The Jewish holiday of Hannukkah is, in essence, the annual celebration of a historic military victory over the powerful Hellenic (Seleucid) invaders of ancient Jerusalem in the latter’s martial attempt to politically and culturally exterminate the extant Hebrew people. History shows that this aspiration has persisted but has notably proven unsuccessful over the ensuing centuries.
In earlier writing, we have observed that the holiday’s thematically celebrated military victory empirically permitted the survival of a people among whom the impactful advent of World Christianity was born. We have observed such an ecumenical dynamic in the historical Jewish holiday. ( see: plinyblog # M. 419) but thematically have omitted the apocryphal “miracle” responsible for the universal designation of the holiday, as “The Festival of Lights,”
As stated in the Old Testament, the successful military achievement of the modest Maccabean Army against the powerful Seleucid invaders was followed by the miracle of eight days of light from lanterns, containing only one day’s supply of oil. Celebrants traditionally eat commemoratively prepared foods, fried in oil, such as potato pancakes (“latkes”).
Students of human history will undoubtedly perceive the universal message implicit in the thematic holiday’s “Miracle of the Lights,” symbolizing the universality of Man’s eternal aspiration for the light of cultural and personal advancement.
The contrasting symbols of light and dark have ubiquitously represented the contrasting and competing forces of good and evil, life and death, knowledge and ignorance, since the ancient days of the Persian prophet, Zoroaster. The miracle of the lights, celebrated by the Hanukkah observants, is, metaphysically, an homage to the endurance of civilized reason and human awareness.
Before Copernicus, the prevailing belief was that, since Man was “the Center of the Universe,” the Sun orbited around the Earth; in reverse order to the empirically d valid “heliocentric Theory” of the obverse. Humanity’s laudable period of dedicated substitution of empirical reality for the “dark age”. superstitions” was appropriately termed “The Age of Enlightenment;” light replacing the former dark reality of ignorance. “Throwing light on the subject has been the universal aspiration for a reasonable explanation to be found for a previously unsolved problem.
Hanukkah accommodates the ultimate preference of human reason, founded upon empirical knowledge, contrasted with Dark Ages ignorance, manifested by the ubiquitous persistence of atavistic ignorance and superstition.
Happy Holidays!
-p,
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