At its core, Judaism is a prag­mat­ic faith. Rather than sim­ply ask­ing what is right, it also asks the broad­er ques­tion, What works? This is just as true in Jew­ish law, which was mod­i­fied, mold­ed, and even bro­ken over time to ensure that it wouldn’t cause dis­cord between peo­ple or vio­lence against the Jew­ish community.

But prag­ma­tism doesn’t exist only in law. If a hol­i­day doesn’t ​“work,” the mean­ings, rit­u­als, and even cen­tral sto­ry of that hol­i­day will be changed to fit with cur­rent norms. And no hol­i­day is this truer for than Hanukkah.

The orig­i­nal Hanukkah sto­ry, told in the Books of the Mac­cabees, is a sto­ry of rebel­lion. The Greeks are defil­ing the Tem­ple and bring­ing their idol­a­trous prac­tices into ancient Israel, and a small band of Jew­ish war­riors revolts. After win­ning the war, they recon­se­crate their Tem­ple and set up a fes­ti­val for eight days, which schol­ars believe is meant to be a sub­sti­tute for Sukkot, anoth­er eight-day hol­i­day they missed while fight­ing the war.

There shouldn’t be any­thing wrong with this sto­ry. Judaism has plen­ty of tales, from Passover to Purim, of Jews van­quish­ing an ene­my. But cir­cum­stances changed for our ances­tors, and the Hanukkah account quick­ly became prob­lem­at­ic. After the Jews defeat­ed the Greeks, they began a short peri­od of self-rule that even­tu­al­ly came to an end when, after inter­nal squab­bling, they brought the nascent Roman Empire in to medi­ate. Rome took one look around and, lik­ing what they saw in ancient Israel, nev­er left. Even­tu­al­ly, the Jews rebelled against Rome. In their effort to quash the upris­ing, Rome destroyed Jerusalem and the Tem­ple. Sub­se­quent attempts at rebel­lions also failed.

Left under the cru­el thumb of Rome, Jews made the prag­mat­ic deci­sion to rewrite their Hanukkah sto­ry. It wouldn’t be smart to con­tin­ue cel­e­brat­ing the defeat of Rome’s fore­bears, the Greeks. Imag­ine hav­ing a Roman sol­dier walk by a group of Jews telling a detailed account of purg­ing their land of Hel­lenis­tic influ­ence. Hop­ing not to get rid of the hol­i­day alto­geth­er, the ancient rab­bis rewrote the sto­ry. They down­played the war and added the ele­ment we all know: oil. When the Greeks left, the Jews tried to find oil to use in the Tem­ple. They found only one day’s worth, but it mirac­u­lous­ly last­ed for eight days.

Sud­den­ly, one could get very seri­ous about Hanukkah in a way that would offend no one. The Tal­mud doesn’t speak in depth about the bat­tle sequences; instead, it talks about the way to light can­dles: what mate­ri­als to use, where to place the meno­rah in the win­dow, how one might use the flick­er­ing light. Hanukkah would now ​“work” for its time.

As gen­er­a­tions passed, Jews found them­selves in oth­er sit­u­a­tions that would neces­si­tate a rethink­ing of the hol­i­day. In medieval Europe, when Jews once again faced oppres­sion from their Chris­t­ian neigh­bors dur­ing events like the Cru­sades, Jews rede­fined the fes­ti­val once again. They revis­it­ed the mir­a­cle of win­ning the war, but this time, rather than cred­it­ing the Mac­cabees with the win, they empha­sized God’s role.

If you’ve ever sung the song ​“Ma’oz Tzur,” it comes from this peri­od. It speaks about the dif­fer­ent eras of Jew­ish his­to­ry in which nations like Egypt and Baby­lo­nia sought Jews’ destruc­tion, and God helped us over­come them. The fifth of the six stan­zas describes God’s role in beat­ing the Greeks dur­ing the Hanukkah sto­ry. The final stan­za is a final plea to God to repeat those feats and save us dur­ing con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous moments of oppres­sion. This stan­za con­tains veiled ref­er­ences to Chris­tian­i­ty — though some schol­ars think it came lat­er than the oth­er five.

Once again, Hanukkah was use­ful in a new way. Since God was the hero, it gave hope to pow­er­less Jews that there was a chance at redemp­tion. If we were able to sur­vive hard­ships in the past, we could van­quish evil again in the cur­rent era.

God’s role in the Hanukkah sto­ry remained para­mount until Jews start­ed immi­grat­ing to Israel in the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry as part of the bur­geon­ing Zion­ist move­ment. Since Zion­ism was based on the idea that we can’t wait for God to give us back our land, that we must do the work to cul­ti­vate and set­tle it our­selves, these ear­ly Zion­ists brought back the human­ist ele­ments to the sto­ry. If you know the song ​“Mi Yimalel,” writ­ten at that time, you can see just how cen­tral the ear­ly Zion­ists found these parts of the sto­ry. The song uses words clas­si­cal­ly reserved for God, like moshi­ah (sav­ior) and podeh (redeemer), and applies them to the Mac­cabees. It mod­i­fies a line from Psalms — ​“Who can retell the might of God” — and trans­forms it into ​“Who can retell the might of Israel.”

Hanukkah ​“worked” in a dif­fer­ent way for these ear­ly Zion­ists. It empow­ered them to know that through their col­lec­tive efforts, they could make a dif­fer­ence. God would no longer be need­ed. They would be the heroes of their own story.

Today, Hanukkah has once again changed. For some, it is an asser­tion of one’s Jew­ish­ness at a time of Christmas’s hege­mo­ny. For oth­ers, it is a state­ment about bring­ing light into a dark world or an act of defi­ance against fear.

Hanukkah is slip­pery, but that’s a fea­ture, not a bug, of the hol­i­day. It is part and par­cel of Judaism’s pro­found com­mit­ment to prag­ma­tism that our faith is nev­er stag­nant, and that every­thing is sub­ject to change if that change will help it work better.