Tag Archives: Maccabees

Vayeshev

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Our Parashah is “bookended” with stories about dreams; both stories featuring Joseph as the central character. At the end of our Parashah, we are told about Joseph’s success in the prison of the court of Egypt – and of his insightful explanation of the dreams of two of his fellow prisoners: Each of the two men – the butler and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were being held in prison – had a dream the same night, and each dream had a meaning of its own. When Joseph came to them the next morning, he saw that they were dejected. So he asked Pharaoh’s officials who were in custody with him in his master’s house, “Why are your faces so sad today?” “We both had dreams,” they answered, “but there is no one to interpret them.” Then Joseph said to them, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams.” (gen 40:5-8)

Dreams appear in the book of Genesis on a number of occasions. The first dreamer is almost incidental to the narrative, when Avimelech King of Gerar (Gen 20:3-7)  is warned by God in a dream to return Abraham’s wife to him after he has taken  her for himself when Avraham had said that Sarah was his sister in a bid to save his own life. The next dreamer is Jacob who dreams twice, the first time when leaving the land as a young boy afraid for his future, and his dream of the ladder with angels ascending and descending and the presence of God comforting him with the declaration that God would be with him and stay with him until his return to this land. The second dream while he is still with Laban but aware that the tide of hospitality is turning and he must return to the land. (Gen 31:10-13). After this God appears to Laban in a dream (31:24) in order to warn him not to attack Jacob who has prospered greatly at Laban and the family’s expense.

Within the Joseph narratives, there are three couplets of dreams. Joseph as a young boy dreaming of both the sheaves of corn and of the stars all bowing down to him; the dreams of the butler and the baker, servants of Pharaoh, And finally the two dreams of Pharaoh himself. Each of these dreams contains a message about the future, and seem to be dependent on interpretation in a way that the earlier dreams do not.

Joseph is confident about his ability to explain their dreams – and that confidence is quickly validated, as each of his explanations is played out in Pharaoh’s court. The butler is restored to his position and the baker is hanged. (40:21-22)

Where did Joseph get this confidence; indeed, where did he get the ability to interpret dreams? The earlier dream sequence in the beginning of our Parashah, involving Joseph, posits Joseph not as a dream interpreter; rather, as the dreamer. His brothers and father are the ones who make inferences from his dreams – but he just reports them. When did he learn how to explain dreams?

And why does the butler “finally” remember Joseph and report his successful dream interpretation abilities to Pharaoh. This ability will lead not only to Joseph’s rise to greatness (as a result of his explanation of Pharaoh’s dreams), but ultimately to our terrible oppression and slavery in Egypt. (See BT Shabbat 10b)

Dreams can bring about powerful events. As Bradley Artson wrote, ‘our lives are made full by dreams” “Aspirations for a better tomorrow, hopes for a world of peace and plenty, of inclusion and freedom, of spirit and dance – these hopes keep us alive and help us to live our lives with purpose. Were it not for our dreams, the world would be too narrow and too cold to contain us. As Theodor Herzl observed, “Every creed of man was once a dream.” Or, to use more religious language, Rabbi Yehudah Ha-Levi exults, “A dream brought me into the sanctuaries of God.”

Through our dreams, we imagine a world worthy of our efforts and responsive to our needs. Through our dreams, we preview ourselves heroic, as larger than life in bringing that better tomorrow today. Dreams offer dress rehearsals for the reality yet to be.

Yet precisely because dreams provide a chance to see ourselves as significant, to view our contributions as substantial, they can also become vessels for our ambition, and sources of jealousy to those in whom we confide. Such was the case for Joseph and his brothers.  “

Joseph’s dreams may well have been prophecy. They may well also have embodied the sibling rivalry between him and his older brothers. He was, after all, ben zekunim, the child of his father’s old age, and therefore a favoured child. He was certainly the child of the favoured wife. His dreams and the way he presented them to his brothers were offensive to them, and quite rightly so.  The brothers were offended not so much by the dream itself as by the apparent cause for this dream. They clearly thought that Joseph must be thinking about his takeover of the family so much that these thoughts have entered his dreams.  Jewish tradition knew early on that not all dream was prophecy, but that it may be the expression of what we today would describe as subconscious desires and repressed urges. So for example the Talmud (Berachot 56a) records two incidents where the local (non-Jewish) governor challenged one of our Sages to predict the content of his dreams of the coming night. In each case, the Sage described a detailed and horrific dream – which so preoccupied the governor that he did indeed dream about it that night.

So the brothers must have thought at first that the dream was an expression of Joseph’s ambition, and they rightly would have hated him for that. But why did they keep silent at the second dream?  There was a tradition that although a single dream may be caused by internal thoughts and ruminations, if that same dream (or the same “message” clothed in alternate symbolism) occurs twice, it is no longer a happenstance – it is truly God’s word. We find this approach explicitly stated by Joseph when he explains Pharaoh’s doubled dream:

The reason the dream was given to Pharaoh in two forms is that the matter has been firmly decided by God, and God will do it soon. (Bereshit 41:32)

So to return to Joseph in the Egyptian prison, when he learned that both butler and baker had experienced significant and terrifying dreams in the same night, he understood that these were more than dreams. Just like a dream that occurs twice to the same person is more than a dream, similarly, if two men sharing a fate have impactful dreams on the same night, their dreams must be divine messages.

His response: Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams – is not presumptuous. He was telling them that their dreams were more than “just dreams” – they were in the province of God and, as such, would not need sophisticated interpretation (as is the case with a subconscious-based dream). They would be fairly easy to understand – as indeed they were. Joseph earned his reputation as an interpreter of dreams – and his ultimate freedom and final rise to power by remembering the lesson from his father’s house – that the “doubled dream” is a mark of prophecy, and by applying it intelligently years later in Egypt. This is what gave him the confidence to interpret first for the butler and baker and then for Pharaoh himself.

Joseph’s dreams were easy to read, and they did of course, ultimately come true when his brothers were forced to bow down to him upon soliciting food in Egypt. But we should never forget the pain that was caused by his telling of them, and the circumstances that were set in motion because of that pain. 

We too may have our dreams and our visions, and see them as being somehow stamped with the approval of the Almighty. But we, like Joseph, should take the time to see our dreams from a different perspective, to look at how they look through the eyes of others. For what may appear to us as a deservedly great reward may seem to other parties involved as conquest, exploitation, or marginalization. We need to strive for a God’s eye view, in which how our dreams appear to others can be factored into the unfolding of the dream into a more welcoming reality. Because our dreams don’t have to pan out exactly for them to come true, and we certainly have a role to play in bringing them forth. As we begin chanukah we should remember not only the dreams of the Maccabees, but the dreams of all who yearn for self determination and religious and national autonomy,

Bradley Artson wrote that “A world without dreams is too small for the human soul. But a world in which our dreams are projected onto the world without making room for each other is too brutal. Ultimately, Joseph and his brothers learn to bring each other into their dreams, recognizing that the greatest dream of all is the one God dreams for us all: “On that day, all will be one, and God’s name: One.”

Chanukah Miracles

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Chanukah is one of the most historically documented of all the Jewish holidays – we have early sources for it in the books of the Maccabees, and in the works of Josephus. We have accounts in the Talmud and in other rabbinic literature. Every Jew knows the story – that Antiochus Epiphanes forced all the people under his rule to take up Hellenistic practices, that the worship of Greek gods and the sacrifice of unclean animals replaced the traditional worship in the Temple, that Shabbat and circumcision were outlawed. And while some Jews were eager to take on Hellenism, with its pantheon of gods, and its emphasis on the beauty and strength of the human body, others resisted, and died as martyrs.

Then one day the Greeks came to the village of Modi’in and set up an altar there, commanding the Jews to show obedience to Antiochus’ decree.  Mattathias an old priest was so enraged when he saw a Jew about to follow the instructions that he killed him, and then he and his 5 sons retreated to the mountains and began a guerrilla war against the Greeks and their Jewish allies. Before he died Mattathias passed on the leadership to his son Judah, who led the forces against a series of Antiochus’ armies, and defeated them all. When he and his followers liberated Jerusalem and reclaimed the Temple from its defilement, they could only find one small cruse of oil, enough to last just one day, yet when they lit the Temple menorah with it a miracle occurred and the light burned for 8 days.  Since then we celebrate Chanukah in order to remember the Maccabees and their successful fight for religious independence, and we retell the miracle of the oil, we light the chanukiah and we eat foods cooked with oil.

That is the story, everyone knows it, yet strangely enough in none of the many early accounts we have of Chanukah do we find the story quite like this.   

Some accounts focus on the facts of war. Other stories place at their centre the personality of individual members of the Hasmonean family; or the terrible persecution suffered under Antiochus; or the willing assimilation by many which almost wrote the Jews out of history.  Other texts talk about cleansing and rededication of the Temple in order for it to be used for Jewish worship once more. 

Different aspects of the story of the Maccabean rebellion have been highlighted at different times. So the rabbis living in Mishnaic times may have felt obliged to mute the story of a successful revolt by a small number of Jews against a powerful enemy; and those of Talmudic times may well have needed the extra emphasis on the Temple rededication, and the reassurance of the presence of God in the world that the story of the miracle would bring.  The issue of religious martyrdom was important in medieval times when the community was decimated in the crusades – and so on. 

            The festival of Chanukah has continued to develop and we continue to tell the story in our particular way.  Every generation engages with the story, infuses the ritual with contemporary meaning, uses the story and the eight days of candlelighting to express something we feel deeply about. Every generation looks at the story of Chanukah, adding their own light and shadow in order to express that which is important to their time. 

A modern response has been to use the festival as an antidote to external cultural influences, to make it, as it were, the Jewish Christmas, with the giving of presents and the eating of rich (and oily) foods. Sadly Chanukah has become a festival our children know more about than the more core biblical ones of Sukkot and Shavuot.  I have no problem with raising the status of Chanukah to combat the alienation caused by the feeling that the whole world is having a party to which we are not invited (and nor should we be, or we risk devaluing the importance and particularity of Christmas), but it does worry me that Chanukah has become a sort of catch all festivity during the dark winter months, and all meaning is overshadowed by celebration.  For Chanukah does have a message for us, and is not simply a convenient peg to enable us to have our own party, Chanukah is all about – indeed the word has the basic meaning of – dedication and renewal. 

            If we parallel the original story of Chanukah in which people moved away from the core values of Jewish tradition and its place of expression, in favour of the values of a world which did not give a worth to the imperatives of increasing holiness through ethical and righteous behaviour, then this is the time of year we should be rededicating and renewing our own Jewish identity – going, as it were, into the sanctuary of our own souls and taking stock of where we are three months after the last stock take of Yom Kippur. Do we need to refocus, to relight our desire to be better than we are being, to rededicate ourselves to our partnership in the work of God?

            Chanukah, often called “Festival of Lights” is more properly a “Festival of Rights” – celebrating the determined fight of a tiny group of people for the basic human right to religious identity, spiritual autonomy and right to define one’s self.

Mattathias and his sons fought a battle whose principle continues to be fought around the world. And this principle is at the core of the Chanukah story. There continue to be refugees fleeing from their countries – from wars which have nothing to do with them, from persecution over their gender, religion, nationality, sexuality, existence….

            The rabbis asked –  “if there was only enough oil for one day, and it stayed alight for 8 days while new oil was being prepared, it is easy to understand the miracle of the last 7 days, but what was the miracle on the first day?”  

They provide a number of possible answers, but for me the one that resonates is that the miracle of the first day was that people still cared enough and believed enough to light the menorah at all, when they knew that realistically it should go out again within a few hours and they would find themselves in deep darkness again. The miracle of Chanukah isn’t some supernatural extension of the burning properties of oil, but that very ordinary human beings lit the oil in the first place, determined to create light even if only in their own locality, even if only for a short time. It would have been so easy to have not bothered, to have said it would make no difference, to have given up.

Miracles are not really about heavenly interventions or supernatural experiences, but ordinary everyday things which we create and experience every time we choose to dedicate ourselves to the values we say we believe in, when we remind ourselves that we are one human race, when we recognise that what binds us is of more importance than what separates us. Miracles happen when people don’t give in to despair or lethargy, or the belief that they can’t make a difference anyway so they shouldn’t even try.

Chanukah is a festival of dedicating ourselves, of learning about ourselves and what we could be capable of, of reminding ourselves that our actions should match our words. As we light our candles and eat our doughnuts and spin our dreidls, let’s give some thought to how our own lives might provide light – even just a small glow – and make our bit of the world a kinder place.