Around JTS when we cite Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, we refer to the great twentieth century theologian who fled Europe during the Holocaust and spent his final decades teaching Torah at JTS, writing a remarkable series of books that continue to inspire a diverse array of Jewish and Christian thinkers, and practicing social justice activism in America. However, Rabbi Heschel was named for a famous ancestor, known as R’ Abraham Joshua Heschel of Apte, or as the Apte Rebbe and Oheiv Yisrael, which was the title of his most famous book. The Apte Rebbe was born in Poland in 1755, flourished as the rabbi of Apte, and later moved to Mezhibuzh, Galicia, where he died in 1825.
In his commentary for Hanukkah, the Apte Rebbe begins by asking why the ancient sages associated the miracle of Hanukkah specifically with the oil of the lamp, rather than with the military victory of the Hasmoneans over the Seleucid Greeks, which was arguably the greater and more significant miracle. His commentary is extensive, and I will reflect only a portion of it.
Mishnah tractate Middot describes the dimensions of the ancient Temple. In chapter 2, Mishnah 3 states (Blackman trans.), “On the inside thereof [namely the Temple Mount] was a latticed partition ten handbreadths high. And it had thirteen breaches which the Syrian kings had made; the [Jews subsequently] fenced them in again, and they decreed over against them thirteen prostrations.” Apparently, the Seleucids not only profaned the Temple with foreign worship, but they also damaged it with thirteen breaches. This Mishnah (which is much earlier than the Bavli’s famous description of Hanukkah on B. Shabbat 21b) describes two responses, one architectural, and one ritual. The breaches were physically repaired, but then a ritual practice was introduced. Whoever entered the temple would prostrate thirteen times in recognition of the damage that had been done by the Greeks. Humility was the spiritual response to this outrage, allowing Israelites to enter the Temple prepared to encounter their God. Continue reading