Clergy Sermons

A Message for Chanukkah

Based on Times of Israel article by Sabine Sterk and Yad VaShem Righteous Gentile section

10 more days until Chanukkah! Are you ready? Note I did not say: “10 more shopping days” -using the language of a commercialized December holiday time. “Are you ready” is asking if you are spending time thinking about how you will make the themes of Chanukkah come to life each night.

There are so many compelling themes of this holiday to celebrate and bring to life: courage, few against the many, creating and seeing miracles, holding onto and affirming identity, responding to antisemitism, increasing light in a time of darkness.

Each night can reflect a different theme with stories and actions.

Tonight, I will weave together several Chanukkah themes with an amazing story. Let’s start by looking at the origin of the holiday. The rabbis did something revolutionary – they took an existing holiday and turned it on its head.

In the book of Maccabees, (165 BCE) the celebration of Chanukkah originated as a celebration of military victory – hurray to the brave Maccabees!

Says the book: “We will celebrate this every year on 25 Kislev.”

The holiday was 8 days because they celebrated Sukkot – an 8 day long holiday they had not been able to celebrate.

There is no mention in this original source of the miracle of oil.

That did not get mentioned in a text until several hundred years later in the Talmud. The rabbis ask: Mai Chanukkah? What is Chanukkah? When the Temple was being cleaned out after having been desecrated by the Greeks, one tiny cruse of oil was found that would only last for a day.

 That cruse lasted 8 days – the miracle of Chanukkah. Why did they shift the meaning? Many holidays at this time utilized light celebration – so they were not creating anew.

But they shifted emphasis. The rabbis worried about celebrating military victories. They worried about glorifying warfare and the power associated with it. Practically they lived under Roman rule and a holiday of rebelling against power was probably not a great idea.

And there’s more: the Maccabees themselves became corrupt very quickly and certainly the rabbis did not want to celebrate them. So, they shifted focus to another story that probably had been circulating- the miracle of the oil lasting 8 days.

This story de-emphasizes human power and military might. The haftarah of Shabbat Chanukkah is Not my might and not by power, but by spirt alone. On a deeper level, the miracle of oil lasting teaches that we see God everywhere – in something as mundane as oil lasting longer than expected. Miracles surround us. Light overcomes darkness. There are the themes the rabbis wanted to celebrate.

I cannot think of a more appropriate themes for this moment in time. Let’s see light in darkness and increase light as we can. Let’s take parts of the original story and find meaning – courage, the few against the many, history changing through small acts. It is why I love sharing stories of righteous gentiles who saved Jews in the darkest moment of recent history – the Holocaust. Whenever I tell these stories – there are almost 30,000 documented Righteous Gentiles – I see bits of light in a place and time that seems defined only by darkness. Tonight, I have a story that I just read last week – and could not believe it.

Tonight, I will tell you the story of Wehrmacht office Albert Battel – an ordinary man who decided that obedience has its limits. In the summer of 1942, on a bridge in the town of Przemyśl, which is in southern Poland, Albert Battel, the officer in charge, stood in the path of the SS trucks coming to liquidate Jews from the ghetto, and refused to allow them to pass.

Here’s the context: The Jewish quarter of Przemyśl had been sealed for months. Jews lived behind barbed wire fences and could not leave. They knew that soon trucks would come and haul them off. The language used was “resettlement” – but everyone knew it meant being taken to Belzec concentration came to be killed. The Jews lived in fear the day trucks would come.

Albert Battel, forty-nine years old, a lawyer by profession, a Wehrmacht officer who joined the Nazi Party in 1933, walked onto the San River bridge the morning the trucks came – July 26, 1942. Something shifted inside him when he saw the SS convoy approaching. Truck after truck. Engines growling. Men ready to empty the ghetto and send hundreds to their deaths. Battel raised his hand. His soldiers lowered the barrier.

“The bridge is closed,” he told the SS commander.

The commander, furious, demanded to know “on whose authority.”

“Mine,” Battel said, knowing full well he had done.

Sabine Sterk, who wrote the article about Albert Battel in the Times of Israel this week writes: “That moment hangs in history like a held breath. German soldiers blocking other German soldiers. Rifles raised. Engines idling. And the impossible happened: the SS trucks turned back.”

Instead of stepping aside after defying the SS, Battel climbed into his own military truck and drove straight into the ghetto. He began knocking on doors: “Get in the truck….Now.”

He gathered grandparents too frail to walk, mothers clutching infants, children - and loaded them into German army vehicles. He transported them to army barracks, fed them, and posted guards to protect them. For hours he moved families to safety, all under the flimsy pretext of “military necessity.” Every moment was a gamble. Every decision was an act of rebellion punishable by immediate execution. By nightfall, dozens of Jews who should have been deported to death camps were instead lying in German army beds…alive.

German leadership reacted with rage. Heinrich Himmler personally took note of Battel’s insubordination and vowed to have him arrested immediately after the war. Battel was expelled from the Nazi Party and placed under investigation. His military career collapsed. Yet he never apologized.

He was forced out of service because of heart disease in 1944. He returned to his hometown Breslau, only to be drafted into the Volk Storm – a militia to defend Germany made up of old men and young boys. He was taken into Russian captivity.

After his release, he settled in West Germany but was prevented from returning to practice law by a court of de-Nazification. There was no recognition, no public praise - just the quiet knowledge that he had done what was right. He died in 1953, and we didn’t get to hear why he defied his orders and saved Jewish lives. His story was almost lost.

There were hints, small clues to explain his behavior – connections and kindness to Jewish people over the years. There was something decent about him. What was he thinking when he defied orders? What set the foundation for his actions?

How do we know his amazing story? After the war, survivors began searching for him: The officer who protected us. The German who said no. The man who stood on the bridge. In 1981, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem honored him as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

His is a story we should tell. And, it is a Chanukkah story. It is a story of courage. Courage doesn’t have to be loud. Sometimes courage is a quiet man on a bridge saying, “No.” Courage is the refusal to let fear decide who you become. Celebrate courage on Chanukkah.

Chanukkah is the holiday of light amidst darkness. Albert Battel teaches us that in the darkest place imaginable, we can find sparks of light and be vessels of light. Celebrate light amidst darkness on Chanukkah.

Chanukkah is a story that the unexpected can happen and change history. Sabine Sterk, reflects: “History can pivot on a single decision, a single moment, a single person. One bridge. One officer. One act of defiance that saved dozens of lives. Sometimes, that is all it takes to change everything.” That too is the story of Chanukkah – a single family who said, “No” we will only bow down to God – not to a statue of the emperor.

Let’s bring light. Let’s remember our power. Let’s find our courage. Let’s allow story to inspire. Let’s remember who we are and what we are celebrating. Shabbat Shalom and Happy almost Chanukkah.