Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster considers what commitment means in Judaism.
In my previous article for Christian Today I discussed the meaning of gratitude. Today, as we approach the 8-day Festival of Chanukah (December 14th-22nd) the subject of commitment comes to mind.
Chanukah is known as the Festival of Rededication and of Lights. We count and add a candle each day, one more every time, till the final 8th day the room is flooded in lights. These are placed at the window for passersby to witness and rejoice.
According to the Jewish faith, we believe that by counting the days we become accountable to G-d and the community, as we spread enlightenment to the world.
Why did the Jews of Israel, and especially the Maccabees, stand up to and fight against the powerful Syrian Greeks who demanded yet further Hellenization of their small country?
The tiny Jewish population of Israel in 164 BCE fought not so much to defeat the Syrians, but rather to retain their Jewish identity and remember who they were.
They were mindful of Abraham’s promise and their covenant with G-d. Therefore they would not eat pork and neither could they permit the Temple to be defiled.
The Syrians were after their soul and spirit, i.e. after what the Jews were about. Therefore the Jews had no choice but to resist and take back control of their religion and way of life. To this they were committed. What is commitment. Is it love?
In the 1964 musical, ‘Fiddler on the Roof’, Tevye suddenly asks his wife Golde if she loves him. Golde is stunned and this is how she responds:
‘Do I love You? For 25 years I’ve washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned your house, given you children, milked the cow. After 25 years, why talk about love right now?' L
Later, she says, ‘For 25 years I’ve lived with him, fought with him, starved with him; 25 years my bed is his. If that’s not love, what is?’
I would suggest that this arranged marriage gradually, over the years, developed into commitment and that Tevye was having a mid-life crisis! Commitment is more than just an emotion.
As I write we are also approaching the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen (December 16th 1775 - July 18th 1817). In a way this quintessentially English author, who wrote six novels, as well as a number of poems and prayers, is the epitome of understatement and level-headedness.
I have always been struck by the title of her first novel, ‘Sense and Sensibility’, written in 1811. As a child I wondered what the difference was between sense and sensibility. Both seemed to point to the head rather than the heart, to common sense and suppression of feelings and emotion. But later I realized that, due to the French influence, ‘sensibility’ was in those days more akin to sensitivity, feeling and emotion, whereas ‘sense’ represented what we call common sense and reason.
In her books, Austen was reacting against the gothic novels and romantic fiction of the 18th century. Especially in Germany, their greatest writer, Goethe (1749-1832), had caused a sensation with his ‘Sorrows of Young Werther’ (1774), written a year before Jane’s birth and quickly translated into English. The result was a number of suicides and other forms of destructive behaviour, as young men emulated Werther and took his fictional story too seriously.
This lovelorn publication by Germany’s greatest writer, who became a cult figure, was followed immediately by the catastrophe for the British of the American Declaration of Independence (July 4th 1776), the French Revolution of 1789 and the Napoleonic wars during which Jane grew up and witnessed the uncertainty and instability amongst the people. No wonder Jane, in the Regency period, favoured sense over sensibility and admired commitment, loyalty and security over frivolity and flights of fancy.
At Chanukah we reflect on the immense heroism of a tiny minority who kept the lights burning while all around them was chaos and mayhem. This tiny minority refused to compromise their covenant with G-d even on pain of death.
What the Syrian Greeks were demanding was that the Jews should be more at ease in the world as it is, to become ‘one of us’, in other words. The downside was that in becoming ‘one of us’, the Jews would no longer be Jews. And this was too much to ask.
The Syrian Greeks did not want to commit genocide. This wasn’t Purim. Many Jews did go along with the Syrian Greeks. Who wouldn’t want a more comfortable life? But those who demonstrated commitment and bravery, the Maccabees and their followers, were the ancestors of those brave souls who for up to two years lived in the hell of the Gaza tunnels. These living skeletons hoped against hope and tried to light their makeshift candles at Chanukah, although there were no windows on Hamas territory.
No wonder ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ and Jane Austen both advocate commitment over the transient. No wonder Jane Austen is still revered as the best kind of English writer in an era long gone.
At this Chanukah time, we will light the candles and remember all those quietly brave souls who went to their deaths, not because they were fanatics like their murderers, but because they were committed and therefore accountable, committed to the tiny positive actions that make up the fabric of a life well lived.
That 0.2% of the global population continue to have the effect that they have goes to show that size isn’t everything and that tinyism can be a positive force for good when it stands up for G-d and its beliefs. This tiny people in a tiny land (0.1% of the world’s surface) still survives because of commitment, positivity, and true heroism.
At Chanukah we read the Story of Joseph (Genesis 41-44) accompanied by the Haftorah reading of Zechariah (2:14-4:7). At the end of his vision (4:6), the prophet states: "'Not by might, nor by power, but My Spirit,’ says the Lord of Hosts." For real commitment it is the spirit that counts and that’s what the Jews have in spades.
