(Author: Gwynne Schrire, Vol. 65, No. 3, Chanukah 2010)
Chanukah has another name – the Festival of Lights – and if you are lucky enough to walk around the streets of Jerusalem on Chanukah evenings, you can certainly see why. Everywhere, the lights of chanukiot are winking and twinkling at you -some shining from behind locked glass panels built into the walls of the houses. Here in the Diaspora, this is not common because of a halachic decision in the 8th Century that the lamp could be placed inside if there was any danger (from goyim – or ganovim?).
Why is the holiday called the ‘Festival of Lights’? Certainly, we light lights -usually candles -44 in all over the eight days in candlesticks called chanukiot. The latter date back to the Talmudic period and probably developed from the early clay oil lamps. Instead of having one spout, these special lamps had eight spouts for eight wicks and looked rather like an eight-toed foot. Another kind of chanukiah from the same period found in a Jerusalem cave is a rectangular grooved stone. There has been a remarkable continuity in this design as not only has this style been found in 12th Century France, but also in 18th Century Yemen and 19th Century North African lamps.
As well as these clay and stone chanukiot, metal ones were also used in Talmudic times. A bronze one from Babylon, dating from the 3rd or 4th Century CE, exists. Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg (13th Century) would not use a chanukiah of clay and his teacher used a metal one which would hang on his door. When it became dangerous to place these outside the home and the custom of keeping them inside was adopted, their shape changed. A back wall was added as well as a hook for hanging. This type developed in Spain, the earliest preserved one dating to the 13th Century. Some Mediaeval French and German chanukiot dating between the 12th and 15th Centuries have survived. These are usually bronze, with a back plate. This design spread around the Mediterranean, reaching Eastern Europe in the 16th Century. The Poles added legs to the back wall so that the lamp could stand on a table.
German Jews were resistant to Spanish fashions. They preferred to use hanging lamps in the form of a star or separate metal vessels like a cup or a chair, adding a new one each day, or an eight-branched standing menorah. Not many early German chanukiot survive as they were confiscated during various wars to reappear, melted down, as guns or bullets. Chanukiot have been made in pottery, stone, glass, ceramic, brass, silver, pewter -but surely none have been as precious as the one made in a concentration camp from carefully hoarded potatoes.
Originally, oil was used for light. Candles came into use in Europe in the 17th Century,although the Mediterranean and North African countries continued to burn vegetable oil. Necessity is the mother of invention. During the 1948 War of Independence, soldiers near Latrun burnt rifle grease in their chanukiah.
Until 1948, Chanukah was the only festival based on a datable historical story -25 Kislev, 164 BCE. Avery exciting story it is too, one of bravery and rebellion, of a small band determined to restore freedom of religion and of a mighty army overthrown. However, the story as it appears in the two Books of Maccabee does not help to answer the initial question about why the festival is called the ‘Festival of Lights’, and indeed does not even mention lighting chanukiot. It mentions the cleansing of the Temple and the lighting of the menorah, but that was just part of the daily Temple ritual. It talks of celebrating the event with gladness like Succoth -but we do not light lights on Succoth! The story of the miracle of the cruse of oil only developed years later. As there was only one cruse of oil, why observe a festival of ‘lights’? Would not a festival of ‘a light’ be more appropriate, using one large candle like a giant yortzeit candle designed to burn for eight days?
When Josephus described the festival two hundred years later, he called it the ‘Festival of Lights’, not Chanukah. He explained the name not in terms of lighting chanukkiot but that the right to serve G-d had come like a sudden light.
His explanation does not shed much light on the problem.
The first reference to lighting a chanukiah comes in a baraita regarding a discussion between Hillel and Shammai over the right way to light it. This indicates that by the second half of the 1st Century BCE, the practice formed part of the festival. By the 2nd Century CE, sages had said that the candelabra of the Hasmoneans were not made of gold, and in another baraita the miracle of the cruse of oil had come to light.
The Encyclopaedia Judaica says that “all these stories seem to be nothing but legends and the authenticity of the ‘oil cruse’ story has already been questioned in the Middle Ages”. Why, then, the story and why the name “Festival of Lights”?
It is very possible that the legend of the cruse of oil lasting eight days developed during Roman times to give a religious cover to what was in essence a nationalistic festival celebrating the overthrow of a conqueror and the re-establishment of Jewish independence and religious freedom. Such themes would certainly not have been acceptable to the Romans,who would most likely have banned its celebration.
However, the name ‘Festival of Lights’ used for this holiday by Josephus would have been most acceptable to the Romans because,being based in Europe, they were well aware of the festivals of lights common at this time in midwinter, in the frozen wastes in the Northern Hemisphere. There, people worshiped the sun and wanted to ensure in the long dark winter that the sun would be reborn to provide another warm and fruitful summer. Fires were lit in December and priests would scan the sky to announce the rebirth of the sun god with joyous celebrations. At this time Rome also celebrated, with a ten day Saturnalia.The lighting of a progressively stronger light as the holiday of Chanukah progressed, using a candle called a shamash (which could have also stood for shemesh – the sun) might certainly have been interpreted by the Romans as a quaint Festival of Lights similar to the other midwinter festivals being observed by their other conquered peoples.
Only the Jews would have been aware that by lighting the candles, they were reaffirming their belief in the power of their G-d who had helped them to overthrow one conqueror and, by doing so, they were fanning the flames of their desire to try again.
Thus the name ‘Festival of Lights’ adds another dimension to the festival of Chanukah, tapping as it does into other traditions, now long forgotten, belonging to long forgotten peoples.
Am Yisrael Chai, and chagim like Chanukah have helped to preserve the Jews as a nation.
Gwynne Schrire is Deputy Director of the SAJBD Cape Council and a member of the editorial board of Jewish Affairs, to which she is a veteran contributor.
