It’s easy to state ideas into the empty void of your living room, or onto the pages of your journal, where nobody can see them and question them. It’s easy to harbor beliefs in private, where nobody is able to challenge them. It’s easy to lay claim to values by making a list of characteristics and ethics that purport to define you.
But what happens when your ideas, beliefs, and values are challenged? Do you stand behind them, do you stand up for them? Or do you retreat?
This is the central theme of Chanukah, the Jewish Festival of Lights.
The Talmud instructs us to put the menorah in the window, where it can be seen by those passing by on the street.
This commandment parallel to the commandment of placing a mezuzah on the doorpost. The mezuzah commemorates the instructions to the Jewish people prior to the Exodus from Egypt, to smear the blood of the lamb on their doorposts as a sign that the home was a Jewish home and the first-born sons should be saved.
Both the mezuzah and the menorah are examples of commandments that require us to express our faith via a public act.
They require us to take a stand for what we value.
A Rededication of Our Values
In the case of Chanukah, this public display directly relates to the reason we are celebrating and the purpose of lighting the candles.
Chanukah means dedication. It is a holiday on which we rededicte ourselves to our values. The victory that we celebrate is a victory of values.
A Victory of Values
The Maccabees were a small group of rebels fighting off an attempt by the Greeks — at that time the most dominant force in the world — to assimilate them. Unlike many other persecutors, the Greeks did not want to kill the Jews; they wanted to obliterate Judaism. They objected to Jewish values and ideals.
The Greeks refuted the concept of spirituality, of a force greater than man.
The Values Conflict
Rabbi Menachem Lehrfield, the Director of the Jewish Outreach Initiative in Denver, Colorado, explains the values conflict:
Greek values stem from an obsession with the external facade of beauty….
Greek society valued the external, superficial. They believed that only sensual experiences are real. That reality is limited to what we can taste and touch, or what our minds can grasp.
This is the antithesis of Torah thought, which believes there is much more beneath the surface — infinite layers of depth beyond what the eye sees. This totally opposes the worldview of ancient Greece.
The Maccabees revolt was a stand for the Jewish values.
That the small rebel group of Macabees claimed victory was itself a miracle. The Macabees did not just have to overcome the powerful Greek army, they also had to battle the apathy from their own people.
Many of the elite Jews in power were happy to assimilate into Greek culture and give up their Jewish values. Other Jews didn’t want to choose sides. They wanted to stay out of it completely.
How to Express Your Values
This brings us back to why we put the menorah in the window.
Values are not merely words we write on a list. What we value is reflected by where we invest what Todd Henry calls our FATE: focus, actions, time, and energy.
What you value is evidenced not by what you say, but rather by what you DO. When we truly value something we are willing to take a stand for it. We publicize it. We make it visible for all to see.
Putting the menorah in the window shows we are taking a stand for our values.
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