Who Brings the Light to the Festival?

Hanukkah has ended (not that you'd know it from the way my mother continues to sing holiday songs in the morning) and thus I am at liberty to reflect on the holiday, in general and this past year, specifically.

This holiday season, my father, originally told he was inoperable, spent the days recovering from what doctors unanimously agree was a hugely and, depending on who you ask, even surprisingly successful surgery. My mother refers to this as our personal Hanukkah miracle. Accordingly, I began to consider the nature of miracles and their relation to our lives.

Upon Christopher Hitchens' death, one of my favorite morning websites posted a tribute cartoon of a girl praying, "Dear Lord, please cure my mommy in a way indistinguishable from the results of proper medical treatment." I laughed when I read it, because I do believe that people sometimes too easily attribute explainable occurrences to fate or providence. I believe that people need to rely less on the forces of the universe and more on themselves. But, unlike Hitchens, I also believe that there is sometimes something larger at play. I think that there is a higher force that is often responsible for those times when the actual outcome is vastly different from the rationally expected outcome.

What does this have to do with Hanukkah? Most people in the United States, including many Jews, believe that the holiday celebrates a miracle of oil that lasted for eight days instead of one. But that storyline was appended later, to increase the miracle's scope, so to speak. The real miracle celebrated by the holiday is the story of the Maccabees. It's the triumph of a small but determined band of guerrilla fighters over the much larger, much better equipped Greek-Syrian army. I'll spare you the awesome details of Judah the Maccabee's ingenious use of hill terrain and surprise attacks, since that's not relevant here. The critical difference I want to point out is that, unlike the story of the oil, the Maccabees' miracle required action, planning, self-reliance, and daring rather than just faith. Needless to say, of the two, I infinitely prefer the Maccabean narrative and its emphasis on human accountability.

I like to think that my family is enjoying the fruits of a Maccabean spirit with my dad, since the outcome arrived on the heels of weeks of research, travel, and refusal to accept first or second medical opinions. But it was, undoubtedly, not wholly the result of our human efforts. Perhaps this is, as Hitchens et. al would argue, a fortunate coincidence. For my part, I prefer the word "miracle." Either way, it was a very happy holiday in our home this year.