This Hebrew year 5785, Hanukkah, the festival of lights, coincides fully with the celebration of Christmas days between December 25, 2024 and January 1, 2026. Jews living in Christian-majority countries feel a kind of relief of conscience in allowing themselves to celebrate at the same time, a time of year full of feelings, nostalgia and reunions. As an evident minority in their countries of residence, Hanukkah together with Christmas is quite pleasant because everyone has something to celebrate.
The story of Hanukkah is very simple. The Greeks wanted to eradicate the vestiges of Jewish identity and prohibited the characteristic rites: circumcision, the study of biblical sources, the observance of the Sabbath rest. When the Greeks invaded and desecrated the temple of Jerusalem, the Jewish revolt gained strength. They imposed themselves in armed struggle against the empire of the moment, regained their independence and ignited the “Menorah””, the ritual candelabra, with a small jar of pure olive oil that lasted eight days even though there was only enough for one.
Hanukkah is an occasion that reflects the very condition of Jews throughout history. As a religious figure, being the precursors of monotheism always relegated them to a clear minority. And then, with the advent of Christianity and Islam, despite the coincidence regarding monotheism and the impact this had on all of humanity, Judaism was left in an absolute minority with its non-proselytizing policy and other circumstances.
Judaism, which triumphed in the time of the Greeks of Antiochus Epiphanes, also represented a minority at that time in terms of individual and national behaviour. Also in everything related to the vision of life. The cult of the body of the Greeks of that time did not correspond to the importance that the Jews gave to this aspect of personal physique, among many other things. While the empire expanded and embraced, the Hebrews continued to do their thing and in the minority. A kind of counterculture of the moment that did not allow itself to be absorbed by the imperial power.
The minority position of the Jews has not only been conceptual. It has always been in the way of perceiving life, of facing it and explaining it. They have always been a minority in numbers and in the military, in relation to power as such in almost all its manifestations. The Israelites were dominated by the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Spanish of the Inquisition, the Nazis of the Second World War, and not all the oppressors are counted in this enumeration. In all their historical appearances as a minority, they were attacked, decimated, but not eliminated. An anomaly of history that believers insist on calling a miracle, fully convinced of the term.
In 2023, the Jews and their modern state were and are also in the minority. Little Israel is surrounded by enemy countries on and beyond its borders. The international media is in full criticism of its actions and omissions. If on Hanukkah it is celebrated that with the oil to light a candle for one day it was possible to keep it lit for eight days, the war that is being waged in Israel is also against eight fronts, not one, and Israel has been able to survive again in a clear minority.
Minorities are always problematic. If the majority fails to impose itself on them, they become a total nuisance, because they even inadvertently end up denouncing a bothersome situation or difference. The Jews, in their eternal role as a minority, have been and continue to be bothersome, although many times there have been no reasons for such annoyance, much less for so many persecutions and massacres.
Reason does not always favor the majority. Knowing that one is right and maintaining one's position and composure is a merit that entails a very high price to pay. The intrinsic condition of a minority demands it. The miracle of Hanukkah, which celebrates the triumph of the few over the many, of the weak over the powerful, is not exclusive to the Jews. It is the heritage of good over evil, of justice over injustice, of truth over lies.
Hanukkah is the festival of lights, the festival of minorities… when they are right.
Happy Hanukkah
Elias Farache S.