Chanukah, Israel, and the light we need

December always draws me into a particular frame of mind. Part of that is simply how life in Australia shifts at this time of year.  The weather warms. The days lengthen. Evening light lingers in a way that slows everything down just a touch. Schools begin to wind back. Workplaces soften at the edges. And even without meaning to, we find ourselves looking back at the months we have travelled through and imagining the shape of the months ahead. 

Jewish tradition teaches us to do this work before Rosh Hashanah. But the rhythm of an Australian summer has its own quiet pull. A natural pause. A moment that invites reflection almost without our choosing it. The year thins, sunlight stretches, and our inner world turns gently toward meaning making. 

This year, that gentle pause has led me back to the story of Chanukah. Or, more precisely, to the story beneath the story. The layered one. The older one. The version that reveals how the holiday first took shape and how each generation has reimagined it. And the way the ancient tensions within it feel very much alive in our world now, especially when we think about Israel. 

Chanukah does not appear in the Tanakh. Its earliest sources are found in 1 and 2 Maccabees, preserved not in our Bible but in the Christian Old Testament. They describe a Jewish community facing real pressure. Cultural. Religious. Existential. A community determined to practise Judaism authentically. Not as prescribed by foreign powers. But shaped by their own covenant, conscience, and communal life. The Maccabees rise as people of conviction, determined to protect the integrity of Jewish practice and belief. 

When they purify the Temple, they celebrate for eight days. Almost certainly a delayed Sukkot. The great pilgrimage festival they had missed while fighting for Jerusalem. Palm branches. Hallel Psalms. A community breathing again.