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Hanukkah: A Holiday for the Under-Prepared

I understand that the Federal Government has decided to make the first day of Hanukkah a Federal Holiday this year - how nice!  As anyone who has ever been in the business of organizing communal tefillah knows, Hanukkah is the perfect time to start thinking about Purim. Next week, I will be restarting last year’s Learning-to-Layn Megillat Esther Chabura. Last year, two members of the community who had never layned Megillah before layned for us at the Women’s Megillat Esther reading, and it was wonderful.  I’d like us to get to four new layners this year -   perhaps one of them is you. And perhaps this is your time. Who knows, perhaps you have attained your position in  the  for such a year as this...? 

In the spirit of full transparency, I am very glad that it is not Purim yet. Like a lot of Jewish holidays, Purim is wonderful and it takes a lot of work. One of the things I love about Hanukkah is that it asks so little of us, at a time of year - at least this year - where I often feel like I have very little left to give. I am not doing homemade applesauce this year. This year, I am the applesauce. But I can light a candle.  I can do that. I’d like to suggest that the relative ease of Hanukkah is not merely an accident of halachic chance, but part of the point of Hanukkah. When the Jewish people lit the Menorah in the rededicated temple, they knew that there wasn’t enough. Showing up without enough can sometimes feel worse than showing up empty handed.  Surely, there were people in the Temple that day who said, we shouldn’t light the lamps at all. We don’t have enough. If we can’t do it right, we shouldn’t do it at all.  The Hellenization of this space has  been too thorough - let us burn it all down, and build a new Temple, one that does not carry in its walls the memories of Greek profanation, idolatry, and shame. 

But Hanukkah is not a holiday about fresh starts, about invincibility, or perfection. Hanukkah comes around the time of year where you’re forced to admit to yourself all the ways that you haven’t lived up to your Rosh Hashanah resolutions. But Hanukkah is the holiday of rededication, of repair, and rebuilding, with imperfect materials, after destruction. 

Today, on the Shabbat before Hanukkah, we read the story of Yehudah and Tamar. It is the story of two desperate people making imperfect choices. The Yehuda we meet in this week’s parsha has done terrible things. When his brothers had discussed killing Yosef in the pit, Yehuda is the one who suggests instead, that they sell him. Maybe Yehuda is just stalling for time, or  maybe he really is this venal.Afterwards, Yehuda has kept quiet, and helped deceive his father Yaakov.  

When we meet Yehuda in this week’s parsha, he is alone. It seems that he cannot bear to deceive his father, or to implicate himself and his brother in Yosef’s disappearance. He has set off in search of a fresh start. He marries a Canaanite woman. He has three children, and even finds the oldest son a wife - Tamar. But something is wrong in this household,  and soon Yehudah’s daughter in law is a twice-over widow. She must marry Yehuda’s last remaining son, Shelah. But Yehdua, understandably, doesn’t want to give him to her. Rabbi Tali Adler suggests that these scenes show us that Yehuda’s actions are motivated by guilt: Yehuda believes he is being punished for his betrayal of Yosef, and for his deception of Yaakov. Why should he condemn another son to death for his sins? But he He sends her away to be an agunah in her father’s house. Then, Yehuda’s wife dies. 

ותמת בת־שוע אשת־יהודה וינחם יהודה ויעל …

“And the Daughter of Shua (Yehuda’s wife) died, ve’yinachem Yehuda v’yial.”, ‘When Judah’s period of mourning was over, and he got up.” On its face, veyinachem is not such an unusual phrase. It means to be comforted. We’ve seen it elsewhere, when Isaac is comforted over the death of his mother. But the first time it shows up, ve’yinachem has a different, and almost completely contradictory meaning: “וַיִּנָּחֶם י״י כִּי עָשָׂה אֶת הָאָדָם בָּאָרֶץ”  

Vayinechem comes up right before God brings the Flood upon the world.  

Which nachem is Yehuda feeling - Isaacs or God’s? Has Yehuda been comforted after mourning his wife? Or does he begin to regret the entire enterprise? Does he regret creating life all together? Yehuda’s actions in the next few pseukim suggest that this is the case. After Yehuda is nachem, he leaves home, and leaves his family, again. Rather than seek out a wife for himself or even another wife for his surviving son, Yehuda seeks out the company of a prostitute, and is even willing to give her the symbols of his rule, of his family, his staff, cord, and seal, as surety for their exchange.  These are the actions of a man who has given up on a future, for himself, and for his family. The 16th century Italian commentator Sforno criticizes Yehuda’s response to Batshua’s death, saying, “Yehuda should have brought Tamar back to replace his wife [for Shela], just as Avraham did for Isaac [after the death of Sarah!]”

When Avraham is bereaved, he seeks to make sure his child is taken care of. When Isaac is nachem, it means life will go on.  But when Hashem is nachem, it means human life will be almost completely wiped out. This is the nachem of Yehuda - the regret of one who believes that things have become so bad that they are irredeemable. Better to be alone, than to try again and fail.  But Hashem ultimately disavows this kind of nachem, making a covenant with human beings swearing never to give up on us so completely ever again. 

Fortunately, for us, Yehuda also ultimately rejects this kind of nihilism. But he does not - can not -  do it on his own. Tamar can see a future for Yehuda that Yehuda cannot. When Tamar hears that Yehuda hasn’t sought to find a wife, for himself, or for Shelah, she jumps into action. Tamar disguises herself as a prostitute and sedduces Yehdua at place called Petach Enayyim, the opening of the eyes.  When Yehuda hears that Tamar is pregnant, seemingly by adultery, I suspect Yehuda feels some kind of relief. The sages note that Yehuda’s response to Tamar’s infidelity is extreme:  הוציאוה ותשרף – take her out and burn her. Burn it all down, he thinks. Leave nothing behind. Start Fresh. 

But then Tamar presents him with the staff, cord, and seal that he gave up, proving to him that he will once again be a father. Ironically, the evidence that Tamar presents to Yehuda, carries a double meaning. These symbols of Yehuda’s power are both reminders of how far Yehuda has fallen, and a reminder of Yehuda’s potential, a reminder of who he could be. When Tamar becomes the mother of Yehuda’s children, she shows him that he cannot separate her fate from his own, that withdrawal into self, that running away, is not an answer to despair. He can’t erase his Canaanite family any more than he can erase his wicked brothers and his heartbroken father. There is no starting over for Yehuda. There is only return and rededication. 

Tamar’s bold gambit doesn’t offer Yehuda a fresh start - but it does give him a way forward. Every day her presence will remind him of what he has lost. But her presence also refutes the idea that his story is over. Tamar’s interpolation is an invitation rededicate himself, לַחֲנוֹך, both to his immediate family and to his covenental family. She sees something in him, or in his family, that is worth perpetuating.  The next time we see Yehuda, he will have returned to his brothers, with Tamar in tow. He shows up, knowing they’re not perfect, but committed to doing better by his father and brothers next time. He will be the Yehuda that offers himself up instead of Binyamin, the Yehuda that shows Yosef that reconciliation is possible.  

The Jewish people’s “ask” on that first Hanukkah was not so huge: they just wanted to relight the lamps.  But of course, even with divine intervention, things could not not go back to the way they were before. The Jewish people’s attempt to repair the desecration of the Temple resulted in a miracle, a miracle that would forever become a part of the redemptive story of the Temple. You cannot tell the story of the Hanukkah miracle without telling the story of the Temple’s desecration. That’s the tricky thing about Hanukkah the shame and the glory are intertwined. It seems like we can accept this about our national stories, Hannukah, and Purim, and Pesach, far more easily than we can about our personal stories.

But the story of Judah and Tamar teaches us that redemption can indeed come from imperfect, even shameful beginnings. We are not asked to come to the project as finished projects, perfectly tahor, prepared for everything. We are only asked to remain open to the idea that, with both human and divine help, our redemption is possible. As you light the Hanukkah candles, ask yourself -  what is the fire in you that has gone out? What is the fuel that you are lacking, that could make that fire burn again? What did you tell yourself on Rosh Hashanah that you were going to do, that you haven’t been doing? What would make that possible? Can you tell someone in your life about this? Can you be bold enough to ask for help? Or can you have it in mind when you daven, when you sing Maoz Tzur? 

This Hanukkah, I invite you to rededicate yourself to something you have dropped. Maybe that project is learning to Layn Megillah for Purim, in which case, I have good news - you can start again next week. Maybe the project going to Minyan. You can start in a few hours. Maybe it’s talking less in shul, or being more patient with your neighbors when they talk in shul. You can start that right now.  The story of Hanukkah, and the story of Yehuda and Tamar, teach us that we don’t need to repair everything in order to begin receiving Divine Help. Whatever you have to give is enough. And even when it really doesn’t feel that way, you are not alone. Perhaps, like Yehuda, the help you receive will come from someone who believes in you more than you believe in yourself. Or perhaps, like the Maccabees, the help you receive will not come from human hands. 

Sometimes a miracle looks like a lamp, overflowing with oil. 

Sometimes the miracle is just to be loved.

Shabbat Shalom, and Happy Hanukkah.