F5: Chanukah

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Stop Jewish education!

The root of the Hebrew word Chanukah is chinuch. Chinuch is often translated as 'education' and so the sentence: Give chinuch to a youth according to his own path, and when he is old he will not depart from it (Proverbs 22:6) is commonly understood as good advice to teachers about a fool proof way of educating their pupils. Talk to a child on his/her level, relate to them and they will never doubt what they have learnt. However this interpretation is based on a mistranslation.

Chinuch, accurately translated, means "dedication", just as Chanukah does, and that is a very different thing to education. Education is about teaching people to think intellectually about things, but dedication means teaching devotion to something, caring for it. That's why in Hebrew the word for education is actually dedication. Where education is calm and non-committal, dedication is passionate and heartfelt. Where education is knowing something, dedication is caring about it, loving it and making it precious. Similarly, Chanukah is about dedicating ourselves to living a Jewish life. Maybe that's why, after all these years, Jews are still dedicated to keeping Chanukah...

Precious lights

Those tiny Chanukah lights are meant to represent our souls. God taught us real commitment, not obsessive achievement. He desires respect, not superiority. The success of the Maccabees was fleeting, but it was all theirs and nothing subsequent could ever change that. Judaism finds that real significance lies in simple things of great personal nobility and self fulfilment. Only these are truly precious.

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