R. Micha'el Rosenberg: The True Story of Hanukkah

Growing up as the only Jew in my class in Iowa, I got lots of practice telling the story of Hanukkah.  The story of the oil that was only enough for one night but which, miraculously, lasted for eight, as I learned it and retold it every December in a classroom full of Christmas decorations, is the most familiar in all of American Judaism.

In recent years, this telling of the tale is often criticized.  The earliest depictions we have of Hanukkah, in 1 and 2 Maccabees (composed within a century of the Maccabean revolt), focus on a military victory.  A miracle on the battlefield is also the focus of our liturgical texts about Hanukkah; both the Al ha-Nissim insertion for the Amidah, and the ha-Neirot Hallalu recitation after candlelighting are fundamentally about “the wars that you performed for our ancestors in those days at this time.”