Heroes – and Antiheroes – to the Rescue
Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, has so many themes that it is no wonder it has lent itself to passionate advocates as a most-significant holiday.
Though in itself it qualifies as a “minor” festival in the Jewish year cycle, it stacks up against the Big Dates and Big Stories of Torah with many elements we recognize from other sacred tales: Epic battles! Costuming! Oil! Heroism!
In our ongoing search for contemporary meaning and relevance in our narratives and rituals, this year I’m bumping up against the Hero element. There was only one hero held up during my early childhood experiences of Hanukkah: Judah the Maccabee. A few others were added as my Jewish education progressed: his father; his brothers; the bereft mother of sons Hannah; and, eventually, as Judaism and feminism intersected in my life, the wily Judith.
Since the story of Hanukkah appears outside the sacred Jewish canon (learn here some theories why) this year I’m thinking about the Biblical Jewish Heroes, and how they, along with Judah and others, get their status despite their many (innumerable; excessive) flaws. Just to mention a few:
Abraham? Tried to pass off his wife as his sister (and possibly allow her to be bedded) by a foreign leader on two different occasions.
King David? Had a general shipped off to certain death on the front lines of war to marry his widow, with whom he had engaged in extramarital intimacy.
Moses? Which do we choose? Manslaughter? Trying to lie to God? Exiling his own sister? Being prevented from entering the Promised Land for disobeying God’s directions about how to get water from a rock?
The one hitting me hardest this year is Jacob, our progenitor, the one given the name Israel, who lies, deceives and cheats his way into our lineage, starting with stealing the first-born blessing from his brother.
Jacob may be our classic hero/anti-hero, with the details of his narrative strand in the book of Genesis showing us the shadow side of valiant leadership. Are we a tradition that puts too much stock in the forward-facing, sword-yielding, wrestle-mania heroics? Is it a symptom of our need to reverse ancient as well as prevailing strands of victimhood-ness?
Most narratives, I acknowledge, require protagonists and antagonists. The Maccabees did have enemies, both external and internal. And. The Hasmonean dynasty was flawed, short-lived, and led to a tragic and paradigm-shattering shift in Jewish history. Maybe this is the lesson of Hanukkah that offers the clearest, most realistic model for healthy heroics: face your flaws, or peril ensues.
When the bright lights of your Hanukkah candles cast a shadow, rejoice in both, knowing that they need each other. Sending bright, shining wishes for a hag urim sameah – a joyous festival of lights,
Rabbi Liz
