What do we celebrate on Hanukkah? After quickly mentioning the miraculous jar of temple oil that burned for eight days, many sources will tell you it’s about the unlikely triumph of the Maccabees, who fought for Jewish religious freedom in the face of persecution by the Assyrians (Syrian Greeks) who then ruled the land of Judah. At the center of the holiday is the menorah, an eight-branched candelabra we light each night, adding one candle per day, until on the eighth and final night it’s ablaze in its full glory.
But if you take a look at a collection of old-fashioned Italian and German menorahs, you’ll find a different figure again and again who goes unmentioned in the standard story: a lone woman, triumphantly raising a knife. This is Judith, the OG Jewish badass lady who was once commonly celebrated at Hanukkah time alongside the Maccabees. Her spear once shone in the candlelight, reflecting these menorahs’ intricate metalwork and illuminating another chapter in Jewish history — lost in the overlapping shadows of modern-day misogyny, assimilation, and Zionism.
Her story, told in hundreds of permutations through the centuries, goes something like this: Judith is a young wealthy widow in the town of Bethulia during the time of the Maccabees when she takes it upon herself to save her people from the Assyrian army. She sheds her traditionally ragged and drab mourning clothes, dresses up in her finest fabrics and jewels, and creeps into the enemy’s camp with a sack of salty cheese and wine.
Once in the center of camp, she slips into the tent of their general, Holofernes. Seemingly praising his military might, she offers him her delicious snacks — and perhaps a little more. Holofernes quickly gobbles up the cheese, failing to realize that its saltiness is making him thirstier than usual, leading him to drink quite a bit of wine. When he falls into a drunken sleep, Judith grabs his sword and slices off his head. She and her maidservant stuff his head into their sack, and the next morning they raise it on a spike for all to see. The Assyrian army bursts into chaos and fear, and soon they retreat. The siege on Bethulia is lifted, and, effectively, her people are saved.
The Book of Judith is not in the Hebrew Bible — like the Books of Maccabees, it was incorporated into the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christian bibles and is included in the “Apocrypha” section of some Protestant bibles. Yet, sometime in the Middle Ages, Judith became a major Hanukkah heroine. Eventually, it wasn’t Judah the Maccabee but Judith who appeared in the center of menorahs, flanked by lions and mermaids, dressed in fine gowns, and always holding her signature dagger. And by the 16th century, some rabbis suggested snacking on cheese to honor her bravery, commemorating the salty tidbits that once felled Holofernes. Italianate Jews took to the task at hand with their usual culinary brilliance, combining the miracle of the oil with Judith’s tale by concocting delectable fried ricotta pancakes.
Right: Menorah, possibly from Germany (late 19th century) (photo by Yair Hovav, © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem)
Judith was especially popular in Italy — and not just among Jews. Depicted by dozens of Italian artists, she represented the triumph of an oppressed people over their oppressors. Some Italians saw parallels between the occupying Assyrian forces and the Medici oligarchy in Florence. So it’s little surprise that Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the few prominent women Baroque artists, drew inspiration from the story to depict herself murdering her rapist, painter Agostino Tassi. Perhaps the fascination that both Jewish and Gentiles in the region had with Judith was another factor behind there being so many Italianate Menorahs featuring her form; often, non-Jewish craftspeople were actually creating ritual objects during that era, so they may have indulged in their shared love here in the form of these candelabras.
Many sages compared Judith’s heroism with that of Esther, the legendary Persian Jewish queen who risked her life to save her people, and who is celebrated in the Book of Esther and on the holiday of Purim. Unlike the Maccabees, whose campaign against the Assyrians also included massacring scores of fellow Jews and other countrymen along the way, Judith achieved victory with no collateral damage. She went straight to the top — literally — and took care of business.
So, why did we stop celebrating her? Especially when delicious fried ricotta pancakes were involved?
Some have pointed to pure assimilation as the reason for her disappearance, as Jews began to change Hanukkah festivities to include gift giving in an attempt to emulate European and American Christmas. While that was certainly a factor, Hanukkah wasn’t a major holiday until the advent of late-19th century political Zionism. And under the leadership of figures like Max Nordau and Theodore Herzl, Zionist organizations were made up of Jews who had already attempted to assimilate in order to avoid antisemitic attacks for generations. This resulted in Nordau’s fantasy of “Muscular Judaism:” a buff, manly “new Jew,” who took his fate into his own hands. Rather than fighting hatred through organized labor, this Jewish Übermensch would defy stereotypes of the “effeminate” and “weak” Ashkenazi Jew by breeding it out of himself. Especially after the Holocaust, former Haaretz writer Mira Shakin explained, “Zionism looked high and low for episodes from Jewish history that would be appropriate for the image of the ‘new Jew’ who takes his fate in his hands, in order to erase from the collective memory the ostensibly flaccid character of the Diaspora Jew with the shtetl aura, who ‘went like sheep to the slaughter.’” They found the perfect role models in the macho Maccabees. Today, soldiers in the Israeli military are commonly viewed as carrying on the Maccabees’ legacy.
Right: Stamp benefitting the Jewish National Fund sold in the USA for Hanukkah (1938) (via Wikimedia Commons)
In enshrining the Maccabees as the sole heroes of Hanukkah, the largely secular early Zionists did not heed the warnings of the ancient sages who authored the Talmud. These rabbis refuted the violence of the Maccabees, from how they forced circumcisions on their neighbors to their ushering in the despotic Hasmonean dynasty. They saw that this violence led to nothing but more hardship. Or, as Rabbi Mike Rothbaum writes, “Born in violence, it became addicted to violence.”
Instead of the Maccabees’ warfare, the rabbis recorded how when rededicating a desecrated temple, a tiny portion of oil that was only enough for one night miraculously lasted for eight. This is the reason for the menorah today. During the Shabbat service that falls during the holiday, we read from the Book of Zechariah, which says that God would bless the world, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit.”
Perhaps the ancient rabbis could foresee the crimes wrought by the Israeli state’s army today, which tragically includes rampant misogyny and sexual violence — not only against Palestinians in countless horrifying events, but, to a remarkable degree, even against female soldiers themselves. They knew not only was this violence against God’s commandments, but that it would do nothing to make Jews safer.
No wonder that a strong woman like Judith has been largely forgotten.
Judith’s story shows that for those of us Jews who protest against Israel’s crimes, our spirit of revolution is already written into our tradition. It’s well past time that we remember Judith’s story, and start crafting new menorahs with her visage once again.
