Hanukkah lamp, Italy (Nineteenth century) (picture through the Jewish Museum)
What can we rejoice on Hanukkah? After rapidly mentioning the miraculous jar of temple oil that burned for eight days, many sources will let you know it’s concerning the unlikely triumph of the Maccabees, who fought for Jewish spiritual freedom within the face of persecution by the Assyrians (Syrian Greeks) who then dominated the land of Judah. On the heart of the vacation is the menorah, an eight-branched candelabra we mild every evening, including one candle per day, till on the eighth and ultimate evening it’s ablaze in its full glory.
However if you happen to check out a set of old school Italian and German menorahs, you’ll discover a completely different determine time and again who goes unmentioned in the usual story: a lone lady, triumphantly elevating a knife. That is Judith, the OG Jewish badass girl who was as soon as generally celebrated at Hanukkah time alongside the Maccabees. Her spear as soon as shone within the candlelight, reflecting these menorahs’ intricate metalwork and illuminating one other chapter in Jewish historical past — misplaced within the overlapping shadows of modern-day misogyny, assimilation, and Zionism.
Artemisia Gentileschi, “Judith Beheading Holofernes” (1611–1613), oil on canvas (through Wikimedia Commons)
Her story, instructed in tons of of permutations by the centuries, goes one thing like this: Judith is a younger rich widow within the city of Bethulia through the time of the Maccabees when she takes it upon herself to avoid wasting her individuals from the Assyrian military. She sheds her historically ragged and drab mourning garments, attire up in her best materials and jewels, and creeps into the enemy’s camp with a sack of salty cheese and wine.
As soon as within the heart of camp, she slips into the tent of their normal, Holofernes. Seemingly praising his navy may, she presents him her scrumptious snacks — and maybe a bit of extra. Holofernes rapidly gobbles up the cheese, failing to understand that its saltiness is making him thirstier than typical, main him to drink fairly a little bit of wine. When he falls right into a drunken sleep, Judith grabs his sword and slices off his head. She and her maidservant stuff his head into their sack, and the following morning they elevate it on a spike for all to see. The Assyrian military bursts into chaos and worry, and shortly they retreat. The siege on Bethulia is lifted, and, successfully, her individuals are saved.
Brass Italian menorahs (possible Nineteenth century) included in Lighting the World: Menorahs Across the Globe on the Museum at Eldridge Avenue (pictures Isabella Segalovich/Hyperallergic)
The Guide of Judith just isn’t within the Hebrew Bible — just like the Books of Maccabees, it was integrated into the Catholic and Japanese Orthodox Christian bibles and is included within the “Apocrypha” part of some Protestant bibles. But, someday within the Center Ages, Judith turned a serious Hanukkah heroine. Ultimately, it wasn’t Judah the Maccabee however Judith who appeared within the heart of menorahs, flanked by lions and mermaids, wearing nice robes, and at all times holding her signature dagger. And by the sixteenth century, some rabbis steered snacking on cheese to honor her bravery, commemorating the salty tidbits that after felled Holofernes. Italianate Jews took to the duty at hand with their typical culinary brilliance, combining the miracle of the oil with Judith’s story by concocting delectable fried ricotta pancakes.
Left: Hanukkah lamp crafted by Johann Adam Boller (Nineteenth century), Germany (picture through the Jewish Museum) Proper: Menorah, presumably from Germany (late Nineteenth century) (picture by Yair Hovav, © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem)
Judith was particularly standard in Italy — and never simply amongst Jews. Depicted by dozens of Italian artists, she represented the triumph of an oppressed individuals over their oppressors. Some Italians noticed parallels between the occupying Assyrian forces and the Medici oligarchy in Florence. So it’s little shock that Artemisia Gentileschi, one of many few distinguished girls Baroque artists, drew inspiration from the story to depict herself murdering her rapist, painter Agostino Tassi. Maybe the fascination that each Jewish and Gentiles within the area had with Judith was one other issue behind there being so many Italianate Menorahs that includes her kind; usually, non-Jewish craftspeople have been truly creating ritual objects throughout that period, so they might have indulged of their shared love right here within the type of these candelabras.
Many sages in contrast Judith’s heroism with that of Esther, the legendary Persian Jewish queen who risked her life to avoid wasting her individuals, and who is widely known within the Guide of Esther and on the vacation of Purim. Not like the Maccabees, whose marketing campaign towards the Assyrians additionally included massacring scores of fellow Jews and different countrymen alongside the best way, Judith achieved victory with no collateral harm. She went straight to the highest — actually — and took care of enterprise.
So, why did we cease celebrating her? Particularly when scrumptious fried ricotta pancakes have been concerned?
Christian Gottlieb Muche, Hanukkah Lamp (c. 1761–72), from Breslau, Austria (present-day Wrocław, Poland) (picture through the Jewish Museum)
Some have pointed to pure assimilation as the rationale for her disappearance, as Jews started to vary Hanukkah festivities to incorporate reward giving in an try to emulate European and American Christmas. Whereas that was definitely an element, Hanukkah wasn’t a serious vacation till the arrival of late-Nineteenth century political Zionism. And beneath the management of figures like Max Nordau and Theodore Herzl, Zionist organizations have been made up of Jews who had already tried to assimilate with a view to keep away from antisemitic assaults for generations. This resulted in Nordau’s fantasy of “Muscular Judaism:” a buff, manly “new Jew,” who took his destiny into his personal fingers. Moderately than combating hatred by organized labor, this Jewish Übermensch would defy stereotypes of the “effeminate” and “weak” Ashkenazi Jew by breeding it out of himself. Particularly after the Holocaust, former Haaretz author Mira Shakin defined, “Zionism looked high and low for episodes from Jewish history that would be appropriate for the image of the ‘new Jew’ who takes his fate in his hands, in order to erase from the collective memory the ostensibly flaccid character of the Diaspora Jew with the shtetl aura, who ‘went like sheep to the slaughter.’” They discovered the proper function fashions within the macho Maccabees. Right this moment, troopers within the Israeli navy are generally seen as carrying on the Maccabees’ legacy.
Left: Peter Paul Rubens, “The Triumph of Judas Maccabeus” (1634–1636), oil on canvas (through Wikimedia Commons)Proper: Stamp benefitting the Jewish Nationwide Fund bought within the USA for Hanukkah (1938) (through Wikimedia Commons)
In enshrining the Maccabees as the only real heroes of Hanukkah, the largely secular early Zionists didn’t heed the warnings of the traditional sages who authored the Talmud. These rabbis refuted the violence of the Maccabees, from how they pressured circumcisions on their neighbors to their ushering within the despotic Hasmonean dynasty. They noticed that this violence led to nothing however extra hardship. Or, as Rabbi Mike Rothbaum writes, “Born in violence, it became addicted to violence.”
As an alternative of the Maccabees’ warfare, the rabbis recorded how when rededicating a desecrated temple, a tiny portion of oil that was solely sufficient for one evening miraculously lasted for eight. That is the rationale for the menorah right this moment. Throughout the Shabbat service that falls through the vacation, we learn from the Guide of Zechariah, which says that God would bless the world, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit.”
Maybe the traditional rabbis may foresee the crimes wrought by the Israeli state’s military right this moment, which tragically contains rampant misogyny and sexual violence — not solely towards Palestinians in numerous horrifying occasions, however, to a exceptional diploma, even towards feminine troopers themselves. They knew not solely was this violence towards God’s commandments, however that it will do nothing to make Jews safer.
No marvel {that a} robust lady like Judith has been largely forgotten.
Judith’s story exhibits that for these of us Jews who protest towards Israel’s crimes, our spirit of revolution is already written into our custom. It’s effectively previous time that we keep in mind Judith’s story, and begin crafting new menorahs together with her visage as soon as once more.
Left: Element of mid-Nineteenth century German menorah from Lighting the World: Menorahs Across the Globe on the Museum at Eldridge Avenue (picture Isabella Segalovich/Hyperallergic); heart: 18th-century German Hanukkah lamp depicting Judith lighting the menorah together with her maidservant (picture by Elie Posner, © The Israel Museum Jerusalem); proper: Element of menorah from Europe, presumably early Twentieth-century France, from Lighting the World: Menorahs Across the Globe on the Museum at Eldridge Avenue (picture Isabella Segalovich/Hyperallergic)
