Hanukkah lamp, Italy (Nineteenth century) (photograph by way of the Jewish Museum)
What can we have a good time on Hanukkah? After shortly mentioning the miraculous jar of temple oil that burned for eight days, many sources will inform you it’s concerning the unlikely triumph of the Maccabees, who fought for Jewish non secular 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 gentle every night time, including one candle per day, till on the eighth and last night time it’s ablaze in its full glory.
However in case you check out a group of old style 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 (by way of 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 save lots of 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 common, Holofernes. Seemingly praising his navy would possibly, she provides him her scrumptious snacks — and maybe slightly extra. Holofernes shortly gobbles up the cheese, failing to appreciate that its saltiness is making him thirstier than normal, 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 subsequent morning they elevate it on a spike for all to see. The Assyrian military bursts into chaos and concern, and shortly they retreat. The siege on Bethulia is lifted, and, successfully, her individuals are saved.
Brass Italian menorahs (seemingly Nineteenth century) included in Lighting the World: Menorahs Across the Globe on the Museum at Eldridge Avenue (photographs Isabella Segalovich/Hyperallergic)
The E book of Judith isn’t within the Hebrew Bible — just like the Books of Maccabees, it was included 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 grew to become 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 wonderful robes, and all the time holding her signature dagger. And by the sixteenth century, some rabbis urged 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 normal 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 by way of the Jewish Museum) Proper: Menorah, probably from Germany (late Nineteenth century) (photograph by Yair Hovav, © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem)
Judith was particularly well-liked 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 outstanding ladies 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 type; typically, non-Jewish craftspeople had been really creating ritual objects throughout that period, so they could 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 save lots of her individuals, and who is well known within the E book of Esther and on the vacation of Purim. In contrast to the Maccabees, whose marketing campaign towards the Assyrians additionally included massacring scores of fellow Jews and different countrymen alongside the way in which, 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 had been concerned?
Christian Gottlieb Muche, Hanukkah Lamp (c. 1761–72), from Breslau, Austria (present-day Wrocław, Poland) (picture by way of the Jewish Museum)
Some have pointed to pure assimilation as the explanation for her disappearance, as Jews started to alter Hanukkah festivities to incorporate reward giving in an try and emulate European and American Christmas. Whereas that was actually an element, Hanukkah wasn’t a serious vacation till the appearance of late-Nineteenth century political Zionism. And beneath the management of figures like Max Nordau and Theodore Herzl, Zionist organizations had been made up of Jews who had already tried to assimilate with a purpose 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. Quite 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 right function fashions within the macho Maccabees. As we speak, 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 (by way of Wikimedia Commons)Proper: Stamp benefitting the Jewish Nationwide Fund bought within the USA for Hanukkah (1938) (by way of 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 compelled 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 a substitute of the Maccabees’ warfare, the rabbis recorded how when rededicating a desecrated temple, a tiny portion of oil that was solely sufficient for one night time miraculously lasted for eight. That is the explanation for the menorah at present. In the course of the Shabbat service that falls through the vacation, we learn from the E book of Zechariah, which says that God would bless the world, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit.”
Maybe the traditional rabbis might foresee the crimes wrought by the Israeli state’s military at present, 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 might do nothing to make Jews safer.
No surprise {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 properly previous time that we bear in mind Judith’s story, and begin crafting new menorahs along 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 (photograph Isabella Segalovich/Hyperallergic); heart: 18th-century German Hanukkah lamp depicting Judith lighting the menorah along with her maidservant (photograph by Elie Posner, © The Israel Museum Jerusalem); proper: Element of menorah from Europe, probably early Twentieth-century France, from Lighting the World: Menorahs Across the Globe on the Museum at Eldridge Avenue (photograph Isabella Segalovich/Hyperallergic)