Rabbi Lamm on Chanukah and the Hollowing Out of Jewish Life - by Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Sinensky

We know the standard dichotomies: Greece is associated with philosophy while Judaism emphasizes revelation, Greece with aesthetics and harmony while Judaism emphasizes holiness and covenant. These contrasts appear often in Jewish thought, but what stands out in Rabbi Lamm’s Chanukah sermons is how rarely he relies on them. During his rabbinate, before Torah uMadda became central to his public identity, he mostly set aside the philosophy-revelation dichotomy and only occasionally touched the debate over aesthetics. Instead, he moved in a different direction.

For Rabbi Lamm, “Greece” became a way to talk about how Jewish life can turn shallow. By this he meant that even if Judaism is not rejected or abandoned, it can still be thinned – admired rather than lived. For him, “hollowing out” described the gradual erosion of the habits and commitments that give Judaism its depth. It was the danger of a Judaism that remained recognizable on the outside yet lost its seriousness on the inside. In the late 1950s, even as he did not emphasize the Athens–Jerusalem contrast in his Chanukah sermons, he continued to develop the theme of a hollowed-out Judaism.

Read sequentially, the sermons showed how Rabbi Lamm’s understanding of this concern shifted as his setting and the broader Jewish world changed. Tracked against these developments, the Chanukah sermons develop along three related lines:

1. Judaism must become deep rather than remain skin-deep.

2. This deeper commitment requires disciplined spiritual work, not just bare-bones observance or inspiration.

3. Not only individuals but also communities must cultivate responsibility and seriousness if Jewish life is to resist becoming thin.

   
   

I. Judaism Must Be More Than Skin-Deep

In his early Chanukah sermons, Rabbi Lamm used the holiday to argue that Jewish life must not remain shallow or merely sentimental. This concern with distinguishing a full Judaism from a thin one grew out of themes he had been developing throughout the 1950s. During that decade, the desire among many American Jews to feel “normal” – to be culturally accepted within America’s melting pot – figured prominently in his preaching. Chanukah gave him an opportunity to press this argument from new angles.

He developed this theme first in “The Progressive Candles” (1952), one of his earliest sermons at the West Side Jewish Center (not to be confused with The Jewish Center), where he served as rabbi for a short period before accepting a pulpit in Springfield, MA. The halakhah of adding lights each night, he argued, is a model for steady, cumulative growth. Chanukah demands elevation, unlike the Greek inclination toward admiration and stasis. A Jew content with sentiment alone is in danger of slipping backward.

He sharpened the point in “A Theology of Respect” (1954). Antiochus outlawed mitzvot, not beliefs, and Rabbi Lamm read this as evidence that sentiment without practice leaves Judaism vulnerable. Admiration, he told his community of overwhelmingly traditional but unobservant Jews, cannot sustain a religion. A Judaism defined by warm feeling but not translated into practice is skin-deep – precisely the form of Judaism the Greeks hoped would replace a fully lived one.

A third dimension appears in “Religion Is Life” (1955). Returning to Chanukah, Rabbi Lamm argues that the struggle was never only against Greek idolatry, but against a deeper mistake – treating religion as something confined to ritual moments and sacred spaces. Hellenism, he notes, was not irreligious; like modern secularism, it reduced religion to cult, ceremony, and aesthetic admiration, leaving the rest of life untouched. That was the lure facing Hellenized Jews, and it recurs in every age. Chanukah answers it with ner ish uveito – a form of commitment that encompasses the whole person and the whole home, not a Temple ritual that can be contained. Even the Hasmoneans, Rabbi Lamm warns, later stumbled when religious life became episodic rather than all-embracing.

Together, these early sermons build a clear argument: Chanukah insists that we deepen Jewish life. It exposes the inadequacy of sentiment alone and calls us to a Judaism lived with depth and consistency.

II. From Depth to Discipline

By the late 1950s and early 1960s, Rabbi Lamm’s audience had changed. His new congregants at The Jewish Center in Manhattan were more established and better educated. The question was no longer whether Judaism could be more than sentimental. It was whether a serious Jewish life could be built on some observance and inspiration alone, without deeper discipline and sustained effort.

In “Variations on the Chanukah Theme” (1958), he contrasts the luminous beauty of the Chanukah lights with the plain, steady ritual of Havdalah. Inspiration, he suggests, can awaken commitment but cannot maintain it. The spiritual life matures only in the consistent practice of tadir, the everyday. Chanukah teaches that the extraordinary cannot substitute for the ordinary.

He extends this concern in “On Being Too Practical” (1960). Building the Temple was dramatic; rebuilding it was laborious. Rabbi Lamm uses this contrast to argue that spiritual depth emerges only when we sustain our commitment after excitement fades. Here, Chanukah becomes a warning against relying on emotional highs and a reminder that genuine religious life is built on sustained practice.

In “What’s the Use?” (1963), he develops an even more pointed critique. The prohibition against using the Chanukah lights becomes a lens for examining a broader temptation: treating Judaism as a collection of useful, efficient practices. Some acts have intrinsic worth, and when Judaism becomes purely functional – a means to an end – it loses its richness. The sermon extends this to relationships: when we treat people as assets rather than ends in themselves, we hollow out not only religious life but moral life as well.

With these sermons, the theme shifts: Chanukah is no longer only about avoiding thinness. It becomes a call to build depth, slowly and consistently.

III. Cultivating Communal Responsibility

After 1967, the context changed again. The Six-Day War reshaped Jewish identity, and American Orthodoxy began its period of institutional expansion in earnest. Rabbi Lamm’s Chanukah sermons from this period reflect a new concern: the risk that a stronger, more confident community could drift into complacency or triumphalism. The question was not whether Jews would practice but whether their practice would remain serious and purposeful.

In “Half the Hanukkah Story” (1967), pointing to the military and spiritual dimensions of Chanukah, he argues that physical survival is only the beginning. Without a corresponding commitment to spiritual and ethical life, success becomes shallow. He warns that Israel’s postwar pride might obscure the deeper responsibilities that come with power. Chanukah becomes a caution against mistaking external achievement for inner strength.

He explores this further in “The Purists” (1968). As Orthodoxy became more accepted, Rabbi Lamm worried that its aspirations might soften. He argued that the intensity of Haredi commitment carried an important lesson for non-Haredi Orthodox communities. The sealed oil in the Chanukah story becomes a metaphor for maintaining seriousness even amid communal comfort. Purity does not mean separatism, but it does mean clarity of purpose – refusing to let external success erode our internal commitment.

In "Afterwards: Straightening Out Jumbled Priorities" (1974), Rabbi Lamm addresses the reordering of values a community must undertake when internal debate and external danger converge. Drawing on the biblical episode of Reuben and Joseph, he shows how good intentions can become misdirected when spiritual self-concern displaces urgent communal responsibility. Reuben’s penitence over his own failure toward his father and mother consumed him at precisely the moment Joseph needed rescue. For Rabbi Lamm, the lesson is stark – saving life and preserving the community take precedence over inward religious preoccupations. Applied to his own moment, marked by intense Orthodox debates over separation and identity, he warned that factionalism pursued in the name of principle can weaken the very structures that sustain Jewish life. A community that turns inward while neglecting unity and responsibility risks undermining its own foundations.

In "It’s Dark Outside" (1975), delivered amid the lingering anxiety of the post-Yom Kippur War era and a growing sense of global instability, Rabbi Lamm develops a complementary argument. The Chanukah lights, kindled only after sunset, symbolize a Judaism that asserts itself precisely when the surrounding world feels threatening or indifferent. When it is dark outside, he argues, Jewish life cannot depend on external security or success. It must draw on inner reserves of discipline, loyalty, Torah, and moral seriousness. Lighting the candles becomes an act of defiance against despair and complacency alike – a commitment to sustain spiritual depth even when circumstances are discouraging.

Taken together, these sermons show how Rabbi Lamm used Chanukah as a lens on communal strength. A community may flourish outwardly – institutionally confident, socially secure – yet weaken inwardly if it loses clarity of purpose and moral discipline. Moments of external pressure reveal whether a community’s foundations are genuinely strong or merely impressive from the outside.

Here the holiday becomes communal in scope: a reminder that Jewish life requires not only individual discipline but collective seriousness, especially in times of strength.

Conclusion: A Holiday That Tracks the Depth of Jewish Life

Taken together, Rabbi Lamm’s Chanukah sermons unfold along three interlocking lines.

1. Judaism must be more than skin-deep.

2. Depth requires disciplined spiritual work, not only observance or inspiration.

3. Strong communities must cultivate responsibility if they are to preserve seriousness in moments of success and comfort.

Across decades and shifting contexts, Chanukah became Rabbi Lamm’s way of pressing a single, enduring question: how do we retain depth of commitment when Jewish life feels secure, accepted, and even flourishing?

His answers evolved as his congregants changed and as American Judaism matured, but the core insistence did not. Chanukah remains a reminder that Jewish life is sustained not by symbols alone, but by the ongoing effort to live a faith that remains thick, demanding, and serious – even, and especially, today.