Chunnukah in Ukraine

The Context

Around the dawn of the 20th century, my great grandfather was celebrating Chunnukah in Lviv, Ukraine. There are no records of his last Ukranian Chunnukah before emigrating to the United States, but it is reasonable to believe that he joined the tradition of his Jewish ancestors in Ukraine and places beyond who commemorated the Festival of Lights in their generations for more than two millennium. The influence of Jewry in Ukraine dates back at least to the 9th century, and for much of the modern history of Ukraine, Jews have been the largest cultural minority group. After the fall of the Czars and for three years prior to the Red Army victory and Soviet take-over of Ukraine (1917- 1920), Yiddish was one of the three official state languages of Ukrainian People’s Republic and was featured in Ukranian currency. The Twentieth Century brought the mass targeting of Jews by antisemitic forces, beginning with pogroms that took the lives of tens of thousands, continuing with the murder of Jews and other targeted Ukranians during Stalin’s Holodomor genocide. During the Second World War, Ukraine and neighbouring Belarus became the location for the horrific genocide of more than a million Jews by Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen. Most Jews in Ukraine were executed as families near their homes, not deported to distant camps. Their executioners were German but also Ukrainian, Russian, and other local collaborators. My great grandfather’s hometown of Lviv (Lvov) became one of the many staging grounds for the mass murder of Ukranian Jews.

My Ukranian great grandfather Samuel, with his Ukranian bride Eva, on their wedding day after arriving in the United States at the turn of the century.

In the Year 2022, Ukraine is once again in the vortex of persecution as a maniacal world leader who is on record repeatedly denying their very existence as an independent people and a nation, sends his troops to murder, rape and destroy them.

The message of Chunnukah 2022 is not lost on Ukranian Jews and Christians who, against all odds, are following their Jewish president to oppose one of the strongest armies in the world. It is not lost to those who saw the Russians bomb the memorial of BabiYar, where 100,000 men, women and children were executed. Nor is it lost on the few remaining survivors of Stalin’s Holodomor who must once again endure Russian atrocities.

Here is that ancient story, one which has become deeply personal for those lighting the Chunnukah candles in Lviv, Kyiv Kherson, Odessa, and throughout Ukraine this week in 2022, even as their power grid flickers and Russian bombs continue to reign down on their homes.

The Chunnukah Story

Approximately 2150 years ago, a small, fiercely independent nation successfully mounted a defense of their homeland against the invading army of King Antiochus Epiphanes, whose empire stretched from the Balkans (just below modern day Ukraine) to India. After enduring the desecration of their holy temple, the destruction of their homeland by the occupiers, and the mass murder of men, women, and children, a priest named Judah Maccabeus led his army of guerrilla fighters to deliver a humiliating defeat of the forces of Antiochus Epiphanes who retreated to their homeland. From these events emerges the story of Chanukah, celebrated by Jews, many Christians, and Jesus Christ himself, as recorded in the New Testament book of John, chapter 10.

The Bible commanded the Children of Abraham to celebrate seven sacred feasts annually - Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, Pentecost, Trumpets, Day of Atonement, and Tabernacles. In the second century B.C., the Feast of Dedication was established by Jewish leaders for a national day of thanksgiving, similar to our own national Thanksgiving holiday, to commemorate victory in battle, the recapture and rededication of the Temple of Jerusalem, and the miracle of the Temple Menorah. Today it is also known as the Festival of Lights.

To understand the meaning of Chanukah, you must first place yourself in the mindset of a people whose homeland has been invaded by a great power, whose identity as a distinct people was denied by a foreign despot intent on having them submit to a broader Greek culture, whose cities have been destroyed by occupying troops, and whose men, women, and children have been put to the sword by the invaders. You must imagine what it is like to be an ultra-underdog in a military conflict against one of the greatest powers on earth. You must try to experience the pain of having your national identity mocked and the sacred places of your people desecrated by the occupier in an effort to bring you to your knees.

Antiochus Epiphanes thought it would be an easy matter to occupy Judea and subdue the Jews. He believed that infighting between the more Hellenistic Jews and the more orthodox had created a wedge that would serve to his advantage. So he funded a military defense of Hellenistic Jews and sent troops to murder and enslave 80,000 of the rest. The cruelty of the torture and murder of civilians, women, and children by Antiochus Epiphanes has gone down through history for its barbarism, including parading women naked through the streets with their infants on their breasts before tossing them off cliffs to their deaths.

Also grievous was the desecration of the Holy Second Temple of Jerusalem, which was turned into a Temple to Zeus and had unclean animals and their blood defiling the sacred altar of the Lord.

Centuries before the desecration of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, a humble servant to the King of Babylon named Daniel prophesied about the circumstances leading to this event. He warned of the coming of Alexander the Great and the kings who would succeed him dividing the world into four parts.

One of those four parts was the Seleucid Empire of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the fourth in line of succession since Alexander the Great. Daniel also prophesied, "But the people who know their God shall be strong and carry out great exploits."

That prophesy was fufilled beyond what anyone could have imagined in the story of Mattathais, a Levite priest and father to five sons: Judah "The Hammer,” Eleazar, Simon, John, and Jonathan, who determined they would not allow the occupation of their nation, the assault on civilians, and the desecration of the Holy Temple. They rallied and trained others sons of Abraham to join them.

The arrogant invaders vastly underestimated the lethal resistance of this nation of beseiged families, committed to the defense of their homes and sacred places. With ferocity, Judah would lead troops with a battle cry adopted from the writings of Moses:

Mi kamokha ba'elim Adonai. ("Who among the gods is like you, O Adonai?" - Exodus 15:11.)

To the shock of these occupiers, Judah Maccabeus and his warriors routed an empire, thus defeating their own Goliath, restoring the Second Temple after an eight day rededication in which the holy oil for the Temple menorah continued to burn long after it should have been exhausted, thus fulfilling the law of Moses.

Light the candles. Remember.

Chunnukah in the streets of Ukraine.

Douglas W. Phillips is a constitutional attorney, writer and filmmaker whose great grandfather was a Ukranian Jew from Lviv, who fled Russian soldiers when Ukranian townsfolk spared his life, hid him and raised money for his escape to the United States.