This year the Jewish holiday of Chanukah overlaps and coincides with Christmas. Although widely observed, it is a minor holiday compared with Christmas. Mixed faith couples observe both holidays, but Chanukah is not a Jewish Christmas.
Chanukah is, primarily, a children’s holiday celebrating the rededication of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, in December 164 BCE, and the miracle of sacred oil for one day lasting for eight days when the Menorah was lit.
However, Chanukah’s origins are so horrible and bloody that Jews have turned the holiday into a festive occasion marked by song and the eating of potato latkes or pancakes. Otherwise, it would be too terrible for children to observe.
Alexander the Great was a friend of Jews and believed in respecting other cultures. He died young and his empire was divided into three parts. The Greek Seleucid dynasty ruled over Judea.
In 173 BCE, the Greek king Antiochus Epiphanes, (God-manifest) began a campaign to Hellenize Jewish culture. All the ancient sources agree that he was mad, insane. It is interesting that 2200 years ago people knew what crazy was. He was a sociopath.
He forbid the practice of the Jewish religion. The Jewish temple was defiled by swine and the image of the Greek god Zeus. Practicing and studying the Jewish religion was punished by death. His soldiers roamed Jerusalem and paraded Jewish women they found who were nursing male infants who had been circumcised. The Greeks then took these women to the walls of Jerusalem and threw mothers and children off the walls to their deaths.
One ancient source mentioned that some Jewish women threw their children and themselves off the walls rather than let the Greeks do it. It is hard to imagine the desperation of such mothers.
I found a photograph of a Greek drinking cup showing Greek hoplites, soldiers equipped with body armor, helmets, and swords, murdering a woman dressed in a short tunic. There is much to admire in Greek civilization, but murdering defenseless people is not.
Starting in 166 BCE the Jews under the leadership of Mattathias and his five sons, the Maccabees, revolted against the Greeks and waged a successful guerilla war against the larger and more well-equipped Greek armies. The Greeks even used armored elephants. Jewish dead were often found in their dung.
The Maccabee fight for religious freedom culminated in victory over the Greeks and the rededication of the temple in 164BCE. Almost 20 battle sights have been identified all over what is now Israel, Judea, and Samaria., i.e., the “West Bank “Jews fought in caves, south of Jerusalem. This Jewish victory was another miracle of Chanukah, the defeat of the many by the few.
At one sight the Jewish rebels put up a monument that said, “Maccabee-Destroyer of Tyrants”. Thus, Chanukah celebrates courage, faith and religious freedom.
The sad thing about Chanukah is that the Maccabee victory was short-lived. Within one hundred years the short-lived Jewish state came under Roman rule. The Jews were permitted to practice their region for another 234 years when the Roman burned the temple to the ground in 70CE.
Jews have been forbidden to pray on the Temple Mount for the last 1950 years. A few weeks ago, the High Court of the European Union ruled that Jews have no rights to live in certain areas where their ancestors fought for freedom. Also, recently there have been two conferences in Amherst, Mass. sponsored by eight academic departments of UMass. demanding the end of the State of Israel.
I find Chanukah to be a sad, misunderstood, and ironic holiday. However, Chanukah proves that history, unfortunately, repeats itself.
Rick Sirvint lives in Rindge.