Chanukah: War and Peace

There is a law in relation to Chanukah which, more than most, tells us about the hierarchy of Jewish values - about what was remarkable about Judaism in ancient times and remains so today.

The festival of Chanukah commemorates an extraordinary victory - of the Maccabees, a relatively small and dedicated force of fighters against one of the great imperial powers of classical antiquity, the Seleucid branch of the Alexandrian empire.

Ancient Greece is sometimes cited as the precursor of certain modern values such as democracy, citizenship and liberty. Its idea of liberty was, however, circumscribed. The Greeks had little regard for cultures other than their own, and when Antiochus IV came to power (calling himself Epiphanes, meaning 'a god made manifest'), he began to force the pace of Hellenization, forcing Greek culture on the people of Israel. Sadly, he was helped in this endeavour by two Jewish high priests, Jason and Menelaus, who assisted in banning the practice of Judaism and turning the Temple into an interdenominational house of worship on Greek lines.

When a statue of the Greek god Zeus was erected in the Temple precincts (Jews at the time called it ‘the abomination of desolation’), a group of Jews led by the elderly priest Matityahu and his sons, rebelled. They fought a brilliant campaign, and within three years they had recaptured Jerusalem, removed sacrilegious objects from the Temple, and restored Jewish autonomy. It was, as we say in the Al haNissim prayer, a victory for 'the weak against the strong, and the few against the many.’

Not only was it an extraordinary triumph. Two other features make it different from other moments in ancient Jewish history. The first is that Chanukah is the only Jewish victory to be recorded in non-Jewish sources that have survived to this day. There is no mention of the Exodus in the annals known to us of ancient Egypt. Nor have we yet found reference in ‘the chronicles of the Medes and Persians’ of the events recorded in the book of Esther. The defeat of Antiochus forces is, however, well documented in the histories of the time - not least because of the second fact, namely that the events recalled on Chanukah changed the course of European history. They marked the beginning of the end of Greece and the start of the rise of Rome.

We can therefore understand the importance halachah attaches to ‘publicising the miracle’ of Chanukah. This is how Maimonides codifies the law:

The commandment to light the Chanukah lamp is an exceedingly precious one, and one should be particularly careful to fulfil it, in order to make known the miracle, and to offer additional praise and thanksgiving to God for the wonders He wrought for us. Even if one has no food to eat except what he receives from charity, one should beg, or sell ones clothes, to buy oil and lamps, and light them.

Mishneh Torah, Chanukah 4:12

A question arises, however, in the case where someone finds themselves, on Friday afternoon, with only enough oil to kindle one light. Should it be used to fulfil the mitzvah of Chanukah or that of lighting a Shabbat light? (The question arises because, as far as the essential law is concerned, one need light only one light for each night of Chanukah. Our custom - to light one light on the first night, two on the second, and so on - is what the Talmud calls mehadrin min hamehadrin, fulfilling the mitzvah in the most beautiful way possible).

Our first instinct would surely be to favour Chanukah. The Chanukah light fulfils the mitzvah of pirsum ha-nes, ‘publicizing the miracle,’ and is essential to our celebration of the festival. The Shabbat lights, by contrast, are incidental to the sanctity of Shabbat - unlike the wine (over which we ‘sanctify the day’). The law, however, is otherwise. Faced with a choice between dedicating the light to Chanukah or Shabbat, Shabbat takes precedence. Why so? Maimonides' statement of the law and its logic is stunning in its beauty:

If a poor person needs oil for both a Sabbath lamp and a Chanukah lamp . . . the Sabbath lamp takes priority for the sake of peace in the home, seeing that even the Divine name may be erased to make peace between husband and wife [the reference is to the case of the sotah, the woman suspected by her husband of adultery. A curse containing the Divine name was dissolved in water and then drunk by the woman. Normally it is forbidden to erase the Divine name, but in the case, said the sages, God Himself forewent the honour due to His name in order to restore peace in the marriage.] Great is peace, for the whole Torah was given to make peace in the world, as it is said, 'Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace' (Prov. 3:17).

Chanukah 4:14

The implication is simple: even the smallest peace (between husband and wife) takes priority over the greatest victory in war. Sir Henry Sumner Maine was wrong when he said that peace is a modern invention while war is as old as mankind. Almost two thousand years ago the sages - following the teachings of the great prophets - made peace their ideal, in an age in which virtually every other culture made war the test of the honour of a nation, and epic achievements on the battlefield the mark of a hero. That was still the mood in most of Europe in 1914, and it took the millions of deaths in the trenches of the First World War to teach people otherwise.

At this distance of time it is sometimes hard to understand how revolutionary was the Jewish attitude to war. The Israelites fought wars because they had to (Maimonides rules that even in the days of Joshua, no war was to be fought unless an enemy had first declined an offer of peace [Melachim 6: 1,5]), but they did not glorify war as the proving ground of virtue. According to the Book of Chronicles (I Chron. 28:3) David was denied permission to build the Temple because "you are a warrior and have shed blood". This very fact would have qualified a David in any other civilization. It was precisely their success in the battlefield that made the leaders of other nations heroes and figures of adulation, even worship.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that in the long term, this was the greater victory of Jews against the Greeks: not just that they won the military battle over Jerusalem, but that they won the far more significant ethical battle between the value-systems of ancient Greece and Israel. A military victory, however great, is short-lived. A moral victory endures.

The lasting message of Chanukah is not just that the Maccabees won the war, but that war itself has a lesser value than the cultivation of the arts of peace. What a remarkable fact it is that two thousand years ago, our sages already understood that shalom bayit, ‘peace in the home’, is not a small thing in comparison with armies, international politics and military might. It is one of the most important things of all - for in the long run the fate of the family - the love and loyalty between husband and wife, and the way parents hand on to children the values for which they live - that determines the survival of a civilization. Israel, then and now, became the nation that wins wars but never loses its love for and pursuit of peace.