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livChanukah was early this year and I felt very disheartened by the prospect of yet another festival sitting at my computer looking at faces in a grid. But ghoti_mhic_uait inspired me with festival enthusiasm, and my community did an amazing set of events, with a different family hosting the Zoom call each night, and actually I had a really good Chanukah.
First night I celebrated with my OSOs and the kids, and they lit Andreas' chanukiah that he made at a Limmud workshop in the Before Times, and I managed to get at least some presents to the whole household, and they sang Maoz Tzur and we played Among Us, which we have decided is a Chanukah tradition now since it involves sabotage and repair.
Second candle was Shabbat. I lit with the community and then immediately logged off so I could have a date withjack. We ate quesadillas which are a bit fiddly with the timing, so doing Friday night Kiddush separately from the meal worked quite well. And we watched Potrait of a lady on fire, which I was excited about based on marina's review, and it really is just gorgeous, though I can't pretend at all relevant to Chanukah.
And Shabbat morning we had the Sunday School / children focused service. We are not a community who do brilliant children's programming; we do well by the kind of children who want to be taken seriously as members of the community who happen to be shorter than most adults, but we don't really do fun activities for younger and less religiously engaged kids. But in this case we managed something that worked well at least for the over 8s. We'd had several weeks of talking about the different parts of the service and learning the tunes and having the children compose readings. And given it was on Zoom and didn't require families getting kids dressed and out of the house in time for a morning service, lots of them actually showed up to the service. I read Torah, the fun story from Genesis 40 about Joseph interpreting the prisoners' dreams.
Third candleghoti_mhic_uait invited several of her home ed and parent friends as well as her oldest and his dad and stepmum, whom we hadn't really seen for months. And I did a kind of explanatory Chanukah service where people asked good questions. There was a slight technical glitch in that I'd set up break-out rooms so the younger children could be loud and boisterous in a separate audio space from the people who were having comparative religion discussions, but for some reason Zoom just wouldn't let me activate them. But we managed to work it out somehow, with one of the guests setting up a separate and parallel Jitsi call.
Fourth candle and my Hebrew birthday I managed to gather together several of my best friends from college, now scattered around the world. So I got to light and sing and debate withpseudomonas and hatam_soferet and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
darcydodo, as well as angelofthenorth (whom I've been really missing while we're separated by plague) so that was wonderful. I also got soaked through delivering the next batch of Chanukah presents to OSOs, but hey. I started to notice that ghoti_mhic_uait's Chanukah presents to me were following a theme, and the theme was CHEESE.
Fifth I lit at work, and explained the festival to colleagues who were all politely interested. I did in fact dip in to the community lighting as well, because the host was a very old friend of mine who has recently moved to Cambridge and had a baby, and I wanted to see the baby. I'm glad I did because she did an excellent job telling the story of Judith.
Sixth I lit with Nisa-Nashim, the Jewish-Muslim women's interfaith network. That was really interesting. R' Shulamit Ambalu explained Chanukah's historical development, and Ustadha Saleha Islam talked about the Muslim version of the story of Moses' childhood and youth. I learned that Musa in the Qur'an was adopted not by Pharaoh's daughter but by his wife, Queen Asiya, who secretly converted to Jewish monotheism and was martyred as a result, and is considered one of the women of perfect faith along with Mary the mother of Jesus and two other people who weren't mentioned.
Seventh included a study session from our student rabbi Tali Artman Partock, which was just amazing. Like most educated Jews, I learned as a child about the miracle of the lights, and when I was older I understood that this miracle story was tacked on to the account of the mostly military success of the Maccabees in overthrowing the occupation, so I had in my head that Chanukah was basically invented in Mishnaic times in around the second century. But it turns out that that too is a simplification. Firstly, there is some pre-Mishnaic evidence of Chanukah, including a mention by Josephus and a line in the Christian Bible about Jesus celebrating a festival of "Dedication" in winter.
But the most interesting source is an obscure first century almanac, Megillat Taanit, which does mention the miracle of the oil, so that appears much earlier than I'd realized! But also it seems that the origin of the story may be that the Maccabees not only didn't have enough oil to light the Temple Menorah, but they didn't have a Menorah, since the invaders had carried the solid gold lamp off as loot. So they had to improvise with whatever trash they could find lying around: some iron [butcher's] skewers. And it seems that what got suppressed from very early accounts, going back to 2 Maccabees even, was a debate about whether it's acceptable to make a holy lampstand out of trash, in an emergency. It's probable that the Maccabees actually did so, but later sources were a bit cagey about that and it sort of gradually got replaced with a story about a shortage of pure oil. I think the hagiographers saw the latter as more uplifting, but I really love the idea of a miracle of human ingenuity, where God intervenes not to accomplish something physically impossible, but to make holy an object made from the lowest remnants, the possibility of rebuilding after devastation.
Eighth I invited my family of origin as well as OSOs. It wasn't perfect because for various reasons the audio quality was terrible, but at least we got to spend the festival virtually together, and that rounded off the season very nicely.
Plusangelofthenorth sent me a wonderful book about tea, and sourced chocolate coins for me to eat and give to the children (6-month-old Gráinne is a big and very messy fan!). I was a bit shocked to find that inflation has reached hanukke-gelt; now they have chocolate £5, £10 and even £20 notes in addition to just coins. And cjwatson brought me doughnuts when I couldn't find any in online shopping and gave me Lavie Tidhar's Unholy Land about an alternate history where the state of Israel was established in Uganda (this was a serious suggestion in the early 20th century). And furthermore read 1-2 Maccabees properly and reported such gems as correspondence between the Maccabees and the Spartans (!) who were apparently descended from Abraham in some way.
So yes, there was learning and teaching and good food and good company. And I'm really excited about the deeper history of the Chanukah miracle! The other awesome Chanukah present was from Daveed Diggs of Hamilton fame; you don't have to be Jewish to appreciate this amazing new Chanukah song with puppies.
ghoti_mhic_uait inspired me with festival enthusiasm, and my community did an amazing set of events, with a different family hosting the Zoom call each night, and actually I had a really good Chanukah.First night I celebrated with my OSOs and the kids, and they lit Andreas' chanukiah that he made at a Limmud workshop in the Before Times, and I managed to get at least some presents to the whole household, and they sang Maoz Tzur and we played Among Us, which we have decided is a Chanukah tradition now since it involves sabotage and repair.
Second candle was Shabbat. I lit with the community and then immediately logged off so I could have a date with
jack. We ate quesadillas which are a bit fiddly with the timing, so doing Friday night Kiddush separately from the meal worked quite well. And we watched Potrait of a lady on fire, which I was excited about based on marina's review, and it really is just gorgeous, though I can't pretend at all relevant to Chanukah.And Shabbat morning we had the Sunday School / children focused service. We are not a community who do brilliant children's programming; we do well by the kind of children who want to be taken seriously as members of the community who happen to be shorter than most adults, but we don't really do fun activities for younger and less religiously engaged kids. But in this case we managed something that worked well at least for the over 8s. We'd had several weeks of talking about the different parts of the service and learning the tunes and having the children compose readings. And given it was on Zoom and didn't require families getting kids dressed and out of the house in time for a morning service, lots of them actually showed up to the service. I read Torah, the fun story from Genesis 40 about Joseph interpreting the prisoners' dreams.
Third candle
ghoti_mhic_uait invited several of her home ed and parent friends as well as her oldest and his dad and stepmum, whom we hadn't really seen for months. And I did a kind of explanatory Chanukah service where people asked good questions. There was a slight technical glitch in that I'd set up break-out rooms so the younger children could be loud and boisterous in a separate audio space from the people who were having comparative religion discussions, but for some reason Zoom just wouldn't let me activate them. But we managed to work it out somehow, with one of the guests setting up a separate and parallel Jitsi call.Fourth candle and my Hebrew birthday I managed to gather together several of my best friends from college, now scattered around the world. So I got to light and sing and debate with
pseudomonas and hatam_soferet and darcydodo, as well as angelofthenorth (whom I've been really missing while we're separated by plague) so that was wonderful. I also got soaked through delivering the next batch of Chanukah presents to OSOs, but hey. I started to notice that ghoti_mhic_uait's Chanukah presents to me were following a theme, and the theme was CHEESE. Fifth I lit at work, and explained the festival to colleagues who were all politely interested. I did in fact dip in to the community lighting as well, because the host was a very old friend of mine who has recently moved to Cambridge and had a baby, and I wanted to see the baby. I'm glad I did because she did an excellent job telling the story of Judith.
Sixth I lit with Nisa-Nashim, the Jewish-Muslim women's interfaith network. That was really interesting. R' Shulamit Ambalu explained Chanukah's historical development, and Ustadha Saleha Islam talked about the Muslim version of the story of Moses' childhood and youth. I learned that Musa in the Qur'an was adopted not by Pharaoh's daughter but by his wife, Queen Asiya, who secretly converted to Jewish monotheism and was martyred as a result, and is considered one of the women of perfect faith along with Mary the mother of Jesus and two other people who weren't mentioned.
Seventh included a study session from our student rabbi Tali Artman Partock, which was just amazing. Like most educated Jews, I learned as a child about the miracle of the lights, and when I was older I understood that this miracle story was tacked on to the account of the mostly military success of the Maccabees in overthrowing the occupation, so I had in my head that Chanukah was basically invented in Mishnaic times in around the second century. But it turns out that that too is a simplification. Firstly, there is some pre-Mishnaic evidence of Chanukah, including a mention by Josephus and a line in the Christian Bible about Jesus celebrating a festival of "Dedication" in winter.
But the most interesting source is an obscure first century almanac, Megillat Taanit, which does mention the miracle of the oil, so that appears much earlier than I'd realized! But also it seems that the origin of the story may be that the Maccabees not only didn't have enough oil to light the Temple Menorah, but they didn't have a Menorah, since the invaders had carried the solid gold lamp off as loot. So they had to improvise with whatever trash they could find lying around: some iron [butcher's] skewers. And it seems that what got suppressed from very early accounts, going back to 2 Maccabees even, was a debate about whether it's acceptable to make a holy lampstand out of trash, in an emergency. It's probable that the Maccabees actually did so, but later sources were a bit cagey about that and it sort of gradually got replaced with a story about a shortage of pure oil. I think the hagiographers saw the latter as more uplifting, but I really love the idea of a miracle of human ingenuity, where God intervenes not to accomplish something physically impossible, but to make holy an object made from the lowest remnants, the possibility of rebuilding after devastation.
Eighth I invited my family of origin as well as OSOs. It wasn't perfect because for various reasons the audio quality was terrible, but at least we got to spend the festival virtually together, and that rounded off the season very nicely.
Plus
angelofthenorth sent me a wonderful book about tea, and sourced chocolate coins for me to eat and give to the children (6-month-old Gráinne is a big and very messy fan!). I was a bit shocked to find that inflation has reached hanukke-gelt; now they have chocolate £5, £10 and even £20 notes in addition to just coins. And cjwatson brought me doughnuts when I couldn't find any in online shopping and gave me Lavie Tidhar's Unholy Land about an alternate history where the state of Israel was established in Uganda (this was a serious suggestion in the early 20th century). And furthermore read 1-2 Maccabees properly and reported such gems as correspondence between the Maccabees and the Spartans (!) who were apparently descended from Abraham in some way.So yes, there was learning and teaching and good food and good company. And I'm really excited about the deeper history of the Chanukah miracle! The other awesome Chanukah present was from Daveed Diggs of Hamilton fame; you don't have to be Jewish to appreciate this amazing new Chanukah song with puppies.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-21 11:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-22 08:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-22 08:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-21 11:18 pm (UTC)Are the chocolate notes the size of real bank notes?? Because that would be... a big chocolate.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-22 08:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-22 08:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-22 12:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-22 08:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-22 02:51 am (UTC)This is marvelous and I hope I remember it for next year.
Happy birthday!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-22 08:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-22 08:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-22 04:56 am (UTC)A Jewish State in the Kimberley region of Australia was also a serious possibility, but I haven't seen a novel about that!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-22 08:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-23 09:47 pm (UTC)The Festival of the Kludge
Date: 2020-12-22 06:51 am (UTC)So you're saying the real miracle of Chanukah is that God looked on their grody kludge and saw it was a righteous hack?
Re: The Festival of the Kludge
Date: 2020-12-22 08:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-22 07:09 am (UTC)What? Why does everyone believe it only goes back to the seventh century, then? <consults Wikipedia> Ah, apparently the work consists of a first-century text in Aramaic, with a seventh century commentary, and of the text you link to, only "On the twenty fifth of the month is Channuka, eight days on which one does not eulogize" is in Aramaic therefore goes back to the first century.
But if you want early evidence of Chanukah, look at the first chapter of 2 Maccabees, which has a completely different origin story, suggesting that the Hasmonean-era festival (which as you say Josephus refers, somewhat coyly, to) was actually bolted onto a pre-existing festival of light, which has now been completely subsumed beneath Chanukah.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-22 09:14 pm (UTC)She also mentioned in passing Megillat Antiochus, which R' Ambalu had also alluded to on 6th. Have you come across that one? It seems like the current scholarly consensus is that it's a late text, but Saadia Gaon believed it was pre-Mishnaic and authentic, in fact he gave it more authority than 1-2 Maccabees, so I understand some Mizrachi communities in fact read it at Chanukah; AIUI it's somewhat derivative of Esther in style. But again, I haven't quite got the details because it was just a passing mention which just happened to come up twice from two different teachers who were covering a lot of ground in short talks while the candles burned rather than formal seminars.
I went back to read your post (from 2009! How did we get so old?!) about 2 Maccabees. I sort of see what you mean about an older light or fire miracle attributed to Nehemiah, and I agree with you that Josephus' explanation that it's called the festival of lights because of general resurgence of hope seems implausible. So I guess the idea is that the tradition in Maccabees wants to connect the rededication of the Second Temple with the building of the Second Temple and to frame both as involving miracles as a sign of God's approval of the work. I think the evidence for celebration of making an improvised Menorah is sketchy, but I also don't think there's a direct line between the fire miracle reported about Nehemiah and the Rabbinic story about the oil lasting 8 days. Plausibly both could be true, that Maccabees used the legend about Nehemiah to underline that God blessed their celebration of second-Succot in ritually not entirely appropriate circumstances.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-22 08:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-22 09:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-22 11:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-23 10:47 pm (UTC)