The celebration of Hanukkah has ended. Now what? We have gathered around our menorahs and prayed the traditional prayers. We have sung “Maoz Tzur” and “I Have a Little Dreidel." We have eaten our latkes with sour cream or apple sauce. We have told the story of the Maccabees, and we Messianic Jews have read John chapter 10, where Yeshua was at the Temple during Hanukkah.
We gathered in homes with our family and friends and in synagogues, and played dreidel for gelt while sharing the legend that the game first was played by Jewish children as they studied Torah, while hiding from the Greek soldiers because the study of Torah had been criminalized. When the soldiers arrived, the scrolls were hidden and the dreidel game began, until the soldiers left and Torah study began once again.
Our rabbis have shared a meaningful sermon (or two) about Judah’s victory and the cleansing and rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem, including, of course, the miracle of the one jar of oil for the eternal flame, which should have lasted for only one day, but supernaturally lasted for eight days.
This is the Hanukkah we celebrated. A Hanukkah that remembers those Jews who rejected assimilation into Greek culture and religion. A Hanukkah that rejoices in the rededication of the Temple and the reinstitution of the sacrificial system and reinstatement of the priesthood. A Hanukkah that reminds us our ancestors fought for their rights to study Torah.
Yes, the Hanukkah story is amazing and full of miracles. But, the Hanukkah story doesn’t end with the victories of the Maccabees and the restoration of the Temple. Unfortunately, when we turn the pages of our history and read the next chapters, we find that although the Temple was cleansed and holy offerings were once again made on its altars, the Greeks still ruled over Israel. The Greeks were later followed by the Romans. In the years that followed the Maccabean renewal of worship in the Temple, the priesthood became politically corrupt and Herod the Great, who married a descendant of the Hasmoneans, became the ruler of Israel. Herod eventually eliminated the rest of the Hasmonean family, along with 45 members of the Sanhedrin.
You see, the Hanukkah story that we usually tell in synagogue and around our table is incomplete. We tell about the Greeks making Torah study illegal, and the battle against assimilation. We tell of Judah’s miraculous victory, and the cleansing and restoration of the Temple. We tell of the oil and the lamp. But, we don’t warn about what happens next. We don’t talk about the fact that only 160 years later Herod the Great who was a descendant of the Hasmoneans orders all male babies in and around Bethlehem to be murdered in an attempt to kill the Messiah before He can become king.
Ultimately, Torah study, while legal, becomes replaced by traditions of men. Jews who were no longer forced to assimilate voluntarily Hellenized themselves. And although they were not offering pigs on the Temple altar, they were selling lambs in the Temple courtyards.
I don’t write this to simply complain about the failures of G-D’s people of the past, but rather to warn G-D’s people today. You and I have experienced greater miracles than the Maccabees: the virgin birth; the life, death, and resurrection of Yeshua; the outpouring of the oil of the Spirit; the cleansing and renewal of our temples; G-D’s renewing His Torah in our hearts.
It is vital that we don’t let those miracles come to naught as our ancestors did. We must keep the oil of the Spirit burning in our hearts so we truly live as lights. We must keep our temples clean and continue to present ourselves as living sacrifices. We must never voluntarily assimilate to become the very thing Yeshua won our victory over.
We must live our lives in such a way that our Hanukkah story ends in victory and revival based on true repentance and re-creation. If Judah Maccabee and those who followed him understood what we read in Ephesians 6:12:
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the worldly forces of this darkness, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places,
maybe they would have continued beyond the physical victory and sought a complete spiritual victory by teaching true repentance to everyone in Israel. The adversary of our souls knows he can never defeat the people of G-D from the outside. So, he encourages us to compromise ourselves through voluntary assimilation.
If we follow G-D’s Spirit and walk in His ways, we can and will have a greater Hanukkah than the Maccabees.