This Hanukkah, Let’s Bring Back Judith Menorahs

What will we have fun on Hanukkah? After shortly mentioning the miraculous jar of temple oil that burned for eight days, many sources will inform you it’s in regards to the unlikely triumph of the Maccabees, who fought for Jewish spiritual freedom within the face of persecution by the Seleucid Empire 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 last evening 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 totally different determine repeatedly who goes unmentioned in the usual story: a lone lady, triumphantly elevating a knife. That is Judith, the OG Jewish badass woman 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. 

Her story, informed in a whole lot of permutations via the centuries, goes one thing like this: Judith is a younger rich widow within the city of Bethulia generations earlier than the Maccabees when she takes it upon herself to save lots of her folks from the Assyrian military. She sheds her historically ragged and drab mourning garments, clothes up in her most interesting 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 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 increase 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 persons are saved. 

The E-book of Judith shouldn’t be 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. Finally, it wasn’t Judah the Maccabee however Judith who appeared within the heart of menorahs, flanked by lions and mermaids, wearing advantageous robes, and all the time holding her signature dagger. And by the sixteenth century, some rabbis recommended 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. 

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 folks 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 Jews and Gentiles within the area had with Judith was one other issue behind there being so many Italianate Menorahs that includes her type; usually, 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 folks, and who is well known within the E-book of Esther and on the vacation of Purim. Not like the Maccabees, whose marketing campaign towards the Seleucid Empire additionally included massacring scores of fellow Jews and different countrymen alongside the way in which, Judith achieved victory with no collateral injury. 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?

Some have pointed to pure assimilation as the explanation for her disappearance, as Jews started to alter Hanukkah festivities to incorporate present giving in an try and 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 underneath 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 arms. Slightly than combating hatred via 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 regarded excessive and low for episodes from Jewish historical past that will be acceptable for the picture of the ‘new Jew’ who takes his destiny in his arms, with a purpose to erase from the collective reminiscence 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. Right this moment, troopers within the Israeli navy are generally considered as carrying on the Maccabees’ legacy. 

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 downplayed 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 turned hooked on 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 evening miraculously lasted for eight. That is the explanation for the menorah immediately. Through the Shabbat service that falls throughout the vacation, we learn from the E-book of Zechariah, which says that God would bless the world, “Not by would possibly, nor by energy, however by My spirit.”

Maybe the traditional rabbis might foresee the crimes wrought by the Israeli state’s military immediately, 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} sturdy lady like Judith has been largely forgotten. 

Judith’s story reveals that for these of us Jews who protest towards Israel’s crimes, our spirit of revolution is already written into our custom. It’s nicely previous time that we keep in mind Judith’s story, and begin crafting new menorahs along with her visage as soon as once more.

Editor’s observe 12/30/24 11:45am EST: A earlier model of this text mistakenly said that the Maccabees revolted towards the Assyrians. The Maccabees fought towards the Seleucid Empire. The article has been corrected.