subject: Jewish Celebrations - Never Personal. Always National. [print this page] When comparing Jewish celebrations to celebrations of other religions, a sharp distinction emerges. Jewish celebrations never commemorate an individual. Other religious celebrations, on the other hand, always do. This is directly related to the fact that of all the world"s major religion, the Jewish religion is the only one termed a "People," as in the Jewish People. There is no term the Christian People, Muslim People, or Buddhist People. There is simply Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, and those who believe in those respective creeds. That being so, Jewish celebrations, being those of a people, center around events that happened to the people as a whole. Other religious holidays center around the founder of the belief or creed. Jewish celebrations are not simply the only ones that are people-based. There are, in fact, no Jewish celebrations at all centered around Biblical figures or leaders. Judaism started as a family, and then flowered into a nation. Therefore, Jewish celebrations, focus on national experiences.
Going through the calendar of Jewish celebrations, not a single Jewish celebration involves a Biblical figure or Jewish hero. There are three major Jewish celebrations in the Bible, known as the three pilgrimage festivals, the concept of which is already national, a pilgrimage being to a national capital. Passover is the first of these Jewish celebrations. During the Jewish celebration of Passover, the Jewish people commemorate the exodus from Egypt, marking the transfer of the ownership of the Jewish people from Pharaoh to God. The second pilgrimage festival of the three Jewish celebrations marks the acceptance of the Divine Law Code, the Torah, at Mount Sinai by the nation as a whole. Sukkot is the third of these Jewish celebrations, centered on the Jewish People's wandering through the desert before they entered the Promised Land. God had sheltered them in huts, commanding the people to do the same during the third of the pilgrimage Jewish celebrations.
Of these three major Jewish celebrations none mentions any leader. No Moses, no Aaron, no forefathers. In fact, Moses is completely left out of the liturgy of Passover entirely - the Passover Haggaddah. Any personal event of theirs cannot be one of the Jewish celebrations, since it wouldn't be a national experience. This trend continues even after the exile, where none of the post-exilic Jewish celebrations commemorate any one person. The first example is Purim, one of the post Babylonian exile Jewish celebrations. Mordecai and Esther are not hallowed, but rather the salvation of the entire Jewish people by God from Haman who sought to kill them. Chanukkah is an even later addition to Jewish celebrations. It is actually the strongest example of a negation of celebration of anything individual.
Chanukkah became one of the Jewish celebrations by virtue of a military victory. There was one particular victory at that time that was marked as a special Jewish celebration that forbade fasting on that day, called Nicanor Day, after the Greek general that was defeated by the Macabees. This became a Jewish celebration of the Macabees. The Rabbis did not like this and got rid of this holiday by turning it into the Fast of Esther, and redefined Chanukkah as another of the Jewish celebrations celebrating national survival against religious persecution. They used the miracle of the oil to redirect this Jewish celebration to the national level, away from the Macabees.
Buddhism celebrates the Buddha or his ideas. Christianity celebrates Jesus or his ideas. Islam celebrates Mohammed or his ideas. Judaism's leaders never made it into any holiday.
by: Shalom Goldfarb
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