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Father Tom Hartman and I created an annual winter custom that sharpened our interfaith instincts. Tommy wrote the Hanukkah column, and I wrote the Christmas column. Since his passing in 2016 I have tried in my way to preserve the essential interfaith impulse that created the God Squad by looking inward at our own holiday traditions and also outward to our spiritual neighbors who are climbing up the same mountain on different paths.

So, my Hanukkah blessings will go first to our Jewish readers but will then explain why this Jewish holiday should also matter to Christians. Next week my Christmas blessings will also explain why Christmas should matter to Jews. It's not as good as having Tommy here writing with me but nothing is as good as having Tommy here – nothing.

My Hanukkah blessings.

Hanukkah begins on the evening of December 14 with the lighting of the first of eight candles placed from right to left and lit from left to right on the Hanukkah menorah. This ritual celebrates the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Greeks in 167-164 BCE and the recorded miracle that one crus of oil for the purification of the Temple lasted eight days when it should have lasted for one day.

That is the story Jews know and celebrate but the meaning of the story is what ought to matter to both Jews and Christians. The key to the meaning of Hanukkah comes from when it happened.

When Alexander the Great died in 323 BCE his empire was divided into three parts: Greek, Egyptian and Syrian. Judea was first given to Egypt who allowed Jews to practice Judaism freely and then was conquered by the Syrians who did not. They erected a statue of Zeus in the Temple as a humiliating sign that the practice of Judaism was dead … and they were almost right. According to the Roman Jewish historian Josephus by the time of the Maccabean revolt there were 20 religions and sects in Judea more numerous than Judaism. The appeal of Hellenism (Greek culture) and years of subjugation had dramatically reduced the world’s population of Jews to the smallest level in Jewish history up to that point. This made the end of Judaism a very likely possibility – but not to a Jew named Mattathias and his five sons called the Maccabees. He began a revolt that in four years restored Jewish sovereignty in Judea until the Roman conquest in the first century changed everything again.

The meaning of the Maccabean revolt for Jews was that just one single family could save an entire faith and give it hope for a future. From that time forth in every time and every place where Jews experienced persecution, the Maccabees represented an example of hope and courage that enabled Judaism to survive.

Surprisingly, the meaning of Hanukkah is actually more dramatic for Christians than it is for Jews. The Maccabean revolt that saved Judaism from extinction occurred almost two centuries before the birth of Jesus, and since the entire mission of Jesus was to fulfill the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible about a coming Messiah who was a descendant of King David, if there was no Judaism in the first century, there would be no meaning to his arrival and his teachings and therefore no Christianity. Christianity required a living Judaism in order to make sense of its own Gospel.

All this is not mere conjecture or blind faith. The Maccabean revolt was an historical event recorded by Josephus in his volume Jewish Antiquities. Unlike the Exodus from Egypt for which there is no independent historical record, all this was verified by one of the world’s first historians. Some people think that Tacitus was the first historian, but my vote goes to Josephus.

It is therefore undeniably, historically true that Judaism saved the world for Christianity and without the Maccabees there would have been no Judaism – no birth in a manger and no death and resurrection and … no Santa!

So let us hear it for the Maccabees and the greatest gift of all. A single Jewish family who saved the world for a single Jewish carpenter who actually did save the world.

Happy Hanukkah to us, one and all!

(Send ALL QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com. Rabbi Gellman is the author of several books, including “Religion for Dummies,” co-written with Fr. Tom Hartman. Also, the new God Squad podcast is now available.)

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