URBANA – While many Christians celebrate Christmas this week, Jewish communities will commemorate the eight days of Hannukah starting on Wednesday. It marks the first time in nearly 20 years that the two holidays have overlapped. IPM’s Reginald Hardwick spoke with Rabbi Alan Cook of Sinai Temple in Champaign about why this week means so much to so many.
The Champaign/Urbana Jewish Federation will host a menorah lighting in the main plaza of downtown Champaign on Wednesday night starting at 7:00.
Rabbi Cook: You know, I think it is significant that so many cultures at this time of year are observing a festival that is based on light. We have just passed the winter solstice, and we see darkness, metaphorical and spiritual, and we see an opportunity to rise out of that darkness, whether we are Jews celebrating Hanukkah, whether we are Christians celebrating Christmas, whether we are African American communities celebrating Kwanzaa, whether we are the Hindi community celebrating Diwali, that we have the opportunity to bring light and hope and sustenance into a darkened world.
Reginald Hardwick: For those of us who are unfamiliar, could you briefly explain what Hanukkah is?
Cook: Hanukkah represents, historically, the sort of the last stand of Jewish autonomy, until the founding of the modern state of Israel. It took place around the year 165 or so before the Common Era, when the has been in dynasty, was able to push back against the Seleucid Greeks, Syrian Greek empire that was ruling the Middle East at the time, and the Hasmoneans, who were nicknamed the Maccabees, were able to resist the drive towards assimilation into Greek culture and say there is still something beautiful about our Jewish identity. According to the legend of Hanukkah, the Greeks had defiled the temple in Jerusalem that was reserved for the worship of the Jewish God, and they had set up statues of Zeus. They came to the temple found it had been defiled. Needed to relight the eternal light that was central to Jewish worship in the temple, and only found enough oil to keep that light burning for a single day, it would take a period of about a week to create new oil that was fit for that task. And miraculously, the oil, rather than lasting only one night, lasted eight nights. And so that was the origin of this being an eight–day holiday.
Hardwick: How was Hanukkah celebrated, and are there more religious or social gatherings?
Cook: Part of the tradition is to really emphasize the miracle of the oil by eating oil fried foods. Not that we need an excuse to eat those, but we eat potato pancakes. Some eat fried donuts filled, jelly filled donuts known as sufganiyot. Hanukkah tends to be a home-based holiday. In addition to the foods that I mentioned, there is the tradition of whiting Hanukkah candelabra, known as a menorah, or more specifically, as a hanukkiah, and each evening of Hanukkah, we add an additional candle. Throughout the festival, it is traditional to light one’s candle and to put it in a place where it can be seen by the public, in order to publicize the miracle. And in modern times, when there is so much strife, unfortunately, against Jews and a rise in anti semitism, observing Hanukkah, again becomes a sense of resistance and a sense of standing up and saying, we are still here.