Jewish Winter Solstice Tales

There are a number of Jewish stories about the winter solstice. Here are some of the legends Jews can tell one another during the darkest days of winter...

I. Adam and the Winter Solstice

"When Adam saw the day gradually diminishing, he said, “Woe is me! Perhaps because I sinned, the world around me is growing darker and darker, and is about to return to chaos and confusion, and this is the death heaven has decreed for me. He then sat eight days in fast and prayer. But when the winter solstice arrived, and he saw the days getting gradually longer, he said, "Such is the way of the world,” and proceeded to observe eight days of festivity. The following years he observed both the eight days preceding and the eight days following the solstice as days of festivity." (Babylonian Talmud, Avodah Zarah 8a)

In this story the first human being is distressed over the decreasing light and believes it is a punishment. Only when he learns that the light will begin to grow again is he comforted. We too often feel sad or anxious when the light diminishes and are glad when it comes again. Adam's drama of fear and acceptance helps us to accept our own moments of not knowing.

After the truth is revealed to him, Adam is able to celebrate before and after the solstice. This Jewish story of the winter solstice teaches us to honor darkness as well as light. We can also wonder: where might Eve be in this story? What would she think of the changing seasons and how would she celebrate them?

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Read more Jewish Winter Solstice Tales here.

From PeelaPom and Tumblr --

Tekufat Tevet – The Winter Solstice

“The winter solstice seems to have to do with sight, or the lack thereof. Mountains become visible to Noah, and the patterns of nature become visible to Adam and Eve. Leviathan is associated with inner site. Jepthah, on the other hand, is blind to his own wrong doings. On the winter solstice the sun’s light begins to become stronger, and we too consider how to strengthen our vision.”

From the Jewish Book of Days by Rabbi Jill Hammer:

Jewish Winter Solstice Song
(Rabbi Jill Hammer)
Light born from darkness,
dawn born from night,
hope born from quiet
waiting for the light.

Spring born from winter,
spark struck from sun,
strength born from calling
for the spring to come.

Tonight the dark is waiting,
longing to be gone.
Tonight the earth is turning,
facing toward the dawn. (RK’Jill Hammer)

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From MyJewishLearning.com --

Hanukkah and the Winter Solstice

There are disagreements as to why the holiday of lights is celebrated when the days are short.

There is a great deal of evidence that, in much of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, the winter solstice was a time for imploring the sunlight to return and celebrating its readiness to do so. In Rome, the 25th of December was the birthday of the Unconquerable Sun. In Persia, at the winter solstice the common people set great bonfires and their rulers sent birds aloft bearing torches of dried grass.

It is a short leap to surmising that the Syrian Greeks may have chosen the 25th of Kislev as a time to desecrate the Temple by making their own sacrifices there precisely because it was a time of solar and lunar darkness, the time of the winter solstice and the waning of the moon. And it is a short leap to surmise that the Maccabees, when they took the anniversary of that day as the day of rededication, were rededicating not only the Temple but the day itself to Jewish holiness; were capturing a pagan solstice festival that had won wide support among partially Hellenized Jews, in order to make it a day of God’s victory over paganism. Even the lighting of candles for Hanukkah fits the context of the surrounding torchlight honors for the sun.

Some commentators have objected that Hanukkah cannot be a solstice festival because it is tied to the lunar, not the solar, cycle. But this objection ignores the fact that the festivals that are most clearly solar — Sukkot and Passover, the festivals of fall and spring — are nevertheless tied to the full moon for their dates. The objection also ignores the fact that Judaism insists on keeping the sun and moon cycles in tension with each other in its entire calendar— never adopting either a purely lunar or a purely solar calendar, but insisting that each be corrected by the other.

Moreover, if Hanukkah is not merely a solstice but a darkness festival, then the 25th of Kislev is the perfect time. In some years, the solstice day itself would be a night of bright full moon–especially powerful in an agrarian-pastoral culture with few artificial lights. So even the solstice itself would feel less like the darkest day of the year on such a moonlit night. By setting Hanukkah on the 25th of the month, the Jews made sure that the night would be dark. By setting it in Kislev, they made sure the day would be very short and the sun very dim.

It may even be that the Maccabees’ desire to celebrate a late Sukkot, or to celebrate this newly Judaized solstice festival in ways reminiscent of Sukkot, was tied to Sukkot’s earlier career as in part a festival of the sun. As we have seen in our examination of Sukkot, the Mishnah goes out of its way to preserve the memory that “Our forebears turned toward the East, to the Sun. . .” and the torches of Sukkot, juggled by the Levites as they danced through Jerusalem, may have been reminders of the sun.

If we see Hanukkah as intentionally, not accidentally, placed at the moment of the darkest sun and darkest moon, then one aspect of the candles seems to be an assertion of our hope for renewed light. Just as at Sukkot we poured the water in order to remind God to pour out rain, perhaps one reason for us to light the candles is to remind God to renew the sun and moon. Indeed, the miracle of eight days’ light from one day’s oil sounds like an echo of the Mishnah’s comment that at the Sukkot water pouring, one log (measure) of water was enough for eight days’ pouring.

Reprinted with permission from Seasons of Our Joy (Beacon Press).