Sacred fires will be lit tonight on windowsills around the world, as Jewish people celebrate the first night of Hanukkah with lighting up Menorahs, remembering ancient victories against oppressors, the miraculous survival of light and hope against the darkness of despair. The construction of this delightful holiday, a relative newcomer to the Jewish calendar, with questionably historical origins already debated in the Talmud, is a mix of memories about military might and supernatural miracles. The Maccabees - those who carry big weapons - have gone down in history as freedom fighters. But closer analysis may point out that they were religious zealots, fighting not just the Syrian-Greeks but also their own people who chose to incorporate popular world culture and blend in or assimilate with the dominant culture of their day. For many generations, this holiday valorized Jewish power - a fantasy of powerless minorities oppressed or at best tolerated. These days, political realities being what they are, the mythic meaning of these ancient warriors and the messaging around their nationalistic and violent opposition to other people, beliefs and cultures is a serious cause for concern. Thankfully, Hanukkah can be constructed as a celebration of seasonal joy, the renewal of hope and spring from the midst of cold winter, and the endless supply of faith in justice found within each flickering flame. More about Hanukkah in the next days as the Book of Judges meets the Jewish calendar this week- including the last two chapters that lead to the tragic end of the story of Samson - and it’s all about the force of fire.
Following his failed wedding to a nameless Philstine beauty who betrayed him - blackmailed by her own people - Samson returns to her with gifts but is turned away by her father who already handed her over to another man. Furious, Samson plans his incredible fierce revenge:
וַיֵּ֣לֶךְ שִׁמְשׁ֔וֹן וַיִּלְכֹּ֖ד שְׁלֹשׁ־מֵא֣וֹת שׁוּעָלִ֑ים וַיִּקַּ֣ח לַפִּדִ֗ים וַיֶּ֤פֶן זָנָב֙ אֶל־זָנָ֔ב וַיָּ֨שֶׂם לַפִּ֥יד אֶחָ֛ד בֵּין־שְׁנֵ֥י הַזְּנָב֖וֹת בַּתָּֽוֶךְ׃
Samson went and caught three hundred foxes. He took torches and, turning the foxes tail to tail, he placed a torch between each pair of tails.
He then released these poor creatures in the fields, bursting, mid spring season, with crops that soon become cinders. The Phillstines in return set his ex-wife’s house on fire, killing her and her family. Samson keeps on fighting and the chapter ends with the statement that he then becomes the Judge of Israel for the next 20 years.
What does this story stand for? In Lion's Honey, David Grossman, with an eye to those old days and contemporary Israeli and Jewish history is quite illuminating:
“Just think what kind of effort a man must invest in order to catch three hundred foxes, tie them in pairs to one another, tie torches between them and then light them, and then send them out into the fields. But no less impressive than the physical undertaking are the planning, the idea, the inventiveness...Let us again read the story he’s telling us here, written in letters of foxes and fire. He ties the foxes in pairs. He fixes a flaming torch between them. We can feel what happens to the foxes at this moment, the crazed running as they try to break free of the other fox, their twin, whom they think is the one that is burning them. All of a sudden each is transformed into a dual being, all afire, that cannot be saved from itself. Each fox tries to escape in a different direction but drags his double, his opposite, his nemesis, along with him. This is apparently what bursts from the depths of Samson’s soul as his hidden ‘artistic signature’, which he heaves with all his strength at the world. His doubleness, the fire raging within him, the powerful urges that tear him to shreds, the pairs of conflicting forces warring inside him always: monasticism and lust, the super-muscled frame and artistic-spiritual heart; the murderous cruelty that erupts from him, versus the poet within; the recognition that he may only be the tool of a ‘divine providence’ that utilizes him as it sees fit, alongside powerful flickering of free will and the urge for personal expression. On top of which is his determination to keep his secret to himself, together with the blatant and desperate need to reveal himself to one other intimate soul.”
What Grossman points out about the duelling forces that govern Samson and are performed in his cruel act of terrorism that destroys the local economy echoes familiar to the very tensions that still apply to Jewish identities today - inside/outside, local/global, separate/universal, national/international. As a leading voice in the moral and liberal Israeli camp that is currently on the defense and in dire danger, Grossman clearly points out that the story of Samson, like that of the Maccabees, is still used to justify one side of this ongoing tension, at the expense of the more nuanced elements of his story, and ours:
“Samson’s tale earned a place in the Bible, where it is told at length and in detail; and if at times the Jewish tradition has read Samson pejoratively – owing to his aggressiveness, his roguish behavior and skirt-chasing – he is also inscribed in the Jewish consciousness as a national hero and a symbol. Perhaps this is because, despite everything, in the deep structures of his personality – his loneliness and isolation, his strong need to preserve his separateness and mystery, yet also his limitless desire to mix and assimilate with gentiles – Samson expresses and implies qualities that are ‘Jewish’ indeed.
Jews throughout the ages took pride in the tales of his heroism and yearned for the physical strength, bravery, and manliness that he represented. They esteemed, no less, his ability to apply force without any restraints or moral inhibitions, an ability which history withheld from the trod-upon Jews for millennia, until the establishment of the State of Israel. In Hebrew, he is almost always referred to as ‘Samson the hero’, and elite combat units of the Israeli army have been named after him, from ‘Samson’s Foxes’ of the 1948 War of Independence to the ‘Samson’ unit created during the first Palestinian intifada in the late 1980s (not to mention a chain of body-building clubs called the ‘Samson Institute’, set up in the 1960s, by a muscle-bound rabbi named Rafael Halperin).”
Beyond the modern legacy of Samson’s foxes, the mythic origins are even more bizarre and baffling. Could there be a connection between this tale of fox tails on fire and one of the most obscure Roman ritual of this sacred season? How may this be connected to Samson’s name - and the Shamash - the ancient God of the Sun who then becomes an element in the Hanukkah ritual? Check this intriguing link to go down this fox hole.
There is one more love story waiting for the angry superhero who leads Israel for 20 years, all the while zigzagging between loyalties to his own people and his love of the women next door. This love object has a name, and a pair of scissors, and with her loyalty to her people over her love to this man, the story will come crashing down in the next and last chapter.
On this first night of Hanukkah let us light up the flames of faith and not of fury, celebrating the eternal sun that Samson is named for, shining brightly with days that go longer as soon as the Solstice, the longer night of the year, coming up this week, will be behind us, leading us, slowly to spring. That is likely the original reason for this festive season - the real miracle of nature’s patient cycles and seasons, dancing, not dueling, with darkness and light.
Joyful and Meaningful Holiday of Lights!
(Enjoy these God-Optional Hanukkah Blessings: Print version or Mobile version)
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