Raise Us Up: Hanukkah 5786

There’s a familiar rhythm to Hanukkah. The candles are lit, the room grows quieter, and almost without thinking we begin to sing Maoz Tzur — an old hymn we’ve been singing for generations. Many of us know the tune well, even if the words themselves are a bit less familiar.

מָעוֹז צוּר יְשׁוּעָתִי / Fortress, Rock of my salvation

We sing it cheerfully, even nostalgically — and usually only the first verse. But when we look at the whole song closely — not the comfortable “Rock of Ages” English rendition, which takes some artistic liberties with the translation, but the Hebrew itself — we begin to hear something different, something far more urgent, something more aching. What at first looks like a song of praise is actually a poem of petition.

A few lines into the first stanza, a plea surfaces:

תִּכּוֹן בֵּית תְּפִלָּתִי / Establish my House of prayer

אָז אֲגַמֵּר בְּשִׁיר מִזְמוֹר חֲנֻכַּת הַמִּזְבֵּחַ / Then I will complete, with poetic psalm, the dedication of the altar

Maybe this goes without saying, but this strikes me as a remarkable thing to sing on Hanukkah. Remember that Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the Temple by the Maccabees. The very word Hanukkah means dedication. 

Yet the poet — likely a man named Mordechai, since the first letters of each stanza are an acrostic spelling out that name — is acknowledging what our history makes painfully clear: the Temple was restored, and then destroyed again. The altar was rededicated, and then desecrated again. The world breaks, gets rebuilt, and breaks again. Hanukkah celebrates an incomplete rededication.

The poet knew this brokenness intimately. Maoz Tzur was composed in 12th–13th century Ashkenaz — an era when Jewish communities were still reeling from the Crusades: thousands slaughtered, whole towns devastated, families shattered. The poet lived in a world that had been upended by violence, and he carried that world into his song, a prayer for deliverance — for a redemption towards which the miracle of Hanukkah gestures, but that remains unfinished.

But the poet does not merely ask for protection and an end to suffering; he also addresses what redemption will look like, and how it will come to pass.

In the final stanza, which I imagine most of us have likely never seen before, especially since it is actually missing from certain manuscripts, the poet prays:

חֲשׂוֹף זְרוֹעַ קָדְשֶׁךָ… דְּחֵה אַדְמוֹן בְּצֶלֶ צַלְמָון, וְהָקֵם לָנוּ רוֹעִים שִׁבְעָה [רוֹעה שִׁבְעָה]

Bare Your holy arm… cast down the oppressor… and raise up for us seven shepherds [or, shepherds of seven]

Amazingly, the poet doesn’t ask God for salvation through sending angels or performing miracles. Rather, he prays for God to raise up shepherds. 

Manuscripts differ about whether he asks for seven shepherds or shepherds of seven. But either way, we are left to wonder — wait, what? Shepherds? Why shepherds? Who are these shepherds? And what do they have to do with redemption?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there isn’t universal agreement on the subject, and interpretations vary widely. 

Some turn to Isaiah, where the prophet envisions a small child who will, at the end of days, peacefully shepherd a list of seven animals, including lambs and wolves, that are typically natural enemies — a picture of a perfected world characterized by childlike innocence and moral imagination. 

Most interpreters, however, look to the prophet Micah, the biblical source of the actual phrase “seven shepherds.” In chapter 5 of Micah, God promises to “raise up seven shepherds” in a moment of national danger. 

Commentators tend to understand these shepherds as human protectors — leaders who will protect the people in a crisis. Some identify them as the trusted advisers of King Hezekiah — the small circle of wise and steadfast leaders who helped Judah survive the terror of an Assyrian siege. These were not warriors or miracle-workers, but human beings — whose judgment, courage, and moral clarity steadied their people in a moment of profound vulnerability. In that reading, the shepherds are the leaders already within the community — the ones whose presence becomes a source of safety when the world feels precarious.

Others hear echoes of our ancestors: Abraham, David, and of course Moses, who becomes Israel’s shepherd only after literally shepherding his father in law Jethro’s sheep. In the midrash, God chooses Moses because he shows compassion for a single lost lamb — meaning the heart of this kind of leadership is not charisma or power, but the willingness to notice and care.

Later mystical sources imagine the shepherds as eschatological figures — leaders who will emerge at the end of days to guide humanity into an age of justice and peace.

Modern translator and scholar Robert Alter adds an even more provocative dimension. He notes that Micah’s “seven shepherds and eight princes of the peoples” may not be Israelites at all, but foreign allies — leaders from beyond our borders who choose to stand with us when danger looms. Salvation, in this frame, arrives through allies who step up to help when others are vulnerable.

These interpretations diverge, but together they form a remarkably coherent picture of what a shepherd is and does. Real shepherding — or so I’m told, as a city slicker who has never actually shepherded anything — requires attentiveness: scanning the horizon, noticing danger before it arrives, keeping the vulnerable close, guiding the flock so none wander too far or fall too far behind. It is leadership rooted not in domination but in responsibility; not in display but in devotion. Sometimes such leaders arise from within a community — the way the sages imagined the wise advisers who steadied Hezekiah when his people were in peril. At other times, that same protective presence can come from unexpected places, when allies step toward someone else’s danger, offer steadiness where there is fear, or use their strength to shelter the weak. However they appear, shepherds share a single calling: to see vulnerability as a summons, and to respond with vigilance, courage, and care.

If what the poet of Maoz Tzur wanted was a supernatural savior — a warrior-hero descending from heaven — he could have asked for that. God can, in the biblical imagination, send angels, plagues, pillars of fire. But a shepherd is neither an angel nor a warrior; a shepherd is someone whose power and promises comes through relationship and intimacy. Which is why the poet doesn’t ask God to send a savior, but rather to  reveal, strengthen, and lift up shepherds:

וְהָקֵם לָנוּ רוֹעִים שִׁבְעָה — “Raise up for us seven shepherds

If redemption is ushered in through shepherds — through human beings raised up rather than miracles sent down — then the question is no longer when salvation will arrive, but who will step forward to help us move towards it. 

This idea — that redemption unfolds through human beings who rise when called — is deeply rooted in our tradition. The poem itself recalls pivotal moments in Jewish history when despair gives way to repair, such as the Exodus from Egypt, the return from the Babylonian exile, the Purim story, the Maccabean revolt. It is, however, noteworthy that in each of these historical examples, God opens a door, but human beings must walk through it. God creates possibility, but people enact redemption. Even the Hanukkah miracle — however we understand it — begins only because someone was willing to strike a match, pour the oil, trust that light is worth kindling even when the odds seem hopeless.

Our tradition does not let us imagine that the work of repair belongs only to heroes, or prophets, or saints. It belongs to ordinary people who choose attentiveness over apathy, responsibility over retreat, courage over comfort. Which also means — any one of us could be the shepherds we are praying for. And that possibility carries both hope and obligation — because it means that the healing we long for may depend, in part, on whether we are willing to let ourselves be raised into the moment before us.

Rabbi Robert Levine echoes and deepens this idea in his book There Is No Messiah… and You’re It. He argues that Judaism insists redemption does not happen to us. Rather, it happens through us. The saviors we await will not be dropped miraculously from the sky. They are the people already alive in the world — maybe even us. So the question becomes not whether we can or will be saved, but rather whether we will recognize the extraordinary potential of all people, ourselves included; whether we will permit ourselves — and encourage one another — to be lifted into the roles our moment requires.

Which brings us back to Hanukkah.

Hanukkah is the festival of rededication — not only of an ancient altar, but of our own lives. The world breaks, gets rebuilt, and breaks again. Light dims, is rekindled, and dims again. And so the work of rededication is not a historical artifact; it is a spiritual discipline. It asks something of us every year — perhaps especially this year.

Because we are living in a moment when fear is loud and empathy is quiet; when outrage spreads faster than understanding; when injustice abounds and moral courage is scarce; when the vulnerable — immigrants and refugees, minorities, the poor, the lonely, those already living on society’s margins — are increasingly left to fend for themselves. A moment when truth is contested, when cynicism passes for sophistication, when cruelty is too often mistaken for strength. A moment when we are tempted to retreat into our corners, to reduce one another to caricatures, to give up on the slow, patient work of relationship and repair.

And it is precisely in such a moment that we need shepherds — leaders who scan the horizon, notice danger before it arrives, keep the vulnerable close, and make sure none of the flock wanders too far or falls too far behind. In an age addicted to spectacle, among a people that venerates power, in a world that worships wealth, shepherding reminds us that real leadership is not domination but responsibility; not display but devotion; not the will to overpower but the willingness to protect. 

This is how we secure salvation. This is the kind of leadership our world is starving for. And any one of us — indeed, every one of us — could be the leaders we need to guide us toward a world redeemed.

So as we prepare to sing Maoz Tzur tonight — as we begin our musical welcome to the Hanukkah season — may we hear the poet’s plea not only as a cry from a broken world, but as a summons to save it.

May God raise up shepherds — and may we recognize them when they appear.

May we also have the humility to see that sometimes, the shepherds God is waiting for are already here: neighbors, teachers, parents, organizers, allies — maybe even you; people willing to notice, people willing to care, people willing to step toward vulnerability rather than away from it.

May we find the courage to be attentive in an age of distraction, compassionate in an age of cruelty, steady in an age of fear.

May we be worthy of the work of rededication — not only of ancient altars, but of our shared world.

And may the lights we kindle this season not only flicker in our windows, but guide our steps, shape our choices, and help raise us into the people our world so desperately needs.

So may it be God’s will. Amen.