I would like to wish a happy holiday season to any Jewish readers that I might have. Many people, I would guess, do not know the story of Chanukah. I will add the story as told from http://mazornet.com
Chanukah is a Jewish holidays in which we celebrate our survival as a nation and the triumph of light over darkness. It is a celebration of a past that seems so relevant and contemporary – a thousand years later.
This brings us to the reign of Antiochus IV.
Around 175 BCE Antiochus IV, who gave himself the name Epiphanes – “God made manifest,” rose to power and ruled the Selucids. Seeking to prevent the Ptolmies from annexing Judea, Antiochus Epiphanes invades Judea and attempts to march into Ptolemy territory.
The struggle Jews faced at the time of Chanukah is in full swing today. Judaism has always been a minority culture. It sets its adherents apart from majority beliefs and practices but to what extent? Then, as now, there were Jews who saw advantages in blending in with the general culture. They appreciated the beauty, art, philosophy, and new political ideas espoused by Greek society. On the other side were Jews, like the Maccabees, who saw Greek ideals and the shunning of faith and Godliness as a danger to Jewish survival.
Jews were willing to pay the ultimate price for their right to worship, study, and live as faith and tradition dictated. Greeks, then the superpower, saw Jewish belief as a corrosive link in their already overextended empire. Despite the odds – 47,000 well-trained, well-armed warriors vs. 4,000 ill-equipped Jews – the Jews persevered. Jewish history reverberates with Jews who fought for what was right against the odds. In recent years, the Maccabee spirit lived on in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Israel’s Independence War, the Jewish refuseniks behind the Iron Curtain, and among every person who does not sacrifice what is right in the face of might.
The Greeks were all for the continuation of indigenous culture in the territories they conquered. Antiochus did not forbid the observance of Jewish laws that were part of Jewish culture, like Passover and Sukkot which celebrate milestones in Jewish history.
Jews fought to express a commitment to God that transcended the limits of human understanding, an approach that irked the rational, logic-loving Greeks.
165 BCE – The fighting continues. Around this time, Mattithias dies. Judah Maccabeus takes over the family’s quest. His name, Maccabeus, is similar to the Hebrew word for “hammer” and may be a reference to Judah’s hammer shaped-head or his willingness to strike out like a hammer.
General Judah leads 4,000 poorly trained and poorly armed Jews to victory against 47,000 battle-wise Greek troops. Even if the Maccabees’ use of guerilla warfare tactics are factored, the Jewish victory is nothing short of miraculous.
On the 25th of Kislev, the date the modern Chanukah celebration begins, the victorious Maccabees reclaim the Temple Mount and the Temple. They find the glorious edifice in shambles. Walls have been destroyed. Once-proud altars and Temple ware have been defaced and used for profane purposes. Idols and their foreign, pagan trimmings litter the courtyard. Purifying the Temple to its original state is a demanding but proud task. Working carefully and quickly, the Temple is soon ready for rededication – except for one thing – the Menorah, candelabrum, must be lit.
The Maccabees went on to become heads of state. In an unprecedented move, the Hasmonean Maccabee family donned the high priest’s garments and held the royal scepter. At first the Hasmonean rulers were righteous, and Judea rejoiced in its restored autonomy. A handful of successions later, the royal Hasmonean line was waylaid by internecine fighting, assassination, and internal strife. They lived in thrall to Greek powers and later generations admired the same Helenist ideals the original Maccabees struggled against.
The corrupted Hasmonean dynasty declined in power and public reverence, and their rule ended when Herod, a Hasmonean son-in-law, seized power and killed off the rest of the Hasmonean line
According to the Talmud (Shabbat 21b), once the victorious Maccabees reached the Temple, they could only find one oil jug with the high priest’s seal intact. Worse still, the oil in the jug was only enough to last one day. A great miracle occurred and the light lasted for eight days.
The Talmud doesn’t emphasize the miraculous victory as the reason for celebrating Chanukah but focuses on the long-burning oil as the basis for the holiday.
What the Miracle Signified
When the Greeks plundered the Temple, they defiled the holy oil, an act that is explained by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1903-1995). The notion that oil could be pure or impure just because someone touched did not make sense to the Greeks. And the Jewish tendency to imbue physical matter with spiritual qualities was offensive to logical Greek sensibilities. Like a younger brother who brushes his younger sister’s shoulder with his pinky after his sister cries, “Don’t touch me!” the Greeks took special measures to spoil the Temple oil.
The Maccabees found one oil flagon with its seal of purity untouched and used it to light the menorah. And with that, the victorious Jews resumed their mission of bringing spiritual light to the darkness around them.
Mattithias – Father of the five Maccabee brothers and Temple kohen-priest fled to Modin to escape Greek influence and pressure in Jerusalem. He began the Chanukah revolt when Mattithias (known in Hebrew as Matityahu) killed a Hellenist Jew sacrificed a pig to a pagan god at the command of a Greek soldier. Before he fled to the hills with his sons to escape Greek revenge, he called likeminded Jews to join him in a fight against Greek oppression. He died soon after the revolt began.
