Season 1: Episode 5 - The Channuka Revolt

Generated automatically from the audio and lightly corrected. It may contain errors; the recording is the authority.

You know, they say all the great stories are struggles between light and darkness. But the challenge of the coming chapter, the Maccabean Revolt, is that sometimes, in the thick of battle, it becomes a little bit difficult to tell just who is who. I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and I'm here to tell the Jewish story, because we're riding the waves of time, hoping to catch one that's going to take us straight in the future, of which we dream. Episode 5 The Maccabee and Revolt Identity is a matter of life and death and that's really what I want to talk about in this episode but before we can really get there I want to touch lightly where we've been in order to set us on the track to where we want to get to Remember Daniel and in particular that vision of kingship which he interpreted for Nebuchadnezzar which was the handing over of kingship into the hands of the nations in the form of the idol, head of gold, arms and chest of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron.

Then we had Ezra and Nehemiah, the men of the great assembly, who used the twin tools of exclusion and entirety, drawing a tight boundary to the people and gaining authority over the interpretation of both the text and the story in order to maintain the identity which they saved from exile. And finally, we've come to the Greek encounter. And that's where Am Yisrael, the Jewish people, are going to begin to confront that big brass body of a Greek culture through time and language in a struggle to become part of the world and yet maintain a sense of self. Because Hellenism is a cultural juggernaut which in the wake of Alexander the Great will sweep the known world. And Hellenistic Judaism, the particular subset of the Hellenistic culture that Am Yisrael will cultivate, is going to have a very rich arc, but it's a steep one.

Let's take a quick moment to think about why it is that the Jews will graft so quickly onto the trunk of Hellenism, and who exactly it is that will do the productive end of this intermingling. First of all, just remember that it's the breadth of culture available in the Greek language, as well as its role as the language of the dominant political and cultural class that makes it highly attractive to those who seek it out. Number one, trade is going to open up the economic elite of Israel to the needs of the language and to a closeness of a relationship which is only found through constant interaction. And second, the Greek written culture is going to attract the intellectual elite. There is a vast and rich cross-fertilization, which created early Jewish wisdom literature, like the Book of Ben Sirah placed the second or third century before the Common Era.

And the critical textual perspective will place much of the wisdom literature under the genre of Hellenistic Jewish lit, despite the traditional attribution of books like Kohelet to the wise as all men. and by the way if that causes a little bit of ripple in your sense of place and time if you really want to know how the sages had a non-traditional side go see the list of who wrote what book in the Hebrew Bible it's in the Gemara in Babu Batra on 14b just be aware that some of the attributions there could you get kicked out of the finest yeshiva in Jerusalem if you insist too hard on them so anyway we have the economic elite and we understand how they and the intellectual elite would be attracted to Hellenism.

And there's a third element, and it's a particularly important one, the urban masses. We're speaking about artists and traders who were not the economic elite, but they still had frequent contact with the Greek world and soon came in the second century before the Common Era to find Greek words and phrases essential to even being understood in their daily life. Now in the Persian period, that mysterious black hole out of which we're really just still emerging, Judea was more or less Jerusalem with the surrounding farming communities that had been resettled by the returnees, by the Shibat Zion. But the polis, the Greek city, was the primary unit of the Greek world from the peninsula and outwards. And it was spread across Asia by Alexander, typically by resettling Greeks who acted as the ruling elite, and subjugating the local population into subject farmers, really.

Now, the Jews were bound up with the founding and growth of both Alexandria, the capital of the Patolic Empire down on the Nile Delta, and Antioch, the capital of the Seleucids hundreds of miles north on the eastern bank of the Orontes in modern-day Turkey. So we have these three pieces of the pie. The economic elite, whose association with Greek culture is easy to understand. The intellectual elite, who is attracted by the power of the Greek mind. And the urban masses, a small but, at least in Jerusalem, extremely locally significant part of our story. Nevertheless, it's critical to recall that the base culture in the land of Israel, and truth is, everywhere else in the world at this point, is and will remain for quite some time that of subsistence farmers, certainly for the whole of the Second Temple period.

Josephus will tell us later that the Jews are an agricultural people and don't go in much for commerce, a comment that's going to get quite a bit of laughter over the next thousand years. Anyway, the language link, which is the primary bridge between Jewish and Greek culture, is all but irrelevant for these people of the land. They're not the urbanized cosmopolitan intellectuals, nor are they the economic elite. Consuming enough calories is their primary concern, and the agricultural cycle is the rhythm of their life. And within that, the priest-led return, Shivat Tzion, remember Ezra, the priest, remember that it's Shimon Hatzarik, the high priest, who emerges as the leadership in the first encounter with Greek culture.

This priest-led return to national divine service, centered on the altar at the heart of the temple, will give expression to and meaning to the whole struggle of their daily life in the context of their return to the land. and in that sense the tithes that they separate from their produce and the festival pilgrimage sacrifice cycle three times a year in the temple where they go physically as well as the Torah whose text gives the underpinning godly narrative to their behavior and the detailed instructions of what one must actually do in divine service that's the focus of these people of the land and because it gives meaning and shapes their identity, it must be maintained and defended at all costs.

So here we are, the peoples of the land and the economic, intellectual, and urban elites. One might wonder, however, how it is that the priesthood, which seems so bound up with the peoples of the land, through their service in the temple, would itself become the heart of the Hellenist camp within Am Yisrael. Because, in a sense, the coming Maccabean revolt will be about the priestly keepers of our story cutting ties within and without in an attempt to save Israel from drowning in Greek culture. And this story is about both sides of that cut, both the healing it brings and the damage it does. If I'm going to answer this question of how it is that the priesthood itself becomes the heart of the Hellenist camp within Am Yisrael.

Then we're going to have to know a little bit about the high priest Jason. Now, there is a story filled with confusion in names and dates in all of the sources. There are intrigues, murder, and even rival temples amongst the high priests. Since that fateful day, when in our story, Shimonat Tzadik, Simon the Righteous, took the beauty of the priestly garments out to meet Greek culture on the road to Jerusalem. But, nevertheless, our story here really begins with Jason, high priest, and his bold move to bribe the king and claim the priesthood for his own. In a sense, I feel like his name says it all. I mean, Shimon was a good Jewish boy. He had a biblical name. But Jason, the high priest? Wasn't Jason an argonaut?

And culturally, we'll see, he embodies the Hellenist camp. But we shouldn't be too quick to pin it on his name alone. I mean, let's not forget Antigonus of Soho, who received the tradition from Shimon Zadig. So here's the story. At the very beginning of the 2nd century before the Common Era, the Seleucid kin Antiochus III, not to be confused with the villain of the Hanukkah story, ended years of warfare and finally conquered the land of Israel out of the hands of the Ptolemies. now the current high priest Ananias III had been a supporter of the Ptolemies and having backed the wrong horse in this race he was eventually denounced once the Seleucids gained control over Jerusalem he then went to Antioch the Seleucid capital in an effort to appease the Hellenist king but by the time he got there Antiochus III had died and was succeeded by the infamous Antiochus IV Epiphanes right, that's the villain of the Hanukkah story and he proves unsympathetic and Onias is forced to remain in Antioch under house arrest, so to speak fortunately for him Onias was not alone he had a brother named Jason unless you think his brother was going to be helpful in this tight spot on the contrary he takes advantage of this situation to buy the vacant office so to speak, of the high priesthood right out of the hands of Antiochus IV.

I mean, what does this lucid king care which priest fills the office? However, he cares which one will fill his coffers. And indeed, that is exactly what Jason does. And this crude move is a break with the hereditary succession of the priesthood that will be a blow to the kahuna, to the priesthood, from which it will never really recover. By the way, Jason also made some other rather significant purchases. in this relationship with Antiochus. Number one, he purchased the right to establish a gymnasium in Jerusalem for the use of and instruction of the youth of the city. It was a center for the cultural indoctrination of Jewish youth into Hellenistic values. He also purchased the right to make the city a polis, a Hellenistic city-state named after Antioch itself.

Now, lest you think that the second piece is just a matter of semantics, it actually meant that the right to live by the Torah, which had been affirmed by Antiochus III to the Jews of the land of Israel after he conquered it in the name of the Seleucid Empire, that right to live by the Torah was now rescinded. And the majority of those who had previously held full rights under the laws of the Torah instantly became second-class citizens in an oligarchy. Now, Jason did two things very quickly. He began to hold Greek games and consolidate power. Now, consolidating power meant purging the Gerousia of anyone who didn't support his Hellenistic reform. This council body first appears in the first two books of Maccabees, which we'll mention in a few moments, and in Josephus as the representative body of the Judean people.

We're going to have a lot more to say about this Gerousian, where exactly it came from and what kind of power it actually constitutes when we discuss it full length later, probably several episodes from now, the Sanhedrin, the high Jewish court. But just note for now that this is the first appearance in the critical historical record of the idea that there is a council of the Jews. So in one fell swoop Jason the high priest purchased the most powerful office in Judea seized the spiritual high ground of the Temple Mount for the Hellenist service in order to make it to the games in the Ginevites Oh, and by the way, they couldn't go straight from the temple to the gym. First, they had to strip off all of their clothing.

Because, of course, Greek games are done in the nude. These priests were stripping off the robes of their specific identity, of the spiritual intellectual elite which they were, in order to take part in the naked universalism of the Hellenistic world. Because out there on the wrestling floor, everybody looks the same. Your national costume is gone. but of course for the Jews that's not entirely true because of that particularly Jewish sign of circumcision because of that it's not so easy to just be one of the boys out there on the wrestling floor it's immediately apparent to everyone exactly who you are and in the Greek culture the exposure of what's meant to be hidden by the foreskin was considered either vulgarly humorous, downright indecent, or both.

And this, as crazy as it may sound, will give rise at this point in history to what today is called epispesm, the reversal of circumcision in a pre-surgical, forget plastic surgery, a pre-surgical era. We won't get into how exactly one does that. But there's far more than aesthetics at stake in the opposition of the Greco-Roman culture to the sign of the covenant in the flesh. And we will explore this conflict at depth and length. But for now, once again, as with so many other elements in our story, just mark its origins at this point. So in a sense, I've addressed the mechanics of the question of how the priesthood became the heart of the Hellenist camp. because as the spiritual and political elite, they were the most exposed to and therefore the most tempted by the Hellenistic culture and the opportunities it offered.

But there's more than just gross opportunism at play here. The games in the gymnasium were more than just sports. They were identity games. To whom do you belong? I don't know about you, but I remember playing identity games when I was growing up in my American Jewish youth group. And the favorite, of course, was always answer the following question. Am I a Jewish American or an American Jew? The question of how to parse identity, of which portion of ourself to give primacy, of what is really essential in who I am, is a basic human challenge. It's been at the heart of our story, of the Jewish story, since the returnees under Zerubbabel rejected the overtures of the peoples of the land, who when they discovered the temple was being rebuilt wanted to have a portion of it.

Remember that line, it's not for you to build a temple to our God. And now it's the very priests who are saying, we'll be Greek-speaking Judeans or, I don't know, Hellenists of the Mosaic Confession, but not Jews. We'll have our national shrine, just like everyone else in antiquity. We'll have our particular customs and our geographic base, but we will be citizens of the Hellenistic world. Now, that approach will actually bear much fruit. The Alexandrian-based Hellenistic Jewish culture will continue to thrive for another several hundred years, walking that fine line between assimilation and acculturation and indeed will produce many, many beautiful things. But it too will pass. A story for another time.

But here in the land of Israel, change is going to be driven by another element which resides within the priesthood. Nurtured at the core of the story about Israel's mission in the world. because this element has an identity based on adherence to the laws of the Torah and to the path of the wise who help interpret and imply that Torah to the world in which we live and it's from within this element which insists that we are Jews and not Greek-speaking Judeans of a Mosaic persuasion from within this element that the reaction against Greek culture will come now from Jason who makes his purchase in 175 before the common era there's a rapid political and cultural descent because the truth is Jason was actually a moderate voice in the Hellenist camp in particular he and his brother priests maintained the temple service according to tradition even if they hurried through the Hoda to get off to the games but you know there will always be someone for whom the progressive edge doesn't go far or fast enough embracing the current culture.

And Jason soon found himself boxed out by the radical Hellenists. In fact, not just boxed out, but deposed and driven by violence from Jerusalem by a rebellion led by the Tobias family, Menelaus and his brothers. And this Menelaus succeeds in purchasing the priesthood right out from under Jason, turned about being fair play after all, after driving him from the city. But he finds that seeking the priesthood and ruling Jerusalem are not exactly the same thing, because his use of temple funds to give gifts to the Seleucid king and his lack of proper family connections turns the people of Jerusalem against him, and a popular revolt breaks out, rejecting Menelaus not only as high priest, but as de facto political leader of Jerusalem.

While all this is happening, tempest in a teacup, there in Jerusalem, there are much larger forces at play in the Hellenistic world. Because in 168 before the Common Era, Antiochus IV, soon to be a villain of the Hanukkah story, made his final and almost successful effort to conquer Egypt. he marched his Seleucid army down through the land of Israel along the coastal road and indeed had defeated the Ptolemies only to be stopped by the Romans just short of annihilating his enemy now once again this is the first mark of an element which will have lasting significance in our story because what were the Romans doing mixed up in the battles of the Hellenistic kings Now, at this point, they had already conquered Carthage, and their influence had begun to dominate the Mediterranean, though it was not quite the Mara Nusrum, our sea, that it would become at the height of the Roman Empire.

Nevertheless, Rome preferred petty Hellenistic kings battling each other on the eastern side of the Mediterranean to one dominant Hellenistic empire, which they would eventually have to face. So they, with their threats of violence, prevent Antiochus from truly defeating the Ptolemies and force him to retreat with his army dissatisfied from Egypt. So thwarted, he stopped to participate in the general chaos that was going on in the struggles between Jason and Menelaus by sacking Jerusalem. I'm sure that it was also worth his while to take every ounce of gold he could out of the secret precinct. In the process, by the way, He also established a fortress and military colony right in the heart of Jerusalem, overlooking the Temple Mount, so-called Accra, which was used to dominate the city, both militarily and culturally.

This is also likely when foreign worship was first actually introduced into the Temple by the extreme Hellenizers, another altar to what faithful Jews considered to be foreign gods. Now, how could the priesthood do this? How could the sons of Aaron, the people who were the both lineal and intellectual, spiritual inheritors of Shimon Tzadik, only 100, 200 years later, introduce foreign worship into the heart of the temple? Well, it was actually quite easy. They rationalized their move by claiming that the God of Israel was simply another manifestation of the supreme deity. was worshipped in Syria as Baal Shamin, and in the Greek world as Zeus. But really, when you say there's only one God, well, as long as I use your own name and you use another, what difference does it really make?

There may be some appeal in this sort of ecumenical approach. It was the final straw, which caused many of the remaining faithful of Israel to abandon Jerusalem. And among them was Matthias and his sons. You may have heard their names, but if not, you should know that they came from the priestly house of the Hasmoneans. But they'll probably forever best be known by the Greek name they earn in battle, the Maccabees, the Hammers. It will be Matityahu and his sons who awaken to the reality that identity is a matter of life and death. Now our story from here is really best told through the books which bear their name. the first and second books of Maccabees specifically, but a brief explanation is in order, a little bit of textual background, because in truth, depending on how you count, there are eight books of the Maccabees, and we're really only interested in the first and the second.

And truth is, the first primarily, but you should know about their relationship. The first book of Maccabees was originally written in Hebrew. Most authorities believe in the first century before the Common Era, and it deals with the period from 175 before the Common Era, that's the year in which Jason the High Priest purchased his office from Antiochus IV, until 134, a year of significance that we'll discuss when we get there. Now, I said it was written in Hebrew originally, but we only know that from ancient testimony because it has survived in Greek translation as part of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. So ironically enough, it will be Hellenistic Judaism, and its primary inheritor of Christianity who preserved the story of Hanukkah in the historical record because the Maccabees are apocrypha.

They're books that the rabbis decided lay outside of the Jewish canon. And as far as I'm aware, the sages had not read the books of Maccabees, which is something that we'll come to when we discuss the story of Hanukkah. The second book of Maccabees is really a parallel. It's a later Greek language abridgment of what appears to be an earlier history written in Hebrew and relates, once again, the stories of the Maccabees written down until the death of Judah Maccabee in 161 before the common era. Now these books lay out the struggle as you may know it. And in many ways, they set the stage with the following passage from the first chapter. In those days, lawless men came forth from Israel and misled many, saying, Let us go and make a covenant with the Gentiles round about us.

For since we separated from them, many evils have come upon us. The Baptist goes on to detail the rise of the Hellenist camp, as I've already described it. But here it's making very clear that the challenge which Hanukkah is a response to is a challenge of identity, and not just any old challenge of identity. Don't forget, since the time of the return, since Ezra and Nehemiah and Zerubbabel and the men of the great assembly attempted to fulfill that vision as God had given it to Jeremiah, and as Daniel had seen through the lens of the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar, of a return of the Jews to their land, since that time, the construction of identity based on the exclusion of other and an entirety in the control of our narrative have been the foundation of survival And here you have the boiled down reified voice of the Hellenist camp saying that separation from the nations around us is the source of all of our problems not the source of our survival And then the book of Acmes introduces an important new element to our story.

It says that the king wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people and that each should give up his customs. He sent letters by messengers to Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, directing them to follow the customs strange to the land, forbidding burnt offerings, sacrifices, and drink offerings in the temple, forcing them to profane the Sabbath, to defile the sanctuary, building altars, sacrificing swine, and leaving their children uncircumcised. And of course, whoever does not obey the command of the king shall die. Now, people who know the Hanukkah story are familiar with this Greek oppression, but you should know that this type of cultural coercion went entirely against the grain of the cosmopolitan ethos of the Hellenistic world, and in fact appears to be unique in the entire history of Hellenism, which brings up a very important question.

Why? Why would Antiochus IV have done this? Now, the simple sociopolitical answer is that the Jews were a difficult people, and he was trying to get at the core of what it was that prevented them from just riding the cultural wave that everyone else seemed to be basking in. And so when he discovered that it was their peculiar religion, he decided to stamp it out. And this is a pattern which he will set and we'll see will define in many ways the relationship between the Jews and the Greco-Roman world. But still, listen to the specificity. Now, there are many versions of what exactly Antiochus forbid. Here, the Book of Maccabees listed a few. classically, the sages taught us that it was Shabbat, Torah study, the sanctification of the moon, and circumcision.

And no matter which particulars were actually at play, the choice of these practices indicates an intimate knowledge of Jewish tradition, a knowledge which must have come from within, because this is indicative of a new level of struggle between the Hellenist and the anti-Hellenist camps. and in fact is a turning point in the transformation of the covenantal relationship commanded by the Torah into a religion. Because it must be that at least in point of information, if not in point of impetus, these decrees came from the Hellenist camp within Am Yisrael. Now what do I mean the transformation of the covenantal relationship into a religion? And well, religion is a system of beliefs, behaviors, and practices which define one's relationship to God.

And by implication, as we'll see with the development of Christianity, there is a realm, therefore, outside of religious life. But the Torah's conception is that of a covenantal relationship, a breed, which of course includes beliefs, behaviors, and practices in the Torah, filled with commandments and ideas, etc. But the critical thing is there is nothing outside of it. It's the difference between the working relationship I have with my boss, which necessitates me showing up on time, doing certain tasks, having a certain posture and beliefs about the right or wrong measure of the financial system within which we participate, and my relationship with my wife. Because though there are beliefs, behaviors, and practices which articulate and facilitate and deepen or perhaps complicate that relationship, it is not part of my life.

It is the context for everything which I do, which is how the Torah conceives of the relationship with God. Ultimately, as we see the halachic project progress, we'll see that the rabbis will assert that there is nothing outside the realm of the divine relationship. This is very different than a religion, because these specific practices, whatever they may be, are an opening salvo in the first fight of who is a Jew. But ironically, this round of the battle is being driven by those who don't want to be labeled as such. The Hellenists want to be Greek-speaking Judeans with their national shrine and their geographic center. They do not want to be Jews. living inside a covenantal relationship which defines their entire existence.

And because of that struggle, things are about to take a very dramatic turn. The Book of Maccabees, the first chapter of the first book, goes on to say, And then the king's officers, who were enforcing the apostasy, came to the city of Modi'in. That's where Mati Yahweh and his sons had fled to. It's a city to the northwest of Jerusalem. and it says many from Israel came to them and Matidahu and his sons were assembled and then the king's officers spoke to Matidahu as follows you're a leader, honored and great in the city he's the big Jew now be the first to come and do as the king commands and then you and your sons will be numbered amongst the friends of the king you and your sons will be honored with silver and gold and many gifts now being a friend of the king isn't just being buddy-buddy this is a very specific political status which has many advantages in the Hellenistic world.

Mati-Nahu answers and said, even if all the nations that live under the rule of the king obey and have chosen to do his commandments, each one departing from the religion of his fathers, far be it from us to desert the law. We will not obey the king's words by tearing aside. Now this is a message which echoes down through time, and we're going to need to spend some time later developing a very complex notion, and we're going really to do it in the context of the emergence of Christianity, which also has its roots here in the story of Hellenism, but the difference between what it is to be a universalist, exclusive religion and a particularist, inclusive religion. In a nutshell, Hellenism is universalist.

Everyone is invited to join the Hellenistic mix, but it is exclusive in the face that it's showing here in our story, which is that if you're not willing to join, then we're going to destroy you. Whereas Judaism often is a vision of the world which is particulars but inclusive, which is we are the Jews, and you're not. And frankly, as we know, we're not so interested in anybody joining up. However, the good news is you don't have to be a Jew, not in order to participate in the world, and certainly not in order to have a relationship to God. But we're going to pursue that line of thought with the rise of Christianity. For now, what Matityahu is doing is defying the entire momentum of the cultural world.

But when he finishes speaking, the Book of Maccabees reports that a Jew comes forward in the sight of all to sacrifice upon the altar in Modim to do the king's command. And Matityahu burned with righteous anger, seized the sword and killed him upon the altar. And then he killed the king's officer and then he tore the altar down, meaning that the first casualty of the Maccabean revolt was a Jew. And the story goes on that once word gets out that the rebellion has started, everyone who had rejected the king's command went out into the hills. They hid in the caves which surround Jerusalem, and the king sent out soldiers to hunt them down. And one day, the soldiers came upon a group in a cave on Shabbat and called them to come out and they said, we won't come out, nor will we bow to the king's commands, nor will we profane the Sabbath day.

Meaning, they saw there to be no difference between agreeing to sacrifice a swan on the altar and defending themselves on Shabbat. The Torah says, Those who violate it shall surely die. The Torah also commands us not to worship foreign gods. So why is it that we would try to save ourselves from worshiping foreign gods by violating the Sabbath. There's a very clean and passionate logic here. And by the way, there's precedent to this behavior. Josephus tells us, and he's recording from a lost Greek work, that when Ptolemy, in the third century, conquered Jerusalem, he took the city on Shabbat, when no Jew would take up arms against him. And he quotes saying, there's a nation called the Nation of the Jews, who inhabit a great, strong city named Jerusalem.

These men took no care, but let it come into the hands of Ptolemy as not willing to take arms, and thereby they submitted to be under a hard mass by reason of their unseasonable superstition. So once again, this unseasonable superstition has a group of Jews blocked in a cave on the Sabbath day, refusing to even defend themselves, and they were slaughtered. Maccabees says that a thousand people, together with their cattle, died on that day. and yet it made sense why would we violate the Sabbath? those who violate shall surely die why would we do such a thing in order to save ourselves from also violating other laws of the Torah but it says that when Matiyah and his friends learned of it first of all they mourned for them deeply these were not strangers, these were their brothers in the struggle and then they each said to his neighbor this is not going to work that's paraphrased meaning if we refuse to fight with the gentle Well, our lives and everything that we stand for will be lost.

And so they made a decision on that day. Let us fight against every man who comes to attack us on the Sabbath day. Let us not all die as our brothers died in their hiding places. Now this is an astounding decision. And will open up for us a very important world of development. Because think about what he just did. he basically said sometimes you have to break the rules in order to save the story now, I want you to remember way back when we spoke about Shimon Asadik who took the eight vestments of the Kohen Gadol out onto the road to Jerusalem to meet Alexander there and to save the people if you recall in our discussion there the context of the Gemara for that story was a question of whether it was permissible to bring the priestly vestments out of the temple precinct.

And the answer to the Gemara was no. And then when it brought that story saying, hey, hey, well, he did it. The Gemara answered that by saying, well, this was et lasut vashem. This was a time to act for God. He firu at Torah Techa. Because the verse in Psalms means it's a time to act for God because they have violated your Torah. The sages read it, that it's a time to act for God by violating your Torah. Menen Shema Sadik knew that it was forbidden to take the garments out onto the road, but nevertheless, he did it because it was critical for the survival of the story as a whole. And here we have Matityahu, at the other end of the relationship with the Greek world, doing the exact same thing. He knows and agrees with his brothers that that whoever violates the Sabbath shall surely die, or at least merits death.

And yet, nevertheless, he understands that sometimes you have to break the rules in order to save the story. And this will open up a Pandora's box, pun intended. Because, of course, how do we know when it's time to break the rules to save the story? How do we know that the Hellenistic high priests who decided that the God of Israel was the same as Baal Shammim, was the same as Zeus, weren't also breaking the rules in order to save the story? and that's a question we're just going to have to leave hanging in the air because on some level history will be the only answer because what happens immediately following this decision is that there are knights with the Maccabees, with the sons of Matityahu a company of Hasidim of pious ones who the text calls mighty warriors of Israel, everyone who offered himself willingly for the law and here they organize an army strike down sinners in their angers lawless men in their wrath they tear down idolatrous ulcers forcibly circumcise all the uncircumcised boys that they found within the border of Israel in short the second phase of the rebellion is now about getting Israel back in line with the Torah And only once this has happened once these pious ones mighty warriors of Israel notice the willingness to offer their lives for the law, because they're wholly devoted to the story, and then purifying their ranks from within, now they're ready to march on Jerusalem and liberate the temple.

there are numerous military histories written about the battles of the Maccabees and how the few overcame the many on their march to Jerusalem but this is not the focus of our story let it suffice to say that against all odds and against even the might of the Seleucid Empire which was eventually brought to bear in defense of the Hellenist camp within Israel the Maccabees indeed managed to march on Jerusalem. And in the year 165 before the Common Era, approximately a year after Matthew Dallin and his sons had fled Jerusalem from Odi'in, Judah Maccabee, Judah the Hammer, leads his troops triumphantly into the temple. And many people may know the story, of course, that what they found there horrified them.

The desolation, the idolatry, the defilement. they set to work quickly cleaning up and in both the first book of the Maccabees and the second book of Maccabees the emphasis is clear that their goal was to reestablish the altar don't forget that since the time of the returnees Ezra and Nehemiah and Zerubabel the mission has been to reconnect heaven and earth the perception that with the loss of sovereignty in the land of Israel there was a rupture in the fabric of creation and that is the altar that provides the connectivity And with this really begins the last and most spectacular element of this particular story, the miracle of Hanukkah. Now when I say that, I wonder what miracle comes to mind.

Classically, when I was growing up, for instance, the instant answer would be why that one jar of oil sufficed for eight days, meaning when the Maccabees entered into the temple, they found everything in a state of ritual impurity, and they wanted so desperately to begin the service again immediately that they were heartbroken that there was no oil pure enough to light the lamps, the sacred candle over them in Nora. But they found one jar of oil with the seal of the high priest, and that they determined to be pure, and that one jar, though it was only enough for one day in a normal circumstance, lasted the eight days that it took them to acquire new oil in a state of purity. Now, if you were a little more sophisticated in my day, you would say, well, but there was also another miracle, and that was the miracle of the few over the many, of the righteous over the wicked, of the pure over the impure.

Fine, but let's talk a little bit about those Hanukkah lights. because we actually have a number of sources which are as close to contemporary as we can really get at this level of history. We have the first book of Maccabees. We have the second book of Maccabees, each of which were written in the first century before the Common Era. We have Josephus' work, The Antiquities of the Jews, which was written in the first century of the Common Era. We have one more document, the rabbinic document, of what's called Megilatanit, the fasting scroll. Let's look one by one and see what we can see. First of all, let's just get it out of the way right away. The first book of Maccabees and the second book of Maccabees focus on the mirth, the gladness, the joy, the celebration of the rededication, but they do not mention the Hanukkah lights.

There is no story of the Nes Pach Hashem and of the miracle of the cruise of oil. Josephus, who by the way, in his introduction, claims a lineage with the House of the Hasmoneans and therefore has every reason to glorify the history says nothing about it as well although he does say from the time of that liberation to his day that we celebrate this festival and we call it lights he's not entirely sure why but he says I suppose the reason was because this liberty beyond our hopes appeared to us and thence was the name given to that festival meaning it's the light of liberty, of freedom, of liberation from the colonial power of Greece that gave the holiday its name but there does not appear to be a story of eight days of oil, so where does it come from?

where it's first located is actually in a fascinating passage in the Gemara Gemara first quotes that scroll fast Megillah Tanit, which is a list of days on which miraculous salvation came to Israel in the Second Temple period. It's a list of days on which it's forbidden to either fast or mourn, hence its name, the scroll of fast. And it just records the dates in Aramaic. And together with the recording of the dates, there is a later Hebrew scholium, an addendum, which explains the significance and gives the story of each day. And there we find the story of the miracle of the eight days and the oil. And when the Gemara incorporates this into its text, it incorporates it in a fascinating way. It opens with the question, my Hanukkah.

What is Hanukkah? Now that question itself in my mind says it all. Why would you open with the question of what is Hanukkah? I mean, you don't ask the question, what is Purim? You certainly aren't going to ask, what is Passover? Why, oh why, do you want to know what Hanukkah is? And I think that the answer is because in all of the competing records, a very different story is told. It's clear that this is a story about the struggle between light and darkness. The sages, in fact, will say that when you look in the first lines of the Bible, when it says, that the land was chaos and emptiness, and that there was darkness on the face of the deeps, Did they see those four phases of exile, those four kingdoms, which inherited kingship itself from Israel and the vision of Nebuchadnezzar?

They see them in that line. Artaita tohu. Tohu, they say this is Babel. Babylon. Uvohu. Vohu, they say this is Persia. The Hoshech, and darkness is Greece, and the Tohom, the deeps. Well, that was Rome, because the rabbis couldn't see the end of that exile. But why would Greece be darkness? I mean, didn't Greece bring the light of reason to the world? Weren't they the original Enlightenment? Isn't that why the later European Enlightenment would have a neoclassical element, meaning looking back at classic Greco-Roman culture as an apex of human achievement or rationality, which had been darkened by the superstition of religion? Yes, that's precisely why Greece was perceived as Rome by the rabbis, because the light of reason can very easily darken the eyes of the soul.

I just want you to picture for a minute when those Maccabees, against all odds, due to their passion, their willingness to give all for the sake of the Torah, not only that, their willingness to break the rules in order to save the story because they had a little spark of that higher prophetic consciousness which knew that God is alive, not just his word, even though we've already gone over the bridge from the prophetic era to the era of wisdom, and Greece has crossed that bridge parallel to us from the mythological to the philosophical. The difference between wisdom and philosophy is that wisdom still attaches itself to the heart, to the soul, to the eyes, which can see that which is not there yet.

And so they entered into that room. And what do you think they expected to find there in the temple? Now it's important to note that when Moshe and Aaron had first built the Mishkan, the portable tabernacle in the wilderness, the way in which they knew that their service was acceptable to God is that fire rained down and consumed their offering on the altar. So too when Solomon built the first temple, how did he know that his work had been acceptable to God? Fire rained down from heaven on the altar. And as the Maccabees entered in with their passion, their commitment, their missearied nephros, their willingness to give all for the sake of the story, what do you think they assumed would happen? Just imagine the waving, the fire to fall.

And when they walked out, what do you think it was they saw? Now, we saw the Maccabees, and we saw Josephus. And I mentioned that the Gemara itself, which tells the story of the eight days of light, begins it with a question of, really, what is Hanukkah? But one thing is incredibly clear, is that the Jewish people know that this miracle occurred. I can't see you now, but I could give you the greatest proof of its occurrence. I ask every Jew listening to me now, did you light Hanukkah candles last year? I'm willing to bet that the answer is yes. Two thousand, two hundred years later, you're doing an act whose purpose is what's called Pirsume Nisa, to make known the miracle. Which miracle was that? Exactly.

You tell me, the many into the hands of the few, the impure into the hands of the pure, eight days of light. Here's the last textual comment. Because when you look, the earliest rabbinic reference to Hanukkah is actually in the Mishnahh in Babakam, in the Laws of Damages. It says that if a camel loaded with flax goes into a shop, and the flax catches fire, and the camel goes berserk and burns down the whole town, well, it's the camel driver's fault. Because, of course, everyone knows you shouldn't bring your camel into a chop with a lit candle. But if the shopkeeper leaves his candle outside, well then, he's liable, because you can't just leave a candle out in the street corner. But Rabbi Huda says, except if it was a Hanukkah light, because then he's exempt, meaning everybody knows that on Hanukkah, we all light candles outside our houses.

and at this point by the time the mission is codified in the second century of the common era identity has been decided that cut which began when Matityahu killed the first casualty that Jew he slaughtered on the altar in defiance of the edict of Antiochus all the way through the battles of the Hasidim, the pious to purify that element of Israel within marching on Jerusalem transforming from a rigid adherence to law into a living commitment to the story will embody itself in the chosen identity of those who advertise the miracle. So here we are. And one last point. Because I think when I was growing up, if you would ask me, and certainly perhaps if I asked you, is this the end of the battle or the beginning?

Most people would say it was the end. But you should know. that the battle between the Hellenists and the anti-Hellenists, between the Jews and the Greek, brother against brother, foreigner against home-born, will continue for another 20 years. The conquest and rededication of the Temple that we celebrate on Hanukkah is the beginning of the battle, not the end. I just want to thank everybody who helps make this possible. All the good folks there at the Land of Israel Network who are spreading the story far and wide. Help folks at Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, that's p-a-r-d-e-s dot c-o dot y-i-l, for giving me a platform to reach the broadest possible swath, Lom Israel, and to steal myakov. I love it because it's my home.

To all those good individuals out there who gave from their hard-earned time and money to help make this vision possible. Thank you.