The Jewish community worldwide is gradually emerging from a consumerist Hanukkah. True enough, Hanukkah is commercialized just like everything else in December. Still, decades of bad spiritual Hanukkah habits have been battered.
No longer is Hanukkah just a time to light lights, or to give presents, or to bake latkes, or to become a substitute for the immeasurably more flamboyant Christian holiday season. Jews have come to understand that Hanukkah marks a victory in war and a victory over assimilationists.
Hanukkah faces outward - against the Syrian Greeks who strove to kill Judaism - and Hanukkah faces inward - against those Jews back then who were seduced into joining the pervasive pagan civilization.
It’s never time to put all that aside.
But this year, it is time for a minimalist Hanukkah. A Hanukkah that simply says: As a Jew, I am the inheritor of Jews who fought for the political independence of the Jewish state. I am a Zionist just like Judah the Maccabee and his cohorts were Zionist. And what happened in Sydney, Australia will not break me.
A minimalist Hanukkah says: There was a Jewish state in antiquity. There is a Jewish state today. It’s in the same place now as it was then. Not necessarily down to the last border adjustment, but still the same land, the same territory.
Jerusalem was at its center.
Jerusalem was its capital.
Then, as now.
That’s the minimalist Hanukkah: I am a Jew. I stand with Israel.
The Maccabees fought for it.
We are fighting for it.
Eight-day miracle, menorahs, fine family gatherings, recitation of Hallel, sober reflections on religious freedom and the emptiness of assimilation - all integral to and indispensable for Hanukkah every year.
But this year, not mainly.
This year, with the rise in hatred for the Jewish state, which is coterminous with anti-Semitism, we mark Hanukkah with a minimalist message because it’s a lot easier to communicate than a complicated one.
We communicate this minimalist message to the world: Hanukkah stands for Israel.
Hanukkah happened in Israel.
Hanukkah celebrated Jewish independence in Israel.
Hanukkah’s heroes were Israelis.
Hanukkah’s enemies hated Israel.
Just like today.
The minimalist message of Hanukkah needs to be communicated not just to world. It needs to be communicated to us Jews.
Not just to the Jews who have lost their way and forgotten the centrality of Israel to Judaism and the centrality of the State of Israel to modern Judaism and the Jewish people.
The minimalist message of Hanukkah is for every Jew, no matter how steeped in the centrality of Israel for Judaism.
That’s Hanukkah: reinforcement.
That’s what the candles say: We fought for independence in ancient Israel.
We’re still fighting.
Still standing up.
Still celebrating.
Still understanding who we are: a people born with G-d’s promise of the Land of Israel, a people exiled from Israel, a people returning to Israel.
Look it up.
It’s right there in the Torah, in the prayers, and in Jewish history.
It’s not a political slogan.
It’s Judaism.
It Hanukkah.
The minimalist Hanukkah.
In our time of rising hatred of Israel, whatever it does, and of rising hatred of Jews, whatever they think, this is the year for a minimalist Hanukkah.
It’s who we are as a Jewish people.
Originally appeared on IJN
Rabbi Hillel Goldberg is editor and publisher of IJN. He is an author, scholar of modern Jewish history, and student of the Musar movement.