We may not yet realize it, but we need a new story of Hanukkah, lest we lose the next Jewish generation to disillusionment with Jewish power and might.

I grew up in the generation that delighted in Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War of 1967, only to discover on my first trip to Israel in 1969 that the exercise of Jewish power meant ruling over the Palestinian people that also wanted its own homeland. Since then, I have been committed to coexistence and equality as the only viable path. I have also, as a poet, sought a “new old” Jewish spirituality that doesn’t rely on the supernatural, and now have written a prayerbook that puts the universe, the earth and Jewish tradition, not God, at the center of our prayers.

What do I make of Hanukkah, our most overtly political and militaristic holiday, in the context of my beliefs? How do I as a liberal thinker approach a holiday that has become a celebration of supernatural miracles and divine intervention?

I stand in a long line of Jews wrestling with these issues. The Talmud famously asks “What is Hanukkah?” as if the rabbis having the conversation had never heard of it. They go on to tell the story of the miracle made by God: how one day’s supply of oil lasted for eight days, enabling them to rededicate the Temple that had been polluted........

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