Why Hanukkah is a Zionist Holiday

Attempts to strip Hanukkah of its connection to Zionism don’t just miss the point — they erase the holiday entirely. Hanukkah commemorates a specific moment in Jewish history: the victory of the Maccabees over the Syrian-Greek Empire in Judea and the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

This wasn’t a generic struggle for religious freedom somewhere in the abstract. It was a fight by Jews to live as Jews in their ancestral homeland. The Greeks weren’t simply imposing new customs; they were trying to erase Jewish identity in Judea itself. Hanukkah matters precisely because it tells a story of Jewish self-determination in the Land of Israel.

Every symbol of the holiday reinforces that reality. The menorah commemorates the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. The dreidel spells out “a great miracle happened there” — there, in Israel. In Israel today, the dreidel reads “here,” because the miracle happened in this land.

You can enjoy the food, the rituals, and the songs. But pretending Hanukkah can be separated from Israel is historical fiction. There is no Hanukkah without the Temple in Jerusalem, no miracle without Jewish sovereignty, and no holiday without Jews free to be Jewish in their homeland — Israel.