a sacred place. It was as though the altar stones had once again been soaked in pig’s blood. He couldn’t control his anger or confusion, for Hannah was an honorable woman, for whom no tribute was too great. How could he condemn her? So he mastered himself and said, ‘Go in peace.’
That night, Eleazar could not sleep. He wrapped himself in his shawl, thinking and praying, he did not hear his next visitor arrive. It was a young man with a shaved chin, and clipped curls, who stood half-naked in the cold. Eleazar recoiled form the sight of him. He said, ‘You’re wise to come at night. If pious Jews found you here by daylight, you’d be dead.’ With a nervous smile, the young man said, ‘I am a Jew.’
‘A Hellenized Jew,’ Eleazar said. ‘You’ve come from the gymnasium, where Greeks teach youths to turn their backs on G-d and worship their bodies. It was your kind who bleated out philosophy while the seven sons of Hannah were slaughtered before her eyes.’
‘I am still a Jew,’ said the young man. ‘I am also Greek. Is that impossible?’ Bitterly, Eleazar said, ‘Oil and water don’t mix.’
‘Don’t they?’ The young man cocked his head. ‘Funny, old Eleazar, that you should bring up oil. We have quite a bit of olive oil at the gymnasium. We oil our bodies to make them beautiful. And rumor came to us that you were short of oil. That should have meant nothing to me, yet somehow it did, and I brought that oil and fed the flame and kept the fire burning.’ Eleazar said, ‘The Maccabees fought against the likes of you.’
‘Yet I am a Jew,’ the young man said again. Eleazar could not speak. He took a long look at the young man’s face and saw there pride, anger, remorse, and a deep need to be told he had a share in the Temple. After a moment, with great effort, he took the young man’s hand. ‘Go in peace,’ he said. ‘You have a Jewish soul.’
He wanted to say more, but before he’d gathered words enough the youth had gone.
Eleazar could not sleep that night pondering the oil poured by transgressors. Was he right to grant them peace? In the days of the Judges, they would have been condemned. In the days of the Prophets they would have been chastised. Yet, Eleazar knew, there were no more Judges in Israel and the age of Prophets had ended long ago. Now, Jews found G-d in each other, in acts of courage and in acts of kindness. G-d’s arms are open. G-d forgives. G-d answers light with light.
Eleazar might have gone to sleep then, but someone else appeared at the door. ‘Old Eleazar!’ The voice was thick, and words slurred together. Eleazar did not return he greeting. ‘Old Eleazar,’ the visitor said again. ‘I’m come to make my peace with you.’
‘Take your peace and go,’ said Eleazar.
‘I’ve come to tell you something. About the oil, old Eleazar.’
‘I know. It was a miracle,’ said Eleazar. ‘Now take your peace, friend and go.’
‘You call me friend? But our people are deadly enemies. Do you grant friendship so easily/’
Then Eleazar looked up. In his doorway stood a man with shaggy hair and brilliant eyes. He wore a lion’s kin and carried a tall, carved staff, and his teeth had been sharpened to points. Bracing himself, Eleazar said, ‘You are a Canaanite.’
‘I am,’ the man replied, ‘My people have lived in this city for thousands of year, when it was called Salem. Then you came, the people we call Habiru. On this mountain we had our temple fo the Evening Star and you made a ruin of it and massacred our people. Now, like us, you have been conquered. You rise up and call for freedom, and we join you Eleazar. Out fates are bound together. And together we rededicated the Temple.’
‘You did not enter G-d’s Temple,’ said Eleazar and he turned away.
‘The Canaanite said, ‘We gave you oil, all we had.’
‘We took no oil from you,’ said Eleazar and he turned back to his bed, hoping the Canaanite woud pass like an evil dream.
‘I stand before you old man, at great peril of my life,’ the Canaanite said. ‘Would you sooner that there was no flame then, Eleazer. Would you sooner the flame went out?’…..
There is so much in this story–the hint of Ebenezer Scrooge and It’s a Wonderful Life. The idea that miracles happen through human action. The role of women, of assimilated Jews, of enemies. The idea of making peace. It brings me continued hope.