When Joseph offers his interpretation of Pharaoh’s dreams in this week’s Torah portion Miketz, it all seems obvious. Seven healthy sheaves of corn swallowed up by seven thin ones, seven healthy cows, eaten by sickly ones could only mean one thing: seven good years, followed by seven bad ones. How did the rest of Egypt miss it? Hindsight, as they say, is always 20-20. Having read the story so many times, it is hard for us to even imagine any other way to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams.
Hanukkah on the other hand is not so easy to interpret. Even the English spelling of it can be dicey. The rabbis of the Talmud in the tractate for Shabbat ask outright, “mayi Hanukkah,”“What is Hanukkah?” The Maccabees saw as it as a celebration of nationalism, the rabbis of the Talmud thought it was about miracles and God’s role in effecting human history, Maimonides and medieval writers thought it was about ritual, and American Jews tend to look at it from the lens of assimilation. I came across an address Louis Brandeis given in Boston in 1912, where he described as thus, “a victory of the many over the ease-loving, safety playing, privileged, powerful few, who in their pliancy would have betrayed the best interests of the people, a victory of democracy over aristocracy.” Today, in America, it seems to be a time of reflecting on our Jewish identities. And, that is how it should be, a holiday that is always shifting and changing depending on time and circumstance; a holiday each of us is free to interpret in our own way.
Happy Hanukkah and Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex
Last Updated on 01/28/2019 by wpadm