Who can retell?

Editorial

Our tradition turns on stories. The saga of the Jewish people is retold each year in the reading of the weekly parshah (Torah portion). The retelling of the story of our exodus from slavery to freedom is the centerpiece of the Passover Seder. And the tale of our salvation from Haman's deadly plans is recounted with the reading of the Megillah of Esther on Purim.

But the heroic deeds of the Maccabees and their courageous battle for religious freedom is neither ritualized nor made sacred in a religious text. And yet, the story remains indelibly imprinted on our consciousness, the quintessential tale of right over might, of freedom over repression, of the few standing up to the many.

The story endures because it resonates, and because of the unfortunate propensity of human beings to replay it again and again. This year, as we light the Hanukkah candles, the age-old story is unfolding in the land of Israel, where the Jewish people struggle to assert sovereignty over our land and to affirm our right to live as Jews in a Jewish state, a tiny nation surrounded by hostile Arab and Muslim neighbors.

And as the Maccabees heroically defeated the Greeks, so the Jews are drawing on both right and might to ward off the Palestinian perpetrators and to prevail.

The Hanukkah story teaches of the responsibility to publicly assert our right to exist and our determination to endure, and to take action, to make real, that part of the story. Its lessons are as striking now as in ancient times.

So we light the candles each night and place our menorahs in the window for the world to see. We tell our children of the heroism of the Maccabees and we eat latkes, dripping with oil and fragrant with meaning. We spin dreidels and recall that "a great miracle happened there," even as we pray for another one now in the land of Israel.

And we sing the words of the "Ma'oz Tzur," reaffirming our pride, rededicating ourselves to the preservation of Jewish life, rekindling our determination to endure.

"Who can retell?" asks the song. We can - and we must.

Home