Hanukkah 

Mark Podwal (b. 1945)
Digitial archival pigment print on paper
7 7/16 x 7 9/16″
USA, 2020
© Mark Podwal

The eight-day festival of Hanukkah is celebrated with the kindling of a hanukkiyah (Hanukkah lamp). The Talmud (commentative and interpretive writings) recalls that when the Maccabees rededicated the defiled Jerusalem Temple a cruse of consecrated oil, enough to light the Temple menorah (candelabrum) for one day, miraculously lasted eight days—the time needed to prepare new oil. Earlier sources such as the Book of Maccabees and the ancient historian Josephus do not mention the miracle of lights but highlight the military victory of the Jews over their Seleucid oppressors in 164 BCE. The Talmudic preference for the miracle story may have resulted from the rabbinic consideration that under Roman domination it would have been unwise to celebrate Hanukkah as a commemoration of a successful Jewish rebellion.  

The woodcut from the 1593 Sefer Minhagim depicts a seven-branched menorah modeled on the one in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, revealing an unawareness of the Talmudic dictum that “It is forbidden to use a seven-branched menorah outside the Temple.” A later Amsterdam edition adds an eighth candlestick. Podwal revises the original by adding a modern hanukkiyah inside a lightbulb. The hanukkiah, by artist Babette Bloch, is on view nearby.