Why Hanukkah Became a Diaspora Holiday about Being Seen

The Hanukkah story that most Jews know is not the story Jews once told – and it will not be the story Jews will tell in the future. Across two thousand years, Hanukkah has been repeatedly reinterpreted to align with the dominant Jewish concern of the moment:  survival in exile, protection against Jewish nationalism, dignity in emancipation, state building, and power in sovereignty. These transformations were not accidents. They were acts of creating meaning.

We stand today at a crucial junction in Jewish history. October 7 shattered long-held assumptions – about the safety of Jews in the Diaspora, about the stability and invincibility of Israel, and the moral clarity of Jewish power. To look honestly at Hanukkah requires more than revisiting the past; it requires us to acknowledge the danger of using Hanukkah to confirm what we already believe. The enduring lesson of Hanukkah’s evolving story is not certainty, but humility; the recognition that what feels like unshakable truth may simply be the echo of our own fears and desires, projected backward onto the past.

Two Hanukkahs: Miracle and Memory

Each year, Jews gather to light the candles of Hanukkah, often without noticing that the flames reflect two quite different—and even competing—stories.

One story, preserved in the Talmud and codified in Jewish law, centers on the miracle of the oil. When the Temple was rededicated on the 25th of Kislev, the Maccabees could find only enough pure olive oil to last a single day. Miraculously, it burned for eight, sustaining the Temple service until new oil could be prepared.

The second story, far more familiar in modern Israel and in American Jewish culture, is the tale of military heroism found in the books of Maccabees and Josephus:   the few against the many, Jewish warriors defying overwhelming odds and reclaiming political independence.

The Disappearance of Judah the Maccabee

What is rarely acknowledged is that this second story virtually disappeared from Jewish tradition for nearly two millennia. Judah the Maccabee is never mentioned by name in the Talmud, nor does he appear as a heroic figure in medieval Jewish literature. Even the work that functioned for centuries as a kind of “Megillah” for Hanukkah—Megillat Antiochus—effectively removes Judah as the central hero, shifting the narrative to a priestly figure named Yochanan the High Priest. Many view this as a reference to John Hyrcanus, Judah’s nephew, who would later become the first Hasmonean ruler to achieve full independence from the Seleucid Empire and to mint Jewish coins, beginning around 132 BCE.

A Diaspora Holiday Is Born

Rather than preserving the Maccabean narrative, the rabbis reshaped Hanukkah into something fundamentally different: a holiday uniquely suited to Jewish life in the Diaspora.

The defining commandment of Hanukkah is not simply to light candles, but to light them publicly. Pirsumei nisa—publicizing the miracle—requires that the menorah be placed where it can be seen by others, including – and perhaps especially — non-Jews. Hanukkah is unique among Jewish rituals in explicitly requiring that a mitzvah be performed in a way that is visible beyond the Jewish community itself. Even the mezuzah, the closest parallel, is seen only by those who enter a Jewish home. The Hanukkah lights, by contrast, were meant to be displayed in courtyards and windows facing the street.

Assimilation, Not Idolatry

This was no accident. It was a deliberate rabbinic response to the central threat that animates the Books of Maccabees themselves: assimilation.

When Judea came under Greek rule following the conquests of Alexander the Great and his successors, Jews encountered something entirely new. Earlier imperial powers, the Assyrians, Babylonians, and others—had destroyed cities, exiled populations, and imposed political domination. But they did not offer a compelling cultural alternative. One could live in Babylonia as a Jew, but one could not become a Babylonian Jew.

Hellenism was different. It was not primarily a religion but a culture: language, philosophy, education, athletics, and civic life. One could adopt Greek ways and still consider oneself Jewish. The category of the “Hellenized Jew” emerged for the first time, blurring the boundary between Jewish........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)