I love the Hanukkah season—lights glowing in windows, the smell of fried latkes wafting through the air, and festive voices singing together. But this year, Hanukkah is about a lot of things. Most importantly, Hanukkah should be about reclaiming Zionism. Zionism is threatened by those who oppose it as a concept and see it as inherently racist, and by those who distort it to fulfill a dangerous agenda and are themselves inherently racist. However, Hanukkah and Zionism go hand in hand. Hanukkah is essentially about celebrating the miracle of the military victory of the few against the many, as the Maccabees survived the onslaught of Antiochus and his brigades. It is about bringing light where there is darkness and spreading it far and wide. Throughout Rabbinic tradition, Hanukkah was celebrated as a minor home holiday focused on the miracle of the jar of oil told to us in an apocryphal story in the Babylonian Talmud. Theodore Herzl’s secular Zionist movement helped to orchestrate this previously undramatic observance into an extensive public celebration of political liberation. It was only with the rise of Zionism in the 19th century that the Maccabees were revived as Jewish heroes . At the second Zionist congress in 1898, Max Nordau urged the shaping of a new “muscular Jewry,” to master the Land of Israel. The Maccabees were lifted up as the prototypes of the new Jews and between the 1930s and 1960s, the Zionists revived annual Hanukkah processions in the streets to reclaim Jewish public space, as did the Maccabees. Menorahs were placed on many public buildings year-round. Olympic-style runners ran with a torch from the graves of the Maccabees near the central Israeli city of Modi’in to Jerusalem, where the President would use them to light the fledgling state’s Hanukkiah. While the Zionists reclaimed the holiday of Hannukah, with your help, we, as Reform Zionists, can use Hanukkah to reclaim our Zionism. Zionism holds such meaning for many Jews around the world because it represents the triumph of Jewish sovereignty in the historical Jewish homeland for the first time since the Hasmoneans defeated the Greeks in the Hanukkah story and established their kingdom. In a sense, Hanukkah is the Jewish holiday most intimately connected to Israel and the Zionist dream because it mirrors the struggle to create the Jewish State and combines powerful political meaning in addition to its religious significance. Our Zionism is about protecting the body of the Jewish People and the State of Israel, and it is also about its soul. It is about collective responsibility for our people, about creating a new Judaism in a Jewish State, and about now that we have power, exercising compassion and care for those who a vulnerable and powerless. Our Zionism is about reminding the world that we have enemies who seek our destruction and that we still must live by our swords. Our Zionism is about reigning in those who are only focused on a military victory and delusionally see this moment as a way to expand Israel’s borders. Our Zionism is about bringing home the hostages, and fighting for their freedom. Our Zionism is about fighting for justice and insisting on the value of the life of every human being. If Theodor Herzl’s movement reclaimed Hanukkah, we will reclaim our Zionism through the same institutions he founded. Join us this year as we return to the World Zionist Congress to raise our voices for freedom, Justice, equality, democracy, and peace. Today, we ask for your support in helping us reclaim Zionism for our Reform Movement. Help us spread the light of authentic, welcoming, and accepting Judaism of people from diverse backgrounds.