Consider this idea -- Chanukah Ushpizin!

Ushpizin is the Aramaic word for guest. The custom of Ushpizn is practiced on each night of Succot. We invite guests in to our Succhah. Traditionally they are Biblical figures. We tell their story, we discuss their life and some of us even craft our menu around them; red lentil soup for Jacob, lamb for Isaac, you get the idea. What if we were to create Chanukah Ushpizin? Let us identify eight people from different moments in Jewish history that each embodies the ideals and heroism of Chanukah. Then we "invite" them into our homes.
After lighting the candles take a few minutes to announce the arrival of the evening’s guest. The guests appear in chronological order highlighting challenging times in our history.
In preparation you might do a little research of your own but if time is limited simply read the short paragraph below. Then encourage your family and friends to discuss the person and their story. In what way does their life inform our celebration of Chanukah?
If you are feeling particularly ritualistic like you might begin by an official declaration, otherwise simply launch a conversation around the evening’s personality.
Here is my list, feel free to create your own. Start with this opening declaration if you like and follow with a list of guests and a few short details about their life.
Welcome venerable guest! Welcome to our celebration of Chanukah. On this Night of Chanukah we celebrate your story of heroism and commitment our people and our beliefs.
First Night
Mattiyahu. How could we not start with this preeminent figure of the Chanukah story? Known in English as Matthias, he is father of the Maccabees. When Greek officers arrive in Modi'in with the intention of forcibly implementing the king's ordinances regarding sacrifices to idols, Mattityahu refuses. Together with his sons and other believers he launches the battle against the Greco-Syrians.
Second Night
Judith is one of our most courageous female heroines. The legend goes that she was coerced by the Greco-Syrians to spend the night with the foreign general before her own wedding. Once alone with the inebriated man she was able to cut off his head, present it to the Maccabbees who proceeded to win the battle against the leaderless army.
Third Night
Yochannan ben Zakkai is the first century sage who faced with the destruction of the Temple by the Romans and the virtual obliteration of his community succeeds in extricating a promise from Vespasian the conquering general to preserve and save the Torah scholars of Yavneh thereby guaranteeing the continuity of our people.
Fourth Night
Don Isaac Abravanel who lived in the 15th century in Spain was a great Torah scholar. Though he was a prominent member of the court of Ferdinand and Isabella he opted to be exiled together with the Jewish community in 1492. He heroically led them in the march out of Spain.
Fifth Night
Sara Bat Tovim lived in the 1700’s in the Ukraine which was still reeling from the Chmelnitzki uprisings. There she began to write prayers specifically for women with uniquely female themes. The prayers were in Yiddish and used by women. Her heroism is the heroism of a less dramatic nature, but deeply significant.
Sixth Night
In the 1920’s Sara Schenier living in Krakow Poland began to realize that young Jewish women were receiving no formal Jewish education. She heroically launched the Bais Yaacov movement still alive and well till today. She started with one school and one small group of young women. By the time World War II started there were over 20,000 women studying in her schools, most of her students perished in the Holocaust.
Seventh Night
We invite two young women, Ala Gertner was one, who on October 7, 1944, several hundred prisoners relegated to Crematorium IV at Auschwitz-Birkenau rebelled after realizing that they were going to be killed that evening. During the revolt, they were able to blow up one of the gas chambers. The prisoners had used explosives smuggled into the camp by these two young Jewish women who had been assigned to forced labor in a nearby armaments factory. The Jewish women who had smuggled the explosives into the camp were caught and publicly hanged.
Eighth Night
Natan Scharansky looms large in the minds of those of us who were alive during the refusnik period. After spending almost ten years in Soviet prisons for trumped up espionage charges he was released with great celebration. Afterwards, when he was asked about his ordeal andhow he had survived, he spoke about a book of David's Psalms, which his wife had given to him. In particular Psalm chapter 23 which said, "fear noevil" which would later become the title of his autobiography.
I hope this helps bring the Chanukah story alive. It is a story with reverberations throughout history and a tale that begins with the Maccabees but continues through the great people of all generations who display every day courage as well as spectacular acts and who are ready to lay their life on the line in more ways than one, for Judaism and the Jewish people.

Judith the Obscure

Sadly, the female experience has become invisible through the ages sometimes even when their role is remarkably critical. To see a significant and meaningful place for women in the Chanukah celebration, one needs to do a little digging -- but not too much. Let's look at the vast body of rich Jewish legal literature, sometimes it may reveal that which you least expect.
Let us begin by opening the Shulchan Aruch, Code of Jewish Law, authored by Rabbi Yosef Karo in the sixteenth century. In section 970 we find the first law concerning Chanukah. He starts with the simple; Chanukah is for eight days beginning on the 25th of Kislev. These are days when eulogies and fasting are prohibited, but work is permitted - except for women who have the custom to abstain from doing any form of labor while the candles are burning. Further on, he writes that women are obligated in lighting Chanukah candles and may light on behalf of the entire household.
Two interesting points jump out. First, though the laws of Chanukah go on for pages, it is women's custom that immediately takes center stage. The only labor prohibited on the festival is by women - during the burning of the Chanukah candles. The second significant halachic twist is that in spite of the principal that women are exempt from positive time bound commandments - when it comes to the lighting of the Chanukah candles their obligation is equal to that of men.
Questions; why do women have the custom to refrain from work while the Chanukah candles burn? Why do they seem to have a higher level of commitment or perhaps reverence for the Chanukah lights? And finally, why are they obligated in lighting Chanukah candles?
Now we will zoom back in time to search the pages of the Talmud for Rabbi Karo’s source. Opening to page 23a of Tractate Shabbat we find that “Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says that women are obligated in the mitzvah of Chanukah lights, for they too were involved in the miracle." They too were involved in the miracle? Rabbi Shlomo Yischaki, Rashi, tenth century scholar, suggests two possible interpretations to the puzzling phrase. First, they too were involved in the miracle - they too were subjugated to the Greeks, but in a terribly tragic way particular to women only. Each Jewish virgin was forced to be with a Greek officer before marrying. Second possibility; it was through a woman that the miracle occurred. This provocative comment is echoed and enlarged upon by Rashi’s grandson Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir, Rashbam, he adds, that the Chanukah miracle was done through the hands of Yehudit, Judith.

Ah, Judith the Obscure! To uncover her mystery, we must do some pasting together of Apocrypha, midrash and poetry. The reconstruction of this episode may never be completely satisfying, but what does emerge is a tale of heroism and sacrifice. It is unclear whether it is Judith the widow who goes forth willingly or Judith the bride who is taken by force, but, once alone with the Greek general she feeds him wine and cheese. She waits for the soporific meal to take its effect, cuts off his head, places it in her basket and ever so nonchalantly she returns to the Judean camp. Officers, troops and soldiers of the Greek camp are left in leaderless disarray and a breach enabling the smaller Judean army to triumph. And thus the miracle was truly executed by a woman.

Now what do we see? Is this what we might call a usable past? I think so. The legend together with halachic practice has bequeathed to women a powerful symbol. Yes, we were victims; but we were also heroes. We are part of the miracle. We were oppressed, but we joined together with our brothers to fight back. Yehudit, Judith is enshrined forever in sculpture, art work, librettos, and novels. Her memory is recalled on the Shabbat of Chanukah when traditionally we recite a lengthy twelfth century piyyut, poem, describing the pathos of her wedding and youthful fears of what awaited her.

Let each and every woman light a Chanukah menorah, refrain from work, watch flames and remember. Let us see in those flames both the pain of our ancestors and the courage of their actions - both male and female alike.