(cont.)
They organized an army, and struck down sinners in their anger and lawless men in their wrath; the survivors fled to the Gentiles for safety. And Mattathias and his friends went about and tore down the altars; they forcibly circumcised all the uncircumcised boys that they found within the borders of Israel. They hunted down the arrogant men, and the work prospered in their hands. They rescued the Torah out of the hands of the Gentiles and kings, and they never let the sinner gain the upper hand.
, the Hasmoneans resorted/had to resort/ to force. Something not good had happened to us in the intervening centuries. Whereas oratory alone had once sufficed, now force had to be used. Either the Hasmoneans didn’t try to use words or we were so far enamored of Hellenism and so hell-bent on jettisoning our Jewish heritage and the worship of the One God that is at its heart (see my citation of I Maccabees 1:11-15 in my previous post) that their words would have had no effect, or some combination of both, but something had happened. Instead of Jew speaking to Jew, Jew fought Jew, and even if that is sometimes necessary, it is never good or desirable. It’s certainly nothing to trumpet.
This is why Chanukah (apart from a rather dry & technical discussion of when to light the candles, with what, by whom, etc.) gets very little press in the Talmud and this is also why our expressions of joy on Hanukkah are rather muted (we light the candles & say festive prayers, but there is no precept to feast & drink like there is on Purim, see my previous post above); our Sages did not want to overly dwell on this shameful chapter in our history when Jews’ shed each other’s blood (it’s certainly nothing to feast about).
Without violating my self-imposed cyber-rule of never discussing the Israeli-Arab conflict online, I’ll simply say that as Hanukkah approaches, I find myself thinking about this alot especially seeing that things here in Israel are so polarized and public debate is so charged about so many things. Civility & courtesy seem to be doing not so good right now and the still, small voices are getting shouted down.
We will do this Festival of Lights a disservice if we don’t learn from both its positive & negative aspects. Just as a candle banishes the physical darkness, so too must we use the 8 (count 'em!) candles of Chanukah to banish the spiritual darkness, because where the divine light shines, the darkness cannot come.
In keeping with the Chanukah tradition of eating foods fried in oil, potato pancakes (
latkes in Yiddish;
levivot in Hebrew; here’s a recipe:
jewfaq.org/holiday7.htm#Latkes) & donuts are big. So, last year, we were having
latkes for dinner one night during Chanukah. DW was frying them in the kitchen. I was sitting with Da Boyz at the table in the lounge to make sure that the
latkes were, in fact, being eaten (as opposed to being used as projectile weapons). And as I sat with Da Boyz, I told them about Chanukah and as is my wont, I waxed…
creative. I told them about Matityahu (Mattathias) and his five exceptional boys (see I Maccabees 2;
hope.edu/bandstra/BIBLE/1MA/1MA2.HTM), the most well-known of whom was Judah Maccabee. I told Da Boyz of the untimely end of Judah’s brother Elazar (I Maccabees 6:32-46):
(cont.)
…prompting DW to aim a dishtowel at my person.
