It is the first day of Chanukah or the Light Festival today. It is something the Jews celebrate all over the world. And although a Christian, I come from the Jewish root, with my homeland Estonia being the first in the world to grant the Jewish autonomy in 1926. My grandmother Amalie worked and lived side by side with a Jewish family who offered her to stay as a part of family and emigrate to Germany with them. She chose to remain. My mother Eve grew up within the Jewish community, with a Jewish best friend and desk mate at school (where they shared the same desk for two all their school time long).
So there has been a lot of Jewishness around us - the flat where I was taken from the hospital after my birth went later into the hands of a Jewish family with whom we maintained a close lifelong connection, and last, but not least, I was born with an Ashkenazi name (which I later replaced by my mother's surname, simply for I liked it the best, but my brother remained as a proud owner of the surname which is shared with the lady judge who sentenced former Israeli President Moshe Katsav to prison).
Today my daughter's best friend is a former Jewish refugee who came to UK as a child.
So, Jews have always been a part and a parcel of our life journey, and it was only natural that my daughter wanted to join IDF or the Jewish Army after her first postgraduate degree which she obtained at a university in Wales. She took all the necessary steps, but there was a delay due to her Christian background, and further references were needed from Jews who were not Messianic, and as the university year had not yet started, her Jewish Professor under whose hand she had studied the Middle-Eastern and more specifically, the Israeli-Palestinian situation which she had also chosen as her dissertation topic, had not yet returned. And then....Gaza Operation Pillar Defence happened. It was in the autumn of 2012. And somewhere then, thanks to her postgraduate course mate who had remained stuck in Gaza and who wrote everything she witnessed firsthand when there, she decided to lay her former opinions aside and take a neutral stand, and weigh the information received from both sides. And then she suddenly saw something she had not seen earlier. We had blindly swallowed the teachings handed over which had been based greatly on the Jewish tradition (which does not reckon with Jesus and the New Testament - in fact, as to her IDF service, she was asked to sign a declaration that she was NOT going to have New Testament with her, and that she was NOT going to tell anyone in the army about Christ) and it had blinded her in her passionate love to Israel and everything Jewish, to the Palestinian people. Even the sight of the Palestinian flag or the mention to them made us both boycott the shops and her to go debate the leadership of the local Anglican church who were greatly into the Palestinian cause. But then, after this discovery, shift happened. And sight improved. We no longer were partial to one side only, but reckoned also with another. We stopped calling the Palestinian people as Arabs, and demonising them, punishing the whole nation for the sins of a few. We saw them as human beings for whom Christ had died too, and many of them most unjustly ostracised by many in the Church...just for prejudice and partiality took over, for whoever as much as thought anything against the beloved Israel, or the Jews, had to be wrong. And needless to say, terrorism and tactics of fear is always wrong. But it is not right to punish all for the sins of few criminally minded violent people, for there are plenty of Christians namely in the midst of the Palestinian population, but when war broke, they were all subject to the same. War knew no exceptions.
But today is Chanukah or Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, which ends in the evening of 20 December.
The word Chanukah itself means a dedication and it celebrates the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire.
In the second century BCE, the Syrian-Greeks tried to force the people of Israel to accept Greek cultures and beliefs. A small band of Jews, led by Judah the Maccabee, defeated their army, drove the Greeks away, and reclaimed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. When they tried to light the Temple’s Menorah, the found a single pot of olive oil, which was expected to last only one day. The single day supply ended up lasting for eight days, and to commemorate the miracle, the Hanukkah festival was created, and is still celebrated across the globe today.
There’s a lot more to the holiday than lighting a menorah each night. While that’s definitely a large part of the holiday, special prayers and fried foods are also incorporated into the celebration.
The menorah holds nine candles, one of which is called the shamash, which is used to light the remaining eight flames. One flame is lit on the first night, an additional flame is lit on the second night, and by the eighth night all candles are kindled. Special blessings are recited before the lighting of the menorah, and traditional songs are sung afterward.
Foods are typically fried in oil in reference to the oil involved in the Hanukkah miracle. Potato pancakes, also known as latkes, are a staple, and usually garnished with applesauce or sour cream. Jelly-filled donuts are also a favorite.
And as Christians know and can tell, it all leads to the True Light who has actually already come into the world, but whom the Jews have not received and recognised as Christ or Messiah. Although, the Son of God was namely born within the boundaries of the land of Israel, and grew up in the midst of the Jewish people, and walked and talked to them, yet not just them, but embracing also the ostracised people who were in a half-Jew status, and boycotted and despised by the real Jews. These people lived in Samaria. Which is today with Judea known as the Palestinian Authority territory.
Now, this Chanukah comes after the recent declaration by the President of the United States, who said that Jerusalem is the rightful capital of Israel. This declaration has ruffled the feathers and caused a disturbance in the Middle East. Many say that it has downright disrupted the peace process and the others say that Jerusalem should be a shared capital for peace. Which makes East Jerusalem the capital of Palestine and the West Jerusalem the capital of Israel.
It is my personal opinion, but I do not think that the emotional response to this declaration should be anything so serious. This declaration may affect people emotionally, but it constitutes no crime, no blatant injustice, and hopefully no deprivation of rights of the inhabitants of the East Jerusalem area. If the latter were to be true, although, then things have to be put right. On the other hand, cannot any country decide which city it wants to have as its capital. E.g. Kazakhstan changed on 10 December 1997 its capital from former Almaty to Akmola, which was later renamed and is today known as Astana which means "the capital" in Kazakh and it was fine. I understand that the present disturbance and emotional response to the declaration which named Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has its roots in religion. But it does not constitute any injustice and hence is no crime, and the emotional response is just what it is, emotions rising up and boiling.
We are called by God to pray that there would be peace in Jerusalem, and this is what we should do. But God is more interested in setting the injustices right, and overturning the harsh and partial treatment, and releasing the people from under oppression and similar. An emotional response which may threaten although to boil over, is not really His concern in the sense that we cannot go around living our life trying to be on tiptoes all the time, lest our conduct or anything about us might offend the feelings of another. Yes, we are expected to behave in civilised manner and be respectful, and not willingly offensive and insulting and definitely not disparaging which takes us to the borderline of racism, but by the end of the day people may get offended just for some are easily offended, and the others were offended even by Jesus, and He was God in human flesh, so it is a mission impossible, for it is downright impossible to live our life not offending anyone. If we set this as our objective, we have bowed down before human opinion, and it has created an idol. But every idol has to fall. Sadly, their fall will pull us along, if we have attached our feelings and ideas to them and not dissociated ourselves from these high thoughts which have elevated themselves above the knowledge of Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:5.
So, if you are not into celebrating the Chanukah, just for you do not consider yourself in any way related to the Jewish or Judaistic tradition or consider yourself as someone of no faith, then there is a natural physical aspect. The winter solstice is on 21 December and follows the Festival of the Lights or Chanukah. Immediately after Chanukah - the Festival of the Lights -
most of the world celebrates Christmas, which has Christ in it, even if it revolves in these days greatly around shopping, Santa and the gifts. But the perfect gift was Christ, so the gifts are still symbolic and refer to the Giver of all gifts and His gift of salvation to the mankind - the Christ, or the Messiah. But the winter solstice is a turnaround time, for the days will become longer and the light will take over more and more with every passing day since then. So, even the natural creation we can see firsthand, supports the idea.
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