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Hanukkah for librarians 2009
By howard | December 24, 2008
The holidays are upon us. We do Hanukkah at our house, which this year has a special library lesson to carry into the new year among all of our other resolutions.
Hanukkah celebrates a miracle. The Temple in Jerusalem was humiliated by Seleucid Emperor Antiochus Epiphanes in 167 BCE by the establishment therein of an alter to Zeus. The Temple was given over to the worship of the Greek gods and the practice of Judaism proscribed. To add insult to injury, the worship of Zeus included sacrificing pigs – the Jews’ most reviled animal – the Temple was truly denigrated.
The pigs are in the Temple
Their rooting snoots debase the floor
Their hooves have carved a dour example
From the altar to the door.
At the same time, the implements and treasures of Jewish worship were removed from the Temple or destroyed.
Mattathias, a priest of the Temple and leader of an intense and traditionalist segment of the Jewish community refused to obey the new laws, took to the hills with his seven sons and their followers and developed an armed insurgent movement, the Maccabees. In 165 BCE, the Maccabees triumphed over the Seleucids and reestablished Jewish practice in Jerusalem. The image I retain from hearing this story as I grew up is of a terrible battle in the Temple itself with the Maccabees at the end left standing in a pile of ruins
They cleaned and ritually cleansed the Temple, built a new altar to replace the polluted one and made new holy vessels. To complete the Temple’s rededication, however, they needed sacramental olive oil to light the menorah, the “eternal light” that was supposed to burn continually inside the Temple. But among the ruins there remained unadulterated by Zeus’ occupation only one vial, only enough to burn for one day.
Miraculously, that one vial of oil burned for eight days, the time needed to prepare a fresh supply. Hence the eight days of Hanukkah, the holiday whose name means “rededication”
A week’s worth of oil from one day’s worth – a familiar miracle to librarians who routinely wring eight days of value from one day’s worth of funding. A tradition we are likely to have to rely on more than usual in the coming year as there seems to be little hope for an end to the economic woes that threaten all of our budgets.
That New Years’ Resolution? Just as the Maccabees recognized the importance of sacramental oil to the recovery of their Temple and their society in BCE 165 Jerusalem, so we need to assert the importance of our libraries in the recovery of our economy and society. ALA has provided something of a blueprint in a report to the presidential transition team that will help us do that. Click here to see it at the ALA website.
Resolved: To do what I can to ensure that everyone, especially our government decisionmakers, understands the important role our libraries have to play in the recovery of our economy and the progress of our nation.
Topics: General | 1 Comment »
January 10th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Thanks for the link; I’ve just sent it with a personal note to state and federal RI legislators requesting their support.
We see the increased use in Tiverton as well.
Our latest newsletter is out: http://www.tivertonlibrary.org; we print quarterly 1000 copies. It’s a drop–but it’s our drop.