Welcome to 2025! A new (gregorian) year has begun, and the challenges forced on us by Patriarchal-Colonialism, from ongoing genocides, biosphere collapse, and lack of access to food, water, community, and land continue. To end 2024 and start 2025, I wrote a Hanukkah reflection that touches on some of these difficulties.
For the last 76+ years Palestinians have been living a perpetual Hanukkah. 1
What do I mean by that? Let’s start by breaking down Hanukkah. Hanukkah is a traditional Judean celebration of the Festival of Lights that began in the 2nd century BCE.2 Known also as the Festival of Dedication, it was started to celebrate the cultural and political resilience of Jewish Palestinians in the face of Syrio-Hellenic aggression and colonialism.
Syrio-Hellenic armies, having split off from Alexander the Great’s massive empire, attempted to conquer Palestine and replace the local cultural and religious customs with their own.3 In the cultural landscape of the time, that would have been explicitly understood as limiting Judean political sovereignty as well. Deities were often understood as being tied not just to a people, but to place as well. Denial of a people’s god and replacing it with another was the same as saying the foreign god, and therefore the human regent of that god, was the true owner of the land. It was a form of displacement, especially for those who refused to go along with the change.
So when Antiochus IV built a statue of Zeus in the Judean Temple, it carried religious claims of Zeus’ sovereignty over Yahu, and therefore claims of sovereignty over Palestine.4 Some Jews acclimated to the new status quo, many were used to Hellenic influence in the region at the time, yet others recognized the attack on their freedom and self-determination and fought back.
The most famous of these fighters would be Judah the Maccabbe, who led a guerilla war against the occupation, and Judith, who seduced and assassinated the occupying military leader. It is significant that both Judah and Judith were the children of (unrelated) Judean priests. The violation of the Temple, the theft of its sacred objects, and the placement of a statue representing a foreign god would have been heavily felt by their families. It is also significant that the actions they took led to the freedom and liberation of the whole of Palestine, not simply the religious freedom to worship how they pleased.
The Maccabees’ victory would be celebrated with a delayed observance of the seven day Festival of Sukkot, however due to the significance of the event and of what was being celebrated, the week-long celebration was quickly established as its own festival. A major aspect of the celebration, attested to in the Talmud, is that when the victorious Palestinians attempted to light the 7-pronged Temple Menorah, there was only enough oil for one night of burning.5 The story goes that for the next eight nights, until new oil could be pressed, the single-nights worth of oil continued to provide enough to light the Menorah. Historian Jospehus would say this is why the holiday was called Light, or the Festival of Light.
There are two major interpretations of the story of the Menorah and oil in Rabbinic Judaism, belonging to Rab Hillel and Rab Shammai. R. Hillel taught that as the nights progressed the oil stretched further, and so on the last night there was enough oil to light all eight lights. R. Shammai held essentially the opposite view, that there was enough oil to light all lights the first night, and it decreased until there was only one light. Followers of the two different rulings light their Hannukhiot in the same manner, either increasing light, or decreasing light.
Some say that Jews should follow R. Hillel’s ruling today, and R. Shammai’s during the messianic era. A time when an anointed one would restore the Palestinian people’s fortunes, end oppression globally, and bring world peace. Because I a Muslim in a Jewslim household.6 I do believe that a messianic era began with Jesus the Christ and Mary of Nazareth, so I have adopted R. Shammai’s practice, while my wife follows R. Hillel. This means that in our house during the week of Hanukkah we have both increasing and decreasing light. This is appropriate for both the winter months, when light is ritually understood to be undergoing rebirth, and our modern political understanding of Hanukkah, where the cycle of resistance waxes and wanes.
Then there is Judith, whose name means woman of Judea. According to tradition the Maccabees’ military victory would not have been possible without her much more intimate victory over the Assyrian General, Holofernes. While the scriptural book of Judith is widely understood to be a fictionalized narrative, there remains the likelihood that a woman like Judith, or women like Judith, played significant roles in the survival and victory of the Palestinian freedom movement of the time. The story of Judith represents a significant shift in the understanding of what acts are considered holy for women. Judith determines that Holofernes must die, so she prays to Goddess to make her a good liar. Then she dresses as seductively as possible, and presents herself to the enemy general as a traitor to her people. A party is thrown in her honor, where she feeds Holofernes the saltiest cheeses and meats, in order to ensure he gets very drunk. And then when he thinks he is going to take her to his chamber to ahem, take her, she chops off his head and penis and carries them back to her city in victory.
Many of the actions Judith takes that allow her to succeed such as lying, dressing seductively, and murder are proscribed for women throughout earlier Israelite/Palestinian writings, and in the story of Delilah in the Book of Judges, a woman behaving in a similar manner is depicted as a problem. Yet these actions are often what is expected of or left to women as well, and it is that in part that makes them such a powerful and surprising form of resistance.
If we light our candles in remembrance of the Maccabite victory, if we have cheese and salty meats and heady drink to remember Judith, then we can’t forget who the Maccabees are today, and where we can find our modern-day Judiths. We must look no further than Palestine, and their heroic self-defence against the invading zionists. According to the books of Judith and 1st and 2nd Maccabees liberation was won through guerilla war, through subterfuge, ambush, and deceit. The occupied used whatever weapons they had available to free their home from an occupying military force. The Palestinian Resistance, which includes a number of religious and secular organizations, is made of people, living human beings fighting for their homes, their lives, their land. The people of Palestine are the oil that fuels the fire of resistance. And it is a true Hanukkah miracle that there is still enough oil to keep the Light burning. The Light of Hanukkah burns throughout the entire land of Palestine, and the zionist menace can never quench it.
Judith used deception to get close to her enemy, so one modern day Judith I want to briefly highlight is Leila Khaled. A member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, she has been a soldier, a diplomat, and she is a former hijacker, a skill that would have required intentional deception to be successful at, and with the same goal as Judith. Liberation. Now, for my readers who may bristle at the word “hijacker”, in the early years of the PFLP, hijacking was used to bring awareness to the hostage situation in Palestine, by creating one of their own. It was not uncommon for a plane flying over Palestine to be forcibly diverted away from landing in zionist controlled territory. Unfortunately since her time the tactic has evolved in a way that no longer serves the cause of liberation.
Today Leila is heavily involved in working for the safety, security, and power of Palestinian women, in the face of occupation and patriarchal violence.
In 2024 Hanukkah overlapped with two other Sarah & Hajaric holidays, Christmas and Fatimiyya.7 Christmas is typically understood as a Christian holiday, though since Jesus and Mary are Prophets in Islam, that isn’t quite correct. There are many Muslims who celebrate Christmas. I celebrate what I call Eid al-Masih, the “Feast of the Messiah”. Jesus and Mary represent the same hope as Hanukkah, freedom from oppression and occupation. Liberation.
It is not uncommon during December to hear people speak of “Christmas miracles”, the Christmas miracle this year is that in the face of Genocide, Goddess brings new life. Her child is born in the rubble, and I can speak truthfully that one of these children, born without anywhere to call home, and under the constant threat of Zionist/State violence, will change the world.
Fatimiyya is a mourning holiday that covers a period of a month or so, during which Shi’i Muslims mourn the Martyrdom of Fatima al-Zahra, the daughter of the Prophet. Tradition says that when her husband’s claims to leadership over the Muslim community were disputed, either because of his youth or because his claim derived partly through Fatima, she and her husband secluded themselves in her house. In an attempt to force her husband to swear allegiance to the newly elected successor, her house was broken into and she was injured. She miscarried her fourth child as a result, and died less than a year later, presumably from her injuries. Before her death she continued to advocate for what she believed to be the correct interpretation of her father’s teachings and against what she believed to be political overreach and abuse by the elected successor. In mourning her death and celebrating her life, we mourn the loss of a vibrant voice for liberation and justice and celebrate the truth that women are often the most vibrant of these voices.
Judith, Fatima, Mary, Leila Khaled…
With Hanukkah behind us, and the horizon reaching ahead, I pray that these saints guide us to a horizon of liberation.
- There are many different accepted ways to spell Hanukkah, originating from differing cultural origins. Hanukkah is derived from the classical Hebrew spelling and pronunciation, as well as being the preferred english spelling of Sephardim. While Chanukah is derived from the Ashkenazi and modern Hebrew pronunciations. I have chosen the former. ↩︎
- Judea was an area of Palestinian land that has been at times an Israelite tribal province, a Kingdom, and conquered territory. The words Jew and Jewish derive from Judean, and referred originally to the inhabitants of the region and their cultural and religious practices. ↩︎
- The land of Palestine (Falasteen in Arabic) has also been known by its inhabitants as Canaan and Yisreal. There is no consensus on which name is older or has a more direct relationship to the land, each one likely deriving from various inhabitants and their languages. This essay uses Palestine to show solidarity with the indigenous Palestinian people of today, who live under a horrific holocaust regime perpetuated by fascists using the name of “Israel” to advance their own colonial claims on the land. ↩︎
- Yahu is likely a variation of the Israelite chief deity’s name, the proper version of which is not supposed to be spelled out or pronounced and is represented with the four letters (in english) YHWH. ↩︎
- Most modern Menorahs are nine-pronged, having eight lights, with a ninth helper light. Since the original Menorah had only seven prongs, it is likely that the increase to eight plus a helper, reflects the ritual observance of the holiday, rather than the original ritual item . ↩︎
- Jewslim can mean a variety of things, but in our case it means I am Muslim, my wife Jewish, and we meet together. This meeting is aided by the Isra’iliyyat. Isra’iliyyat is the term for a genre of Islamic commentary of traditional narrative that bears strong resemblance to Jewish, Christian and Zoroastrian material. Initially understood as providing the context for Muslim practice and belief, many Isra’iliyyat narratives and traditions have become disputed and subjected to claims of being “un-Islamic.” ↩︎
- “Sarah and Hajaric” is a term coin by Dr. Ibrahim Baba as a feminist alternative to “Abrahamic”. ↩︎
Sources:
The Book of Judith
The First and Second Book of Maccabees
Hanukkah – Wikipedia
How Do You Spell Hanukkah? Or Is It Chanukah?
The Hanukkah Story
Rabbi Jericho Vincent Instagram Story