Men feature heavily in the story of Hanukkah as it is usually recounted. Both in winning the war against Antiochus and the enormous Syrian/Greek empire, and in the miracle of finding a flask of undefiled oil in the Temple, which lasted 8 days, men are seen as the main players.
But yet we are also told that, even though lighting the Chanukiah is a time-bound mitzvah (from which women are usually exempt), women are included in the commandment to light the Hanukkah candles, and if a woman lives alone or her husband is away, a wife lights the candles in his absence.
The reason is that women were an important part of the miracles both spiritually and physically. Antiochus not so desperate to kill the Jews, he mainly wanted to turn them into Greeks in culture, dress, philosophy and sports and to worship all things Greek. But most of all he was determined to stop all their Jewish practices i.e. Brit-mila, Rosh Chodesh, Shabbat, Learning Torah, etc.
The penalty was death for anyone caught celebrating any Jewish festival, eating kosher food, learning Jewish texts, carrying out Jewish rituals, or keeping Jewish commandments.
But Antiochus wanted to go a step further and make sure that Jews were totally abandoning their religion and worshipping Greek gods. He arrested many Jews and forced them to bow down to a Greek idol or be killed. Among those he arrested were Hannah and her seven devout, G-d fearing sons, no doubt thinking what an achievement it would be for him when he got them to prostrate themselves before a Greek god. He may have had no video to put on social media to go viral in a few seconds, but word would still get around quickly by ancient Greek standards.
But his plan failed miserably as one after the other, each son refused to bow down and was horrifically tortured and put to death in front of his mother and brothers. As each son was brought forward to the idol, Antiochus screamed at Hannah that she could stop the murderous rampage easily by just telling her sons to bow down. But she refused and instead encouraged each one by telling them their pain was short-lived lived but their reward in Olam Haba was eternal. But Antiochus was getting really desperate because when her last little boy came forward, Antiochus threw his ring onto the floor and said, “Here, pick up my ring,” so that it would appear that he was bowing down and Antiochus had finally won. But the boy fully understood Antiochus’s ruse and refused. Hannah asked permission to speak to him and Antiochus, assuming she would persuade him to bow down and live, readily agreed. But Hannah whispered to her little child “When you meet your ancestor Avraham, tell him that he was only asked to sacrifice one son, whereas I sacrificed seven.”
As her youngest son was being tortured to death, she ran to the roof of the building and threw herself off.
But women did not only show their spiritual strength and heroism during the time of Hanukkah.
Yehudit, (Judith), who some sources say was the High Priest’s daughter, was a very beautiful widow who lived in Jerusalem at the time when the Greek King Holofernes was losing patience with the Jews. He knew they were secretly still practicing as Jews, keeping mitzvoth and celebrating Shabbat. They had also managed to kill one of his military commanders which enraged him even more. He wanted to get rid of them without too much effort on his or his army’s part. Better they should just die of starvation or surrender. So he laid siege to the city and waited it out.
Food was running out. The water supply had been cut off. The Jews were getting desperate; their hunger and thirst were driving them crazy. Many of them wanted to surrender but Yehudit was sure that surrender would just mean death, and for the women, even worse than that. She convinced the Jewish rebel leader to give her a few days to carry out her own plan to see if they could avoid surrender and beat the Greeks.
Dressed to kill and carrying baskets of food and wine, she slipped out of the city one night and made her way to Holofernes’ tent. She told the soldiers on guard that she had a special message for their leader. Her seductive dress and manner led them to believe that Holofernes would be delighted to see her so they let her through. She told him that the Jews were almost at breaking point and if he just waited another few days they would surrender and save him wasting his manpower and weapons.
She then tenderly fed him some salty cheese and drowned his thirst with heavy wine until he was completely plastered and snoring then quietly slipped his sword from his belt and sliced his head off his shoulders. She wrapped his head in the tablecloth and pushed it to the bottom of her basket and slipped out into the dark night.
In the morning, when his troops saw their King’s head speared onto the wall of Jerusalem they fled in terror.
Heroism comes in many forms: spiritual, physical, peaceful, and forceful. Jewish women have played their role in them all.