Hebrew Voices #136 – Hanukkah Under Attack

Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com

English - November 29, 2021 12:05 - 48 minutes - 66.6 MB - ★★★★★ - 313 ratings
Judaism Religion & Spirituality Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed

Previous Episode: Torah Pearls #10 – Mikeitz (Genesis 41:1-44:17)

Next Episode: Prophet Pearls #10 – Mikeitz (1 Kings 3:15-4:1)

The post Hebrew Voices #136 – Hanukkah Under Attack appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.

In this episode of Hebrew Voices, Hanukkah Under Attack, Nehemia Gordon talks with with Rebekah and Isaac Garvin of Teshuvah Ministries, about the significance of the Feast of Dedication for those coming from a New Testament perspective and hears how Hanukkah changed their lives and set them free from pagan sun-god worship. This interview came in response to last week's episode "Pagan Origins of Hanukkah?".

I look forward to reading your comments!

Podcast Version:

https://audio.nehemiaswall.com/Hebrew-Voices/Hebrew-Voices-Hanukkah-Under-Attack.mp3

Download Audio

CHAPTERS

00:00 Intro

01:37 Who are Rebekah and Isaac Garvin

04:07 Fire Festivals were celebrated in all cultures

05:43 Hanukkah under attack for pagan origins

07:24 What is Teshuvah Ministries

09:25 Do followers of Yeshua need to repent

16:15 Pagan Christmas customs

19:55 The philosophy behind “Hebrew Voices”

21:52 Celebrating Hanukkah with a New Testament perspective

27:37 The custom of lighting Hanukkah candles

33:40 Removing pagan customs from your life

41:48 Conclusion

Transcript

Hebrew Voices #136 – Hanukkah Under Attack

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: Tell me why as someone who, and not for me, but for those who are coming from a New Testament perspective, who believe in Yeshua, why should they keep Hanukkah?

Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I am here today with Rebekah and Isaac Garvin of Teshuvah Ministries, and our subject today is Hanukkah Under Attack. Shalom, guys!

Rebekah: Yay, shalom Nehemia.

Isaac: Yay, happy to be here. Honored.

Nehemia: You did this video that somebody sent me a link to on YouTube, where it was a response to the interview I did with Rabbi Paul Shrell-Fox. He was proposing a theory… really, I wouldn't even call it a theory, a hypothesis, and he called it... I think the word he used was "speculation", I forget the word he exactly used.

Isaac: Supposition.

Nehemia: Supposition was the word he used. And I actually dwelled on it when he said that, because I wanted people to know that, here he's proposing this idea that Hanukkah has pagan origins. And the way he proposed it was really a perspective I'd never heard before. And that's why I wanted to bring him on the program. And just to tell people up front, I'm a Karaite Jew - we don't celebrate Hanukkah. And I didn't want to be dousing other people's fire… maybe that's a good pun there, dousing other people's fire. I didn't want to be raining on other people's parade, and I said this in the program, "If you feel in your heart you're supposed to keep Hanukkah for some reason of faith, there's nothing that this rabbi has just said that should challenge that, because it's supposition.”

So first, I love putting people in boxes, it makes me feel more comfortable. Tell us what box we can put you in. Are you Christian? Are you Messianic?

Rebekah: Okay, I don't know if you went to our website, but the first thing you see when you come to our website is we're Melchizedek, so it's different. It's not Christian, it's not Jewish, it's not Messianic. I mean, we have more in common with Messianic, but we also have things in common with Christians and Jews. Melchizedek is just basically honoring our rabbi, Yeshua, who is the Melchizedek Priest forever, as the Scriptures talks about, that he is going to be that, he is that, and so we look at things from that perspective, which kind of sets us apart. So there's a huge teaching on that. I know it's not the time for it right here, but we are all about...

Nehemia: You have a website, teshuvahministries.com, that we're going to throw up on the screen here. And that's Teshuvah, with an H at the end. You know, it's funny, because my name, Nehemia, doesn't have an H at the end. And people so often misspell it that I was actually required to report that as an alias on my official government forms, with the H at the end, because it’s so often misspelled.

Rebekah: We’ve heard you say that before, so whenever I type your name into anything that I do or teach, I’m like, “Make sure not to put the H there.”

Nehemia: Well, I appreciate that. Although I don't know how important my name is, but this is an important topic - Hanukkah. And I have to say, I haven't heard the term Melchizedek Priesthood except from Mormons.

Rebekah: I know, don't get us mixed up with them.

Nehemia: And you're in northern Idaho, so I don't know, it's kind of close to Utah. Are you Mormons?

Rebekah: No! We have nothing to do... let's make sure everybody understands that - nothing to do with Mormonism.

Nehemia: Are you of Mormon background?

Rebekah: No. Seventh-Day Adventist.

Nehemia: So this is what we would call, to use maybe a term that Rabbi Shrell-Fox would use, “convergent evolution”. Meaning, you looked in the Tanakh and the New Testament, and the Mormons looked at the Tanakh and the New Testament, and you both are focusing on this term Melchizedek Priesthood. I think they mean something else by it. I think they mean every male head of the household is part of the Melchizedek Priesthood. And you said for you Yeshua is the Melchizedek Priest.

Rebekah: Yes, he's the High Priest in the Order of Melchizedek, which is the royal priesthood which was and is and goes forever…

Nehemia: And that's based on the Book of Hebrews, I assume, as it interprets Psalm 110. Am I right?

Rebekah: Yes, exactly. Yes, absolutely.

Nehemia: Maybe we’ll get into that in a different program, or if we have time today.

Rebekah: We would love to.

Nehemia: But let's talk about Hanukkah. Actually, you only saw 10 minutes of my Hanukkah video, Rebekah. Isaac saw 37 minutes. And I don't know if you know, but there's a second half. And so, maybe the second half explains the title a little bit better. So Rabbi Shrell-Fox's hypothesis… and I'd rather him just say it, but if I understood his hypothesis correctly, he's saying that Hanukkah goes back to some primordial thing that was common to all cultures. And there were pagans who also celebrated some kind of a fire festival, and that today has, through what he calls evolutionary psychology, which we can talk about in a minute, eventually morphed into Hanukkah, Christmas… I forget what the Zoroastrian one is called; and different other festivals throughout the world. And the northern Germanic tribes had the Yule Log, which now has been incorporated into Christmas, but originally, it was a separate thing that I don't think anybody disputes was pagan.

And so, there's this universal idea there that's expressed most clearly, I would say, in a song that children sing in Israeli kindergartens. And here I'll point out the difference between me coming at it as a philologist. A philologist is somebody who interprets ancient texts using history, language, context, archaeology, codicology, paleography and other disciplines. And he's coming at it as an evolutionary psychologist, which is a very different approach.

So what is your approach to Hanukkah? I think your video was really expressing that you feel like Hanukkah is coming under attack. And I'm going to use this term, and don't be offended, but the term “Hebrew Roots Movement”. And by Hebrew Roots, I'm including Messianics, and Melchizedek, and Nazarenes. And it's really a broad thing, that's where it's kind of a problematic term. But I'm using it in the sense of anybody who believes in Yeshua… and we're not defining what that means, because that can mean different things to different people. And then feels that there's something about the Torah that's still valid today, other than just symbolism. I'm going to use it in that sense.

Within the Hebrew Roots movement there's this strain that I call the "Everything is Pagan" strain. We just celebrated here Thanksgiving with my wife and her family, and I've had people say, "Thanksgiving is a pagan holiday. And you can’t say Wednesday, because it’s the day of Odin.” And there are people in Hebrew who say you can't say the word "panic", because it comes from the god Pan. And in that case, it's actually true. Wednesday does come from Odin and panic comes from the god Pan, but is anybody thinking about the god Pan when they say "panic"?

And so, where do you draw the line with "everything is pagan"? And so, I didn't want to do that with... I did an episode a few years ago called Pagan Origins of Christmas, and I felt like this was kind of a follow-up to that. I was surprised at how little evidence there actually was for the pagan origins of Christmas. Even though it seems obvious and intuitive, when you actually look at historical texts, not that much evidence as you would think.

So talk to me about Hanukkah, what's Hanukkah for you guys?

Rebekah: Okay, can I just preface this whole thing by just making sure that you know, and your audience knows, that we love you?

Nehemia: Oh, well, thank you.

Rebekah: Our life has been radically changed by your work. When we came out of Christianity, Seventh- Day Adventism, actually came out of that, and the ruakh was unpacking the truth for us in a way we’d never heard it before. You were one of the first ones that we listened to along with Michael Rood. Michael Rood introduced us to you, and we got into the calendar from you. We never went into the nonsense calendars. So I just want to thank you publicly for everything that you've done, and the work that you are still doing. I have an online university with courses, and I've got video links of yours for all my students to watch, and I’m constantly...

Nehemia: You have an online university where you teach people? I didn’t even know that. Tell us about that.

Rebekah: It’s Kingdom University. If you go to our website, you’ll see we have a YouTube channel, we have an online university. It’s developing. It’s not huge yet, but it’s developing. So, at the university I am teaching on all the feasts, so it's a huge module that unpacks every single feast through the light of the Melchizedek understanding, and just everything I've learned from you and Michael and everyone else. I'm just like the feast diva girl. I love the feasts. I love, love, love his rhythm, and so I'm trying to teach others, and especially ladies. I have Ladies of Teshuvah group which is booming right now. Ladies are flying out of Babylon and they're trying to figure out how to help their families learn how to repent, and they don't even know how, and so, then they find my stuff and they realize, "Oh my gosh, this is how I repent, I need to be offering better sacrifices,” which is, you know, what holidays do you celebrate? So that's where my focus...

Nehemia: I got to stop you there for a minute. Teshuvah, of course, is the Hebrew word for repentance. And your organization is Teshuvah Ministries, with an H. Repentance Ministries. I was once speaking at a congregation, and the gentleman who introduced me gave this little speech of his own, about a 30-minute speech, and look, it was his congregation, he can present anything he wants. And it created a whole uproar, because his position was that people who are followers of Yeshua can't repent, don't need repentance, because repentance was not necessary, and essentially is rejecting the sacrifice of Yeshua, or something like that. It was in Dutch, so I don't know exactly what he said. This is what people told me.

So tell me, how can you, coming from a New Testament perspective, have something where repentance is the central name of the ministry?

Rebekah: Oh my gosh, you jump in anytime, Isaac, but I can go off on this.

Nehemia: I love that your names are Isaac and Rebekah.

Rebekah: Well, just to clarify, my name, Rebekah, is my birth name. His is not. He chose to change his name, and he wanted to laugh more, so he chose the name Isaac. And then when he started to go by that, we were like, "Oh my, it's Isaac and Rebekah.” So it wasn't planned intentionally like that, but...

Nehemia: That's awesome.

Rebekah: Go ahead. What were you going to say?

Isaac: Oh, I just wanted to say that, yeah, I grew up in a denomination that taught that because I was born into this Christian religion, that I could not have a conversion experience. You know, this awakening type of experience that a non-believer would be able to have when they converted. And I always kind of wished I could have that. But I found out later in life, when I experienced it firsthand, that that is available. So, that's my experience.

Rebekah: Because we come from… it's a whole story from book one to the end, right? It's a whole story, that's how we approach it. And pretty much in the Tanakh, the primary call for Israel is to repent, and he doesn't change, and you look at...

Nehemia: Hey, you're preaching to the convinced here. So how do you reconcile that with this... And someone will correct me in the comments, and that's great, but my understanding is there's this debate between John Calvin and his disciple, Arminius. Calvin had the idea, which has been translated into modern terms, it is not the term he used, but basically, “once saved, always saved”. And Arminius said, "No, every time you sin, you need to repent.” And so, this is a debate going back like 500 years, and I wanted to ask somebody who is a Sunday Calvinist Christian, or a Reformed Christian, I said, "So what's the difference? This sounds so hypothetical to me as a Jew.” He said, "The difference is when we do the altar call on Sunday, the people who did the altar call last week can't come up, because they're already saved.” This is what he explained to me, I don't know if this is every church. He said, "The people in the Armenian church, who believe you can lose your salvation, they say, ‘No, if you sin that week, you've got to come up to the altar call.’”

And he decided that it wasn't a good message for his children that every week the same people were coming up to the altar and getting saved week after week, because they had sinned, and he didn't like that message. That's just what one person told me, I don't know if it represents the whole denomination or not.

Rebekah: No.

Nehemia: So your ministry is about repentance. What is repentance? I know this isn't our topic of Hanukkah, but it's still fascinating. Is there a need for repentance for you as Melchizedek believers in Yeshua? And this is amazing. Here I am, a Karaite Jew, with the Melchizedek believers in Yeshua, and we're talking about Hanukkah. Isn't this an amazing world we live in? This conversation couldn't have happened even a few years ago. So, what is repentance?

Rebekah: Amazing. Okay, so repentance is turn. Obviously, you know that. The word teshuvah means “to turn”, and you're going to turn from something to something. And so, we have to really look at... if Yah's biggest beef in the Tanakh with Israel was their idolatry, we have to look at this. Because we have to look and say, "Is there any idolatry still in our lives?” Yeshua didn't come to say, "Because of what I did, you're not sinning.” No, every single person pays the consequences for whether they sin or don't sin. In the end, He says, "I'm coming with my reward to give you according to what you did.” And he always came to speak the words of his Father, so you have to look at what the Father said. What did Yehovah say?

And Yehovah's biggest beef with Israel was idolatry. He was always constantly saying, "Turn from your idolatry, rend your hearts to Me and turn, and stop doing that and obey Me and worship Me.” And Nehemia, I'm not a scholar like you, or anything, but the best that we can do, we look at what that means to repent, to turn. And when I look at women... okay, I know he has things to say, but from a woman's perspective, I've looked at my own life, and I was undone one year when I realized that my hands were bringing idolatry into my home.

I grew up Christian. I grew up a Seventh-Day Adventist. I was on the pulpit, I was on the stage, I was promoting Seventh-Day Adventist things. But when I realized after watching Michael Rood's DVD and seeing your talk on the calendar, I was realizing I was so far from actually offering my family true worship. Here I brought in a tree into the house. So, for what we believe, absolutely, Christmas is pagan. Easter is pagan. We were sold on that instantly. And I would bring in every single year a tree into my home and have this routine that I was just promoting this wickedness in my own home. And so, then all of a sudden, I was like... I was on the floor. I was in tears. I wanted to repent, and what I was moved to do was to turn from that idolatry to the true holidays, the true holy days, His holidays. And with your guys' help and Michael Rood's help, I learned all about those and did a 180. And so, my whole ministry now is to teach ladies how to do that turn, how to leave. I mean, talk about hard, to leave Christmas. I mean, it's everywhere, right?

Nehemia: You say that like I'm supposed to know the significance of it. I don't, because I never celebrated Christmas, but I understand. Let's start with this… and here's my disclaimer for those who love Christmas in their heart. If you believe that you're convicted to keep Christmas, I don't know if there's anything we can say that could or should change that.

And this is what I said to Rabbi Paul Shrell-Fox, “Christmas is not in the New Testament, and even the idea of the birthday.... It was pointed out to me when I was a kid that the only one who celebrated a birthday, in the Tanakh, at least… in the New Testament I think you have Herod, but in the Tanakh the only one who celebrated a birthday was Pharaoh. It definitely wasn't a concept that Jews had in their culture. My grandmother did not know her birthday, and neither did her brother. They were born in Lithuania, and they came to America, and they said, "When were you born?” And she said, "I was born in Rosh Hashana.” “What's that?” “It's the new year.” So they put down January 1. But we’re not even sure if that’s when she was born. There are countries like Yemen where people have no idea when their birthday is. So it’s not obvious that you would celebrate birthdays. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, personally, celebrating a birthday.

Rebekah: Our thing with that is when you look at the genealogies and you look at these things… they know how old they were. So somehow, they had to be keeping records.

Nehemia: Well, then Job curses the day of his birth, so he apparently knew when he was born, right? So some people did, but the idea that the birthday is the most important day... If you want to celebrate it, celebrate it. But don't tell me that it's some religious requirement.

Rebekah: And this is where a lot of Christians... I mean, when we grew up Christian, this was our thought too. But basically, Christians are like, “It's a day set apart to honor Jesus.” But they know his birthday wasn't that day. And most Christians will say, "Well, we know it wasn't that day, it was probably in the fall somewhere.” And what they don't understand is his birthday was during Sukkot…

Nehemia: I'll ask you to talk about Sukkot and Hanukkah in a minute, and how they tie into Yeshua's birth and all that, but I just want to make a clear distinction for people, or invite them to think about this distinction. Between on the one hand, Christmas as maybe it was kept, I don't know, 1,700 years ago by Constantine, and Christmas, what it is today, where you have the mistletoe and you've got the Christmas tree, and obviously that's pagan – the mistletoe and the Christmas tree. I mean, nobody in the Middle East in Israel was doing mistletoe and Christmas trees in Israel, because we don't really have those kinds of trees. Not where you could cut them down and bring them into your house, that's for sure. We have very few trees.

And then the lights around the Christmas tree. And I don't know that many people would dispute that it's pagan. But I want to send people… go on the internet and find this movie with Kirk Cameron, who is this child star from the 80s, and he's become a very devout Evangelical Christian. He has a movie called Saving Christmas. And it's kind of a badly made movie, but he's trying to make the point that everything about Christmas is great for Christianity, because the tree reminds us of the cross...

Rebekah: Oh my gosh!

Nehemia: And the light reminds us of the light of Jesus... I might be getting this wrong, but I saw this, and I’m like, Okay…

Rebekah: Kirk Cameron is the one that propagated the lies that Christians should be celebrating Halloween because we could use it for a tool to witness, so I don't listen to Kirk Cameron.

Nehemia: I didn't know about that. I want people to hear both sides. Kind of the idea of Hebrew Voices is I've done like 100 or 200 hours of videos. I did Torah Pearls and I did Prophet Pearls. And I wanted people to hear what are all the other Hebrew Voices out there that they don't hear. And maybe not just Hebrew Voices, in the case of Kirk Cameron, and that's why I had Rabbi Shrell-Fox on. It's not my perspective, but let's hear what he has to say, and as Isaac pointed out in your response video, it really was a conversation between two Jews. The New Testament reason for keeping Hanukkah is not something either Jew would connect with.

I do want to make one point. In your response video, which we'll put a link to, you mentioned that he's an atheist. I can't speak for him, but I don't think this rabbi is an atheist. He is openly and explicitly coming at it from a humanist perspective. And I identified that and dwelled upon it, because I want that to be clear, and maybe we can learn something from that, maybe not, but it's a different perspective; here's a rabbi in Jerusalem, and he has this teaching about Hanukkah having connections to other holidays, including Christmas and other pagan festivals, that it's this festival of light that comes at a time of darkness, so there's something in human psychology to want light in the time of darkness.

Isaac: I may have just jumped there as he was describing how religions are purely...

Nehemia: Oh, I was horrified! I asked him about Shabbat, and he suggested that from an evolutionary psychology perspective, Shabbat was something someone just made up to try to kind of force people to do what they wanted them to do. And I said, "That's very...” what was the word I used? We'll let people watch that video. That is definitely not my perspective.

Tell me why as someone who, and not for me, but for those who are coming from a New Testament perspective, who believe in Yeshua, why should they keep Hanukkah?

Rebekah: Oh!

Nehemia: Come on sister, preach it!

Rebekah: Okay, so if we're going to return to Yah, if we're going to do what He says and obey, which is teshuvah, then we're going to, through the eyes of looking at our Rabbi Messiah, Yeshua, what did he do? Well, in John it shows us that he was in the Temple. He was actually in the treasury during Hanukkah, and he was preaching. He went up to Hanukkah. And so, just to lay the basis... Did you know this, Nehemia, that there are people who believe that Yeshua was protesting Hanukkah, not celebrating it? So when it says he was at the Feast of Dedication, he was protesting it, not celebrating it?

Nehemia: What was he protesting? Like, why was he protesting it?

Rebekah: Because they think it's a pagan celebration. So here's the thing, He never ever made it his practice to go up to a pagan celebration, hold a sign and protest in that manner. He never did that. In fact, I've heard other people say this too, at Sukkot, which was before, obviously, one of the last feasts in the fall, he went up incognito to the feast. Sukkot is required for you to go up to. He had to go, but he went incognito because he had death threats over his life. But at Hanukkah, he didn't have to go to Hanukkah because the Hanukkah isn't a required festival, but he went anyway because he thought it was so important to get up and interpret for us, to say, "Hey, I'm the light of the world.” That's what he said on Hanukkah - I'm the light of the world.

So there are so many reasons, Nehemia, we feel that Hanukkah is super important, but I think he's biting at the bit. Hold on. What did you want to say?

Isaac: Yeah, I'm kind of...

Nehemia: This is like me and Keith, I never let him talk. Go ahead.

Rebekah: I know, I'm like, ah!

Nehemia: Yes, Isaac, what have you got?

Isaac: I'm kind of quoting Rebekah here that Teshuvah Ministries, Rebekah, we believe it's important to understand the process of rededicating your heart back to its original purpose, which is that it was meant to be a dwelling place for the one true God.

Rebekah: Right. So if you look at where Hanukkah started, it started in a good thing. They had the Maccabean revolt, and then they got a hold of the Temple and they cleansed it, and then they re-dedicated it, and they lit the menorah in there so they could do their work there in the Temple. And so, when you look as a believer in Yeshua and you know that there are all these prophetic implications, you know where the Temple now resides; there's no brick-and-mortar Temple. If you believe the New Testament, if you believe the Brit Hakhadasha and Yeshua, then you know that the Temple is right here in our hearts.

So when you look at this, it is an amazing festival, because you're supposed to clean up this temple from idolatry, from everything that is anti-Yah. You clean this up and then you get re-dedicated, you re-dedicate your heart to its original purpose, which is to be a house for Yehovah. We're all houses for our God, right? You're either going to let one god live in you or the other, and there are only two kingdoms. There's the evil kingdom and there's the good kingdom, so I want Yah to fill my temple with his Ruakh HaKodesh, I don't want an evil in there, so we have to clean it up.

So there's a process of Hanukkah, I call it "the process of Hanukkah", “the process of dedication”. Israel knew about dedication; they knew about Hanukkah. You know this...

Nehemia: Yeah, but the audience may not. I might know, so tell the audience.

Rebekah: Well, you know the word Hanukkah is "dedication" in Hebrew. And so, Israel was familiar with the process of dedication, something happened. In fact, in the Levitical priesthood, you had the seven days where the priests, during the ordination sat in the doorway for seven days. Well, actually, you have to back up. They watched Moses do his job before, so they watched it and then they sat in the doorway for seven days, and they were getting ordinated. And then on the eighth day, they started their ministry, they were dedicated, and they became ordained, basically. And what did they do? They did exactly what Moses did.

So looking at it from a Melchizedek Priesthood standpoint as believers in Yeshua, and that temple now residing here, you go, "Okay, we watched Yeshua, what did our high priest do? What did the one who guides us do?” And then we look at what he did, and then we sit in the doorway, if you want to say, during Hanukkah for seven days... And I know that this takes place over the course of your whole life, but the idea is you have those seven days, and then on the eighth day you rededicate your heart back to him. And then you get back and then you start working for him as his priest, in his priesthood. So that's in a nutshell.

Nehemia: So, do you guys light candles and lamps on Hanukkah? Do you do that?

Rebekah: Yeah. And we have a lot of people who don't think that that's a good thing to do. All we do is we use it to count the days. So you have the shamash candle, the servant candle, like Yeshua lights us. We're wicks, he lights us. And then we actually use the hanukkiah, just simply to count the days. In fact, Nehemia, you have had a candle many years, we've dedicated a candle to you, because...

Nehemia: A candle for me? Wow.

Rebekah: Yeah, you brought so much light into our life. So when we sit down at the table during Hanukkah and we light that new candle, we will pick a person who has brought...

Nehemia: Is it a big, shiny, bald candle? What blessing do you make over the Hanukkah candles?

Rebekah: Not the one that you teach. We don’t do that one.

Nehemia: So here for the audience I want to clarify, and I guess I kind of thought this is what was going to be discussed in the interview, but he had a different perspective than what I knew. So we have an historical event that took place in 165 BCE; some people say it's 164 now, but whatever, in which the Maccabees, the Hasmoneans, liberated the Temple, and they found the altar there. It had pagan sacrifices, pig had been sacrificed on the altar, so they tore down the altar and made a new altar.

And they saw in Leviticus that there was an eight-day dedication that took place for the tabernacle, and they saw Solomon had an eight-day dedication for the First Temple. And they had had legends or some historical information that there was some kind of eight-day dedication for the Second Temple. And they said, "Okay, we're going to put back the altar, it's eight days, that's what we should do. That's actually one of several explanations given in the First and Second Maccabees.

The other is that this was a second Sukkot. That they hadn't kept Sukkot, which was their most important festival, for three-and-a-half years while they were fighting the Greeks, and so, they said, "Alright, the first chance to keep Sukkot, we're going to do an eight-day celebration in commemoration. Just as there's a second Passover in Numbers chapter 9, we're going to do a second Sukkot.”

So those are the two main explanations that are given in the books of the Maccabees. We have evidence that people were lighting candles in Second Temple times, but not that it had anything to do with the miracle of the eight days of oil. That only shows up later, after the Temple is destroyed. And there what it seems is that most historians would say… or many historians, I don't if I could say most, many historians would say that once there was no reason to celebrate the dedication of the altar, because the name of the holiday is khanukat hamizbe'akh. There are still prayers and songs in the Jewish culture that reference the dedication of the altar. It had nothing to do with the menorah. So once the altar had been destroyed, then they may have taken these lights that people were already lighting and shifted them to dealing with this supposed miracle of the seven days of free oil. It was eight days, the first day wasn't free, they had the oil, so seven days of free oil.

The references to the lamps from Second Temple period, they actually tied into Sukkot. They say, "Why is it eight days of lighting? Because there are eight days of Sukkot. And each one represents the sacrifices brought on a different day that they couldn't bring when it was under Greek rule.”

So that's kind of the historical overview. What Rabbi Shrell-Fox was talking about, and he's probably aware of this… there are these people who study the Dead Sea Scrolls who say, "No, wait a minute. There seem to be references to some kind of oil festival that predates the Maccabee event.” It's not Hanukkah, because that required the altar to dedicate. But this festival of eight days… and he kind of said this, may have pre-existed, and then they kind of rededicated it, no pun intended, for the purpose of this miracle, or originally to the military victory. That's kind of speculation, we don't know that's the case.

But for you the key piece of information, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that Yeshua celebrated Hanukkah, and it's a “what would Yeshua do?” kind of thing. Is that fair?

Rebekah: Yeah.

Isaac: That, and the Torah protocol that you referred to of the eight-day dedication of the altar.

Rebekah: Yeah, it feels to me like the idea of Sukkot being the framework by which they created this, it doesn't make sense to me, because that's nearly two months ago. It seems like it's pretty far away, and it seems like if the Maccabees and Mattathias were all priests, they would have known the Torah protocol for dedicating a new altar. So that’s…

Nehemia: And it's possible there are multiple reasons. It's possible that they said, "We didn't celebrate Sukkot for three years, or three-and-a-half years, now let’s do eight days.” There could be multiple reasons. It's possible.

Rebekah: But the oil… that's a propagated construct, like Isaac was saying, and it just leads people astray, I think, from what the true Hanukkah is about. And so, a lot of people who follow our ministry have massive issues with Hanukkah because of how it's being celebrated right now. And they know that dreidels and the oil...

Nehemia: What's wrong with dreidels? I love dreidels. There's nothing pagan about dreidels. I don't think there's anything pagan, even, about the Hanukkah menorah. The issue I have with the menorah is the benediction that Rabbinical Jews make, which is, “Barukh ata Adonay Elohenu melekh ha'olam asher kideshanu bemitzvotav,” “Blessed art thou Lord king of the universe, who hast sanctified us by His commandments,” “lehadlik ner shel Khanukkah,” “to light the Hanukkah lamp.”

And everyone in Rabbinical Judaism knows God didn't command us to do this, but He commanded us supposedly to obey the rabbis, and by lighting the Hanukkah candle you're professing the God-given authority of the rabbis. If Yeshua lit Hanukkah candles or lamps, and I don't know if he did or not, he certainly didn't say that blessing, because the blessing doesn't come about until after the destruction of the Temple.

Rebekah: Yeah, and I don't think he lit candles. No, he was going for the heart.

Isaac: And truths like that, that might ruffle some feathers or be objectionable to some groups... We so respect you and appreciate you for going to the wall for what is actually written in the Torah.

Rebekah: Just what’s written, what is it that’s written; we just really appreciate that. I think people look at Hanukkah and they don't understand the depth of it and the beauty of it as believers in Yeshua, and they see just the top little bit of it, and they think it's shallow, and they think it's pagan and everything. So we just really believe... Our hearts got so cleansed during that first Hanukkah that we ever celebrated after we watched Michael Rood and you, we were doing our teshuvah, and it was an amazing... We took books from other religious leaders from our home and had a book burning during Hanukkah and got cleansed.

Nehemia: Well, that makes me feel very uncomfortable, burning books. I don't endorse that, but okay.

Rebekah: I know, but we were cleansing. We were doing what it took to cleanse our life.

Nehemia: I hear you. And by the way, for those who don't know, you just reminded me. There's a series I did, the Open Door Series, and the last third of it or so was on Hanukkah, and it was talking about the historical origins of what Hanukkah actually was, originally… but I'll let people go watch that.

Rebekah: We just watched that.

Nehemia: Cool. Alright, so give me some bullet points. For those who believe in Yeshua, as you say, what is the depth of Hanukkah? And you already talked about some of it, but give me five bullet points, if you can. But you've got a book, show us the book. Did you write that book? What a nice cover. Is that a hardcover book?

Rebekah: Yes.

Nehemia: I can't even imagine what that cost to print.

Rebekah: Yeah, it's a little spendy, and it's full color. It's got everything that we know about Hanukkah in here.

Nehemia: Let me see the title of the book. Okay, and that's Yehovah from the Aleppo Codex. I believe that's Ezekiel 3:28, or 3:22 maybe. The True Hanukkah. So you have a whole book about it, family friendly. What are the five bullet points from that book that you can share with the audience? Where can people get this book?

Rebekah: On our website.

Nehemia: Okay. My friend, Keith, has this expression, “sandbagging”.

Rebekah: What's that?

Nehemia: That's when you're really good at something and you kind of hide it until the end. So you've been sandbagging here, you've got a whole book on it. How many pages is that book?

Rebekah: 310.

Nehemia: Wow. Alright, so what's five bullet points from your 310-page book?

Isaac: There are probably bullet points in the book. As you probably picked up on, we're kind of what you might call essentialists or purists.

Nehemia: I don't know what that means. Tell me what that means, an essentialist.

Isaac: We believe there's something essentially true in things that are, in fact, true, and once we discover the things we want to get back at the pure form, like the heart of it, which would be historical, but also, from our perspective, to get at the heart of it, and what it's really about. We talked about the Feast of Dedication, rededicating yourself, your heart back to its original purpose.

Rebekah: And you can't do that until you get cleansed. So cleansing the heart.

Isaac: Right, the cleansing process came first. And that was the work that the Maccabees did in the Temple. So, cleansing from idolatry and then rededication.

Rebekah: Rededicating your heart.

Isaac: And then a time for celebrating freedom from pagan sun god worship.

Rebekah: So this is what I say. We'll get to the five points in a second, but this is what I say. You cannot have Christmas and Hanukkah in the same room. Here's why. Because Hanukkah is a celebration from pagan sun god worship. They put this in place to celebrate the fact that they got all the idols down. They took Zeus down, they cleaned it up, and they restored proper worship to Israel. Right? And so, if you look at the roots of Christmas, which is total pagan, you can't have the two in the same room, because one is a celebration from the other. So to have both in the same room is to not be dividing the word of truth properly, it's not being set apart. You're being confused.

So Hanukkah is a celebration from Christmas, so when we celebrate Hanukkah, we are really saying, “We have cleaned our lives up from the pagan holidays and we are restoring true and proper worship.” Worship is what you do in trade for life. You're making an offering; you're doing something in trade for life. Back in the old days when they had their babies, they’d give their babies to Moloch in trade for what? In trade for life. Next year maybe the crops will be better, the community is better, whatever it is. They were offering their babies to these gods for life, for something that was going to happen better. And that's what we do with Christmas, and we didn't want to do that. We want to offer our family true worship. I’m pretty big on that.

Nehemia: So the headline here that you're saying… and this isn't my position, it’s your position, I never celebrated Christmas in my life, but that Hanukkah for you, in a sense, is celebrating your liberation from Christmas.

Rebekah: Liberation from pagan sun god worship. All of it, yeah.

Nehemia: Wow.

Isaac: And one point on that that might be more relevant to most Bible believers is that we grew up, like Michael Rood says, inheriting lies. And we grew up with a system of holidays that aren't even in the Scriptures.

Rebekah: They're nowhere in there.

Isaac: And we grew up not even knowing about… we did, a system of holidays that are named in the Bible.

Rebekah: Yeah, you grew up celebrating, but we didn't.

Nehemia: I grew up celebrating some things that were biblical and some things that were added to the Bible. Every Shabbat my mother would do the thing over the candles and bless God for commanding us to light Shabbat candles. Well, where's that in the Torah? Well, no, it's not, but God commanded us to obey the rabbis, and they told us to do that. Okay, where's that even in Rabbinical writings? It’s not, actually, until very, very late. It’s not even in the Talmud. It’s later than the Talmud.

So I grew up with some things that were true and some things that were... and I call it "spiritual mixing of seed". There's this commandment not to mix two different types of seed, and I have a whole teaching on it. I think it's in the Open Door Series, actually. And one of the reasons that people explained that you shouldn't be mixing seed is that there was the high-quality seed, the wheat, and the barley, which was the low quality. And if you mix them together, they didn't have a technology to separate them apart, and what you're doing is you're basically scamming people. You're giving them this mixed seed, and they don't have the ability, it's too difficult to remove the low quality from the high quality, and you're selling it as the high-quality.

That's one explanation, at least. And to apply that to Torah, is if you mix in that false... and also, often as a grain of truth, right? You mix that falsehood into the truth, it's very hard to distinguish. And I meet people all the time who are coming to Torah, who are trying to live in accordance with what they understand that is the instruction of God in the Torah, and they don't know… and I see this from Jews, they don't know what it is that God actually said and what is it that is tradition, because they're so intertwined and mixed.

So I did grow up with some things that were, frankly, rebellion against God. Thanking God for commanding us to do something He didn't command us to do. And you know He didn't command you to do that. That's a rebellion against God, I think, from my perspective.

So you guys have a very interesting perspective. I feel like we don't even need the five bullet points, because you've given us some juicy things to think about here. Quickly tell people what your website is, and how they can find out more.

Rebekah: It is teshuvahministries.com. And if you go there, you'll see a blue light house, at least at this point, and you'll see lots of different links to the Kingdom University where you can get online courses. They're developing these courses and some other things. And then our YouTube channel, which you can subscribe to that and get stuff every once in a while, we’ve got lots of teachings there. And then we have a store where you can go buy DVDs and books and products. And then I have a ladies’ group. So for any ladies who are wanting to repent, learning how or feel lonely, I've got a really fabulous ladies’ group. So there's a tab that's called "Women" and you just click down there. I also have a war room in the women's group where we pray together.

Nehemia: I feel like the war room should be for the men, but okay.

Rebekah: I know, right? It's a woman's war room right now. Someday he'll start a men's side of this ministry, but for now it's just us. And then if you'd like to donate to our ministry, then there are links there as well.

Nehemia: Can you end with... maybe a prayer for Hanukkah?

Rebekah: Yes! Let me see. I wrote out a prayer. Hold on. Can I read it?

Nehemia: Sure.

Rebekah: Okay. A prayer for Hanukkah. By the way, Nehemia, I just have to say that I can't thank you enough for letting Yehovah use you to restore the name to us. It literally makes me want to cry. To be able to know how to pronounce... I'm constantly watching your videos on that. I'm constantly getting people asking me, "How do you pronounce it?” And then they argue with me about this, that and the other thing, and I'm like, "I learned from Nehemia,” and I'm constantly going over there because I'm not a Hebrew scholar like you. I just want to say thank you from the bottom of our hearts for doing that and for continuing to validate the name and letting us know how to pronounce it.

Nehemia: Well, all glory to Yehovah.

Rebekah: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, a prayer for Hanukkah.

We thank you, Yehovah Elohim for the hope that has aroused in us through the deliverance You gave Judah long ago and that we can experience in Yeshua now and in the future. During Hanukkah we get to celebrate the fact that we do not have to honor the pagan rituals of Christmas or Easter or any of the other pagan festivals anymore. We were blind to what we were doing. We could not help what we inherited. But now we fully repent of participating in pagan sun god worship. We have become hungry for the truth, and You have honored our quest by giving us eyes to see.

You have come through for us by breaking the yoke of paganism that has been on our necks since childhood. We no longer feel forced by some unseen power to offer our allegiance to those unforgiving, unsatisfying and completely consuming traditions that have bound us and been so hard on our hearts for most of our life. Instead, we claim Hanukkah, which is a true and superior thing to celebrate in Christmas at this time of year.

Thank you Yehovah that we don’t have to offer our children up to a god of wood or stone and to gods who don’t exist, but in the form of thought. These gods, like Santa and Easter and other forms of pagan worship, are not real and have no power to make blessings come or go. Thank you that we can offer our children the real living Elohim who can and does have the power to heal, restore, bless and love us. We offer Your real living oracles to our children to learn and celebrate.

I'm so glad that You do have the power to make good on Your promises, unlike the pagan deities who are nothing. Thank you for providing us with the celebration that eclipses the pagan one. Thank you that we can offer our children something that lights up the dark days of the winter months, and when all their little friends are being indoctrinated into the same lies that we once knew, thank you that we do not have to pass this idolatry down to the next generation. Thank you that we are not blind anymore, that have eyes to see. Instead of sacrificing the hearts of our children on a pagan altar, we now get to offer our children up to a holy celebration. Amen.

Nehemia: I just want to offer one last thought before we end. And I'm just thinking of... and here I'm kind of going out on a limb, in a sense. I wonder if this could be a way to look at Hanukkah symbolically. When the Hasmoneans, as the Maccabees came into the Temple, and they found that altar desecrated, they said, "How can we serve God on this desecrated altar?” And they tore down the altar, and they replaced it with a new one.

And if you look at Hanukkah, as you said, as dedicating your heart, I wonder if it's God… or maybe for you Yeshua, who's coming and tearing down that old altar, that old heart, and giving you a new heart. And now that's of course a metaphor in the Tanakh, where God says, "I’ll give you a new spirit,” in Ezekiel, and a new heart. And you have to be willing to do it. Now this is me, the Karaite, speaking. You have to be willing to let God give you that new heart. You have to receive it, but you also need Him to do it as part of the teshuvah, as part of the repentance. And with that, I wish everybody a Happy Hanukkah. Shalom.

Rebekah: Happy Hanukkah. Thank you.

You have been listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon’s Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

We hope the above transcript has proven to be a helpful resource in your study. While much effort has been taken to provide you with this transcript, it should be noted that the text has not been reviewed by the speakers and its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. If you would like to support our efforts to transcribe the teachings on NehemiasWall.com, please visit our support page. All donations are tax-deductible (501c3) and help us empower people around the world with the Hebrew sources of their faith!

SUPPORT NEHEMIA'S RESEARCH AND TEACHINGS!

Makor Hebrew Foundation is a 501c3 tax-deductible not for profit organization.

Share this Teaching on Social Media

The post Hebrew Voices #136 – Hanukkah Under Attack appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.