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December 3, 2004
Coins for saving, not spending
Chanukah gelt recalls Jewish freedom and a long tradition of learning.
BATSHEVA POMERANTZ ISRAEL PRESS SERVICE
While Jewish children today look forward to receiving Chanukah
gelt (money), in former times it was actually given as a token of
appreciation to Jewish educators.
The rabbis in 18th-century Eastern Europe kept the light of Jewish
tradition alive by teaching the children and adults in their communities
but, during Chanukah, they would leave their towns and travel to
outlying villages to teach Torah.
Initially, the rabbis declined payment but, eventually, they accepted
token gifts or gelt from appreciative villagers. This practice became
obligatory and other pillars of the community began receiving Chanukah
gelt.
By the 19th century, children were also being given gelt as an incentive
to study Torah. During Chanukah, the children would return home
early from school in order to light the Chanukah lamp with their
family. With the long winter nights ahead of them, the gelt (often
in the form of chocolate coins wrapped in gold and silver foil)
and gifts were often used in tandem with another Chanukah favorite
– the dreidel or spinning top.
The eight-day festival, commencing on the 25th of Kislev (Dec. 7
this year), celebrates two major events that took place in the land
of Israel in the second century BCE. The first is the battle of
the Jews against the Greeks during the reign of the tyrant Antiochus,
who defiled the Temple and issued a series of decrees to eradicate
Jewish identity, including the confiscation and burning of all holy
books and a prohibition on following Jewish law, observing Shabbat
and the Jewish holidays. The battle was led by Judah Maccabee of
Modi'in and his four brothers from the Hasmonean priestly family.
They courageously outmanoeuvered and defeated the Greeks.
The second event is the miracle of the cruse of oil. Following the
battles, the Hasmoneans went to the Temple in Jerusalem in order
to kindle the menorah as part of their priestly duties. As the Temple
had been defiled by the Greeks, all the oil was deemed impure. However,
the Hasmoneans found one cruse of pure, undefiled oil, sufficient
to light the menorah for one day. Miraculously, the oil lasted for
eight days.
Some years after the Temple was rededicated, new coins were minted
as a sign of independence – both physical and spiritual. Some
Hellenistic symbols, like the horn of plenty, a star and an anchor,
were used on the coins, but other Greek imagery was avoided because
of the second commandment that forbids the use of man or beasts.
A coin from the time of the High Priest Mattathias Antigonus (40-37
BCE) of the Hasmonean family depicts some Temple utensils, the golden
table of showbread and the menorah. When the Temple was destroyed
in the year 70, the coinage ceased, except during the period of
the Bar Kochba rebellion, when a series of coins was minted by the
Jews (often over the top of an existing coin) proclaiming the "Freedom
of Israel." The state of Israel revived the tradition by linking
ancient history with modern Israel. It created its first Chanukah
coin which displayed the exact menorah portrayed on the coin of
Mattathias Antigonus 1,998 years earlier.
The Israel Government Coins and Medal Corp. has been designing and
producing Chanukah mint sets since 1958. The sets include coins
of the current circulation used in Israel – with a tiny menorah
mint mark. Exclusive to the mint set is also a 12-sided half-shekel
coin engraved with a menorah from a different Jewish community each
year. The set is available in a plastic collector's box, which includes
background on the community.
In 1972, a Russian menorah was used to convey a message to the world
about the Jews trapped behind the Iron Curtain. In 1976, an American
Chanukah lamp engraved on the 12-sided coin marked the U.S. bicentennial
year. A coin featuring an Iraqi Chanukah lamp appeared in 2003 during
the war in Iraq.
An historical set from 1984 depicts a Chanukah lamp made clandestinely
in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia –
evidence of the power or the Jewish spirit and a symbol of defiance
against the Nazis. The original lamp, donated to Yad Vashem, is
made of scrap iron and automobile parts.
Other sets have commemorated communities as diverse as Holland,
Cochin in India, Italy, Yemen, North Africa and, of course, Israel.
This year's Chanukah set includes a coin depicting a Chanukah lamp
from Damascus. It is particularly meaningful because when Antiochus
IV – who ruled Syria after the death of Alexander the Great
– plundered the Temple, he sent the sacred vessels to Antiochia,
the Syrian capital. In addition, a large Jewish community lived
in Antiochia and, upon Israel's establishment in 1948, many Syrian
Jews immigrated to Israel.
Chanukah gelt, therefore, is not just a favorite treat with children
but recalls the high point of Jewish freedom as well as an awareness
of the Jewish people's long tradition of learning.
For more information on Chanukah sets, contact the Israel Government
Coins and Medals Corp. at www.coins.co.il.
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