Hanukkah for Dhimmis (excuse us, Dummies)
by Bill Levinson (originally posted in December 2006)
Hanukkah is often called “the Jewish Christmas” because it takes place at about the same time of year. There is in fact a very strong connection between the two holidays; had it not been for the events that Hanukkah commemorates, there would be no Christmas. Hanukkah is about standing up to those who menace one’s home, family, or way of life as opposed to singing “Kumbaya” with them.
We have often pointed out that science fiction and fantasy societies are based on real human societies, and the one in Battlestar Galactica is no exception. We suspect that it is an alternate history in which Michael Lerner of Tikkun.org and Eric Yoffie of the United “American” “Hebrew” Congregations (now the Center for Reform Judaism) were in charge of the Jewish people when the Greeks demanded that the Jews worship the Greek idols. As stated by Yoffie at the Million Mom March rally in 2000,
We’re going to find out who’s getting NRA funds, and benefiting from NRA ads, and we’re going to vote for the other guy. The American people, I believe, are ready for a leader who will take on the fanatics and support sensible gun control. …Controlling guns is not only a political matter, it is a solemn religious obligation. Our gun-flooded society has turned weapons into idols, and the worship of idols must be recognized for what it is-blasphemy.
With “Jewish” leadership like this, of course, the Maccabees–who would probably have been jailed by the Yoffie-led Hebrews for owning unlicensed and unregistered swords–would have lost the war, and the ex-Jews would then have ended up worshiping genuine honest-to-the-gods graven images. The result would have been a space-faring civilization like that in Battlestar Galactica, where spaceship pilots carry little Greek idols to which they pray on a regular basis. Jesus would then have been an idol-worshiper like everyone else, and the Christian religion would have never existed.
Hanukkah is therefore about defending one’s home, family, and country: a concept totally repugnant to the Kumbaya-singers. The war between the Maccabees and the Greeks was only the first in which Jews had to fight for their survival.
# Two thousand or so years later, Minutemen used privately-owned firearms in the American War of Independence to create a country with freedom of religion. Many Jews emigrated from Europe and came to America so they could practice Judaism without having to worry about pogroms by Inquisitions, Cossacks, and the like.
# In 1943, Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto revolted against the Nazis. “The first armed resistance occurred when a 17- year-old [”idolator” and “fanatic” per Eric Yoffie] named Emily Landau flung a grenade into a cluster of SS men from a rooftop on Gesia Street, killing or wounding a dozen of them. The SS promptly assaulted the building with submachine guns blazing, only to be met by a volley of return fire that felled four or five Germans and drove the rest back in disorder. Emily Landau was bending down to recover a pistol from a slain SS officer when she was struck by a bullet fired by a German rifleman covering his comrades’ retreat. [She died trying to recover an “idol,” which proves her a fanatic, right, UAHC?] The first to fight, she was also the first to die” (Jon Guttmann, “Genocide Delayed”).
# In 1947, Jews founded the Nation of Israel in the face of immense hardships. Its Arab neighbors invaded so the “idolators and fanatics” fought back desperately with whatever firearms they could buy, beg, borrow, or steal. If it had been up to Yoffie and the Union of “American” “Hebrew” Congregations, the Arabs would have overrun the Jews and thrown them into the sea. (Recommended viewing: “Cast a Giant Shadow” with Kirk Douglas as Col. Mickey Marcus.)
Physical cowardice and elitism are the elephants in the gun controllers’ living room, the ones that everyone knows about but no one wants to acknowledge. Ownership of a weapon requires the implicit acceptance of the idea that one may have to fight and possibly die to protect oneself or those for whose safety one is responsible: an idea that is repugnant to the typical gun control supporter or Kumbaya-singer (and the two usually go hand in hand).
This position is reinforced by the fact that some societies actually required their gentry to carry or at least own weapons, as an explicit symbol of their responsibility to defend that society. We therefore recommend that the gun control movement replace its handgun with a red line through it with a white feather. We recommend, in fact, that gun registration and confiscation advocates send one another white feathers by way of greeting, perhaps on September 30 (the anniversary of Neville Chamberlain’s Munich agreement with Adolf Hitler).
The bottom line was stated in a movie about the life of Jesus: “Those who live by the sword kill those who have no swords and go on living.” History’s most vicious conquerors and genocidal maniacs have indeed lived quite well by the sword unless and until they picked a fight with the wrong people, who invariably also had swords as opposed to flowers and peace signs.
Some gun control supporters are, however, former police officers and soldiers; people who are obviously not afraid to bear arms. Their position is apparently that of elitist medieval overlords who wanted a monopoly on the means of violence. There were times when feudal Japan banned commoners from owning even knives–not to control crime, of which there is relatively little in Japanese society, but to prevent the commoners from defending themselves against sword-wielding samurai. Medieval knights similarly hated the crossbow, which allowed a commoner to shoot even the bluest-blooded nobleman from his saddle.
Finally we have elitist cowards like Ted Kennedy and Rosie O’Donnell. Both employ armed bodyguards while demanding strict gun laws for commoners. As elitists, they want a monopoly on the means of violence. As cowards, they are unwilling to bear arms themselves. Niccolo Machievelli wrote a long time ago that you cannot pay a man enough to die for you, but O’Donnell and Kennedy apparently think otherwise. (We add in 2008 that Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, who has allegedly tried to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat, also opposes gun ownership by law-abiding people. If he is found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, he will be just one more common criminal who doesn’t want honest people to own guns.)
On a larger scale, the Kumbaya-singers want to disarm the world’s democracies to avoid “threatening” tin-pot dictatorships like North Korea and Iran. The Kumbaya-singers think it’s fine and dandy for those dictatorships to have the means of killing millions of innocent people, because they assume that Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are Kumbaya-singers just like Jimmy Carter and themselves. This is of course a manifestation of their personal cowardice, because they are afraid to even think that Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might actually set off a nuclear weapon in New York City or Los Angeles. As Herman Kahn wrote of nuclear war, refusal to think about the unthinkable makes the unthinkable not only thinkable, but likely.
A large number of Christians are starting to point out that Christmas is not about shopping malls, plastic Santas, and so on. It is past time for Jews to remember what Hanukkah is really about, and it has very little to do with anything the Jewish Left represents.
IDF Confiscating Reserve Guns in Judea and Samaria
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/125830
http://israeljewishnews.blogspot.com/2008/04/idf-confiscating-reserve-guns-in-judea.html
B”H
I am very skeptical that this will lead to a safer Judea and Samaria. I would love to think that the IDF has information that terrorists are intent upon grabbing those weapons, so they have confiscated them in order to protect them from the terrorists, but why would the terrorists need those weapons when the US and the EU are sending them brand new weapons every day?
It is only the Jews who have old weapons to protect themselves. The arabs have new weapons, armored personnel carriers, mortars, everything they need. Why would they care about some reserve weapons in Judea and Samaria?
OK, so let’s get out of the realm of make-believe and spin and talk about what they are REALLY doing, OK?
The Israeli government is currently in negotiations to give Judea and Samaria to the arabs. Shas has already confirmed that by saying that they didn’t care about Judea and Samaria, and that they weren’t in office to protect the “settlements” (Did I say they are weenies? Why are they in office, please, tell me!)
Now, we know that the Israeli government is trying to give up Judea and Samaria, and we know that they are planning to “relocate” about 80,000 people and destroy their homes, businesses, farms, schools, and lives (as they did with the Gaza “resettlement”).
What do you think is the next logical leap? The Israeli government is expecting a full-scale civil war between the secular leftists and the religious settlers. So, they are confiscating the weapons stores.
What’s next, you ask? Well, they will call up the “reserve” officers who have guns, and remove their guns (perhaps even detain the officers), then they will take the list of personal weapons they have, and they will go house to house and collect them before they announce that they have agreed to give all the Arabs the Jewish land.
Of course, the “settlers” can stay, the government will say—but without any means to defend themselves from well-armed and deadly terrorist thugs.
So, here’s my advice—start storing extra supplies now. You know what you might need when the Shitzu hits the fan. You will probably have to bury your supplies so the terrorists don’t take them. Later, we can discuss who the terrorists are.
M
Comment by yamit82 — December 22, 2008 @ 2:57 pm
Israeli NRA Gains Momentum Under the Shai Dromi Law
B”H
Although this article was, I’m sure, terrifying for the weasels at Ha’aretz, it is wonderful news to many of us who believe “for every Jew a .22″ is the soundest advice we can follow to prevent another Holocaust.
We cannot be afraid of guns, we cannot avoid guns. Every Jew should have a gun, know how to use it, and keep it ready. You would think that we had all learned our lesson about how not to be a victim.
Too many Jews are running around thinking that the “authorities” will help them if they need assistance, but too often the authorities can’t make it in time.
We need to stop depending on others for our protection and start depending upon ourselves. We need to arrange for our own security, make sure that those who attend synagogue and Jewish schools know how to protect themselves from attacks, understand how to protect our communities, and we need to donate to our shomrim.
We need to understand that guns are an extremely valuable asset to us, and instead of being afraid of guns, we need to understand them, train with them, teach our children about them, and respect them. We need to know how to store them and use them safely, and we need to know that when we do use them, we can shoot straight, sure, and swiftly.
We need to understand that Hitler’s first action was taking our guns. We need to make sure that we never give them up again.
My idea of gun control is using both hands
For more information about where you and your kids can go to learn more about guns and gun safety, check out the NRA or, my personal favorite, JFPFO (Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership)–an excellent organization which could benefit from an influx of new membership!
M
—–
Founder of Israeli NRA seeks to import American gun culture
By Raphael Ahren, Haaretz Correspondent
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1037295.html
Comment by yamit82 — December 22, 2008 @ 3:06 pm
Happy Hanukkah everyone. And Merry Christmas to our Christian friends.
Comment by Laura — December 22, 2008 @ 3:38 pm
fine column bill,now give me a great big hug.
Comment by bugsy — December 22, 2008 @ 3:50 pm
Absolutely. Israel is now sounding like Toronto (not Canada; the Albertans still have some beitzim).
Yamit - I don’t have to tell you: what the Israeli government is doing is a form of insanity. Let’s see what happens if the New Messiah in the US tries to take the guns from the people. A contact in the US says that she can’t find a handgun anywhere in her area; as soon as the Messiah was elected, people went out and cleared the shelves…
See - even the common people (as opposed to the “elites”) can exhibit intelligence…
Comment by keelie — December 22, 2008 @ 6:21 pm
Great article, Bill. I posted this on Usenet .
A war on guns would yield more casualities among the police in three weeks than the war in Iraq yielded among the troops in one year.
Comment by Michael Ejercito — December 22, 2008 @ 7:07 pm
Happy Chanukah to all Israpundit Jewish contributors and a very merry Christmas and Happy new year to our Christian contributors.
Comment by Bill Narvey — December 22, 2008 @ 8:39 pm
Michael Ejercito,
I think we could safely say that this would spell the start of the second American Revolution.
When the powers-that-be fly in the face of the people - especially armed people - this is what happens. And I’m sure the founding fathers of the US recognized this.
Comment by keelie — December 22, 2008 @ 8:51 pm
Email received:
Comment by elvis — December 22, 2008 @ 10:05 pm
Kellie:
“for every Jew a .22? is the soundest advice we can follow to prevent another Holocaust.
We cannot be afraid of guns, we cannot avoid guns.
We need to understand that Hitler’s first action was taking our guns. We need to make sure that we never give them up again.
My idea of gun control is using both hands
Comment by yamit82 — December 23, 2008 @ 4:23 am
And here we are, Hanukah 5769, thinking that guns are our path to redemption.
Hanukah is about dedication - rededication to be precise. That’s what the word means, after all. The Maccabim didn’t lay down their lives for the 2nd Ammendment.
The difference between “them” and “us” is the difference between “G-d bless American” versus “Israel bless G-d”.
Comment by Shy Guy — December 23, 2008 @ 4:31 am
Guns and redemption are not necessary exclusive, the former might be a necessary tool in attaining the latter. No Jews no redemption. Self defense even from other Jews is a Human as well as a Jewish imperative. Under the Nazis, the Jews of Warsaw numbered over 500,000. They were depleted with regular deportations aided by Judenrats (Jewish leaders). The Revolt in Warsaw began when the Jewish population was down to 50,000 (or 90% murdered). At what point is it OK to rebel? When is civil disobedience OK? When is civil war a better course than suicide? All throughout history there have been rebels and loyalists. History is usually written by the victors but truly there is seldom a universally accepted moral standard as to what is a proper rebellion and what is not. We can say with absolute certainty, however, that the Jewish return to Zion and our struggle today for Eretz Yisrael are more righteous than any other struggle for national liberation in the history of the world. The Israeli government is in rebellion against everything that Israel, Zionism, and Judaism are all about. They are the ones causing the rift in the body politic and they will be totally responsible for any resulting violence. We must pray that this does not happen.
Read in its historical context, however, the Hanukkah story is really about a revolt against the Hellenized Jews who had fallen madly in love with the sophisticated, globalizing superculture of their day. The Apocrypha’s texts make it clear that the battle against Hellenization was in fact a kulturkampf among the Jews themselves. Here is how the first Book of the Maccabees describes Jerusalem on the eve of civil war and revolt in the time of Antiochus:
At that time there were some evil-doers in Israel who tried to win popularity for a policy of integration with the surrounding nations. It was because the Jews had kept themselves aloof for so long, they claimed, that so many hardships had befallen them. They acquired a following and applied to Antiochus, who authorized them to introduce the Greek way of life. They built a Greek gymnasium in Jerusalem and even had themselves uncircumcised.
Uncircumcision as the price of admission to the Jerusalem gym! When they were eight days old, the “sign of the covenant” had been carved in their flesh; now as young men, these Jews risked health and sacrificed sexual pleasure to “become one flesh” with the regnant beauty culture. In Judea, then, there were Jews choosing to die rather than publicly profane Jewish law—and there were Jews risking death to free themselves from the parochial constraints of that law. The historic Jewish passion to merge and disappear confronted the attested Jewish will to stand apart and persist.
That’s the clash of Hanukkah. Armed Hasmonean priests and their comrades from the rural town of Modi’in attacked urban Jews, priests and laity alike, who supported Greek reform, like the gymnasium and new rules for governing commerce. The Hasmoneans imposed, at sword’s edge, traditional observance. After years of protracted warfare, the priests established a Hasmonean state that never ceased fighting Jews who disagreed with its rule.
So the miracle-of-the-oil celebration of Hanukkah that the rabbis later invented covers up a blood-soaked struggle that pitted Jew against Jew. The rabbis drummed out this history with a fairy tale about a light that did not go out. But really, who can blame them—after all, what nation creates a living monument to a civil war?
Mattathias, his sons and his grandson John Hyrcanus battled together and supported each other and John Hyrcanus was able to build the country and complete the work the others had started.
The country was built and enlarged until it became strong and independent through one central unifying purpose: to build a country in which Jewish people could live as Jews and practise their faith. Single minded, the members of the royal family were loyal to the ruler and as soon as one died the next one was ready to take over and was in turn supported by the rest of the family.
With Aristobulus I it seems that power had corrupted but he did not rule for long and Alexander Yannai was able to do very well indeed.
Following the popular rebellion for Judaism, for Jewish law and thus for freedom, the rulers formed a dynasty and a supporting establishment, had tasted power and meant to have it. Hence they battled for power with each other, allied themselves with foreign powers against each other. In so doing they divided the people and weakened all.
To begin with all were united and struggled against the brutal oppression. They struggled for Torah, freedom and the people. Against them were foreign invaders who believed in slavery and who were trying to impose their way of life through imposing their beliefs.
Comment by yamit82 — December 23, 2008 @ 9:22 am
Levinson rightly reminds us of something of Chanukah’s true meaning.
The notion of the salutation, Happy Chanukha and the giving of gifts to children is relatively recent and as most of you know was fostered by doubtless well intentioned Jews who did not want their children to feel left out of the gift giving and spirt of the season bound up in Christmas which came about the same time of year as Chanukah.
We should be making a point of telling our children and reminding ourselves that Chanukah is a celebration of the day Jews standing up for themselves, their religion, beliefs and way of life, defeated their oppressors and the forces of assimilation that had already drawn too many Jews from their Judaism and their past to foresake Hashem and to adopt the Greek religion and culture as their own.
The forces of assimilation are all around us today, stronger then ever and they are drawing Jews away from their identities, their religion, their past and their heritage in ever greater numbers.
Perhaps the true spirit of Chanukah can become the rallying force and cry behind those Jews today who do not accept that assimilation continues to whittle away at the numbers of Jews and the vitality of Judaism and Jewish culture and are compelled to take a stand.
Comment by Bill Narvey — December 23, 2008 @ 9:47 am
I did NOT intend to convey that we should rely upon passively openning up our Tehilims and chanting 18 hours a day. I’m all for using the best tools available, as long as they’re accompanied by a “l’shem Yichud Kudshah Brich Hu” prior to use.
Comment by Shy Guy — December 23, 2008 @ 9:50 am
Giving gifts, yes, but wishing your fellow Jew a Chanuka Sameach is something whose equivalent you would do on any other joyous Jewish calendar day, from Yom Kippur to Purim to Rosh Chodesh. It has nothing to do with anybody else’s season.
Not exactly. The original rallying force of Chanuka was due to Hellenized Jews, along with their Greek overlords, imposing harsh decrees against their own Jewish brothers and sisters in the land of Israel, preventing them from living Jewish lives, even at the risk of death.
The Maccabees did not fight the Hellenists to force them to return to Judaism at the threat of the sword.
Comment by Shy Guy — December 23, 2008 @ 9:54 am
It’s not about guns per se, but having the ability to protect oneself. His Sign for protecting the sanctification of His Name was the miracle of the sparse amount of oil lasting for eight days. How soon it was forgotten.
Comment by elvis — December 23, 2008 @ 10:52 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdHZ481Mrqg
After three years of guerrilla warfare in the hills and forests against the regular armies of Antiochus and his collaborators in the Jewish community, the Maccabean forces won. They recaptured Jerusalem in 166 BCE, and set out to rededicate the Holy Temple.
During the next century, the deeds of the Maccabees were recorded and celebrated. The eight-day celebration of rededicating the defiled altar in the Temple is described in detail in I Maccabees chapter 4. In II Maccabees chapter 10, Hanukkah is described as a kind of rerun of Sukkot, the Festival of Huts, which the Maccabean guerrillas (”living like wild animals in the mountains and caves”) had been unable to celebrate in its proper season. The First and Second Temples were both dedicated at the season of Sukkot, and so the reenactment of Sukkot may have seemed an especially appropriate way to rededicate the Temple. And so, from I and II Maccabees. Jewish tradition about Hanukkah, however, is not so simple. The books of the Maccabees themselves became an issue. They seem to have been treated as holy books by the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria. The rabbis, on the other hand, never regarded them as holy, and never entered them among the books that made up the Jewish Bible. And it was rabbis who determined what became Jewish tradition. Ironically enough, these books that celebrated the Maccabees’ victory over Hellenism survived not in Hebrew but only in the Greek language… (Indeed, the Maccabean books survived into modern times only because some of these Hellenized Jews became recruits to Christianity, and brought with them the assumption that these Books of the Maccabees were holy writings. The Christian Church then included Maccabees among its version of what it called the “Old Testament.”)
For the classic Jewish view of the origins of Hanukkah, therefore, we must turn to the Talmud. Here we find Hanukkah in a most peculiar position. It is the only one of the traditional festivals that does not have a place in the Mishnah (the earlier level, or layer of the Talmud). And in the later layer, the Gemara, it is treated in a very off-hand way, without the focused attention that is normal for deciding how to observe a holy day.
In a discussion of what kinds of candles may be used for Shabbat, one rabbi asks, rather casually, whether the rules for Hanukkah candles are different; in this context, another asks — as if he had barely heard of the festival — “What is this Hanukkah?”
This is the answer he receives:
Our rabbis taught: On the 25th day of Kislev [begin] the eight days of Hanukkah, on which lamentation for the dead and fasting are forbidden. For when the Greeks entered the Temple, they defiled all the oils in it, and when the Hasmonean dynasty prevailed over them and defeated them, they searched and found only one bottle of oil sealed by the High Priest. It contained only enough for one day’s lighting. Yet a miracle was brought about with it, and they lit [with that oil] for eight days. The following year they were established as a festival, with Hallel (prayers of praise) and Thanksgiving [Shabbat 21b].
After this brief explanation, the rabbis go back to discussing the candles. They have no more to say about the internal divisions of the Jews, the revolt against Antiochus, the victory of the Maccabees, the rededication of the Temple.
The reason for this cautious attitude towards Hanukkah is that the rabbis were not happy with the Maccabean approach to Jewish life. They were writing in the period when similar revolts against Rome, seeking to win the Jews political independence, to turn Judea into a rocky fortress, and to toughen the Jewish people had been systematically and brutally smashed by the iron first of Rome. The rabbis believed that only the rabbinical kind of power — the power not of the fist but of the spirit — had protected and preserved the Jewish people in the past and could do so now.
Moreover, the Maccabees had made themselves and their offspring kings, after expelling the Syrian-Greek empire. That, in itself, was a violation of the ancient Israelite constitution, which required that priest and king be of different tribes, so as to create a check-and-balance system between religious and political power. Even worse in the eyes of the rabbis, the Hasmonean kings — despite their anti-imperial, anti- assimilationist origins — had invited the Roman Empire to become protectors and overlords of the Jewish kingdom, paving the way for the ultimate Roman conquest. Finally, and worst of all, the Hasmonean kings sided with the Sadducees, the priestly upholders of the primacy of Temple offerings as a channel to God, against the Pharisees — forerunners of the rabbis who saw prayer and the study and interpretation of Torah as the path to God.
All these Maccabean ways of exercising power seemed to the rabbis a subtle surrendering to the habits of the Gentiles (ironically, a form of assimilation) as distinct from pursuing a life-path that the rabbis saw as authentically Jewish. And so, in retrospect, the rabbis were critical of the meaning and ultimate outcome of the Maccabean revolt; without utterly rejecting the national liberation movement, they refocused attention away from it toward God’s miracle — toward the spiritual meaning of the light that burned and was not consumed for eight days.
Through almost two millennia, Hanukkah remained a real but secondary festival of the Jewish people. Beginning late in the 19th century in central and eastern Europe, Hanukkah had a second birth. There were two major factors in this second birth, both of them stemming from the emancipation of the Jewish people and their increasing day-to-day contact with the Christian and secular world.
As secular, non-religious, or rational religious ideas grew during the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment in the 19th century), there was a special disdain for the irrational notion of the miracle of the oil in the Temple. In addition, with the growing popularity of the secular notion of Jewish peoplehood, including the Zionist notion of the Jews as a nation seeking political rehabilitation through politico-military action, the Maccabees began to seem less dangerous and more heroic than they had throughout the centuries of rabbinic tradition. Indeed, many Zionists identified the rabbis’ fear of militant action against oppressive governments as a major element of exile mentality to be transcended in rebuilding the Jewish people.
Thus, from about 1890 on, the miracle of the lights declined, and the Maccabees advanced in attention and popularity. Hanukkah became more and more important as a celebration of Jewish political courage and military prowess. At the same time, the Christian Apocryphal books of the Maccabees became more accessible to Jews, as the barriers between the Jewish and Christian worlds crumbled.
An additional factor contributing to the rebirth of Hanukkah was the growing popularity of Christmas as a major society-wide event among Christians in Europe and North America. As Jews became more assimilated into the broader (Christian) society, they felt themselves both attracted and threatened by the joyful Christmas celebrations and especially by their appeal to children. Hanukkah — both because of its date and because of its anti-assimilationist content — became a useful tool for strengthening Jewish identity.
Out of these twin facts, Hanukkah was reborn as a popular holiday, with a greater emphasis on the Maccabees, on resistance to assimilation and the defense of religious and ethnic pluralism, on the giving of gifts, and on the pleasure of children
Comment by yamit82 — December 23, 2008 @ 11:16 am
Shy Guy, you say that the Maccabees did not fight the Hellenists to force them to return to Judaism at the threat of the sword.
What did they then fight the Hellenists for?
As far as I know it was to defeat Hellenists who if left unrestrained, would have gained increasing power and success at inducing, forcing or leading all Jews to abandon Judaism and all that entails and through assimilation, replace Judaism with all that Greek culture and religion entailed.
I still say Jews that are today assailed by assimilation and feel threatened by it, need leaders and followers who would do well to adopt Chanukah as a symbol and inspiration to fight against all the forces of assimilation impacting against our world Jewish community, including those Jews who already are part of those assimilative forces.
Comment by Bill Narvey — December 23, 2008 @ 12:01 pm
For freedom from them and their Greek based religious oppression, which affected the vast majority of otherwise decent Jews all over the land. A small elite hedonistic class trying to forcefeed the rest of us with their empty ways. The Maccabees goal was not to force the Hellenists to become Jewish. It was to free the nation from the Hellenist’s overrule.
Comment by Shy Guy — December 23, 2008 @ 1:11 pm
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Radio/News.aspx/421
Audio: The Political Significance of Chanukah
Yehuda is joined by Professor Hagi Ben-Artzi and Rabbi Beni Eisner who explain the inner meaning and political significance of Chanukah. Mordechai Taub provides political analysis.
Yehuda HaKohen lives in Jerusalem and is the director of the Zionist Freedom Alliance. He is a political activist, history teacher and frequent guest lecturer at college campuses in the United States. Eliyahu Chaim is recognized in activist circles as an authority on American political history. He currently serves as the head campus coordinator for the Zionist Freedom Alliance in the New York area. The Struggle for Israel’s Freedom airs live every Monday from 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM on Israel National Radio.
Comment by yamit82 — December 23, 2008 @ 2:59 pm
Jewish culture clash
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Radio/News.aspx/419
Comment by yamit82 — December 23, 2008 @ 3:06 pm
#3, Laura, sincere thanks for the Christmas wishes & Happy Haunkkah to you. Some of us Christians are more into Hanukkah, which is actually mentioned in the New Testament, unlike Christmas, which we Bible-believers know is a day specifically chosen by the Catholic church because it was the greatest day of pagan worship on the calendar, not to mention that Bible-believers don’t celebrate any “mass,” much less Christ-mass.
Comment by soren — December 23, 2008 @ 3:13 pm
You let me down greatly Yamit! I’ve agreed with almost all your comments. But to vote for Obama Hussein???? He has criminal associations, and is probably not a natural born US citizen. Your arguments for electing him are weak at best and dangerous at worst. It seems to me that Obama will be a horrible,”Friend” at best and bad nightmare at worst. Israel is in a state of mess, no denying that! But electing some putz in the hope they wake up is naive at best! The Maccabees were true Jews if only for a moment. I believe that is what Hashem wants. The trying for the righeousness! Hannukah is our time of hatikvah! They fought and even for a brief period in history achieved success. This is what Israel, Jews and the rest of the world needs. Chag samach!
Comment by tov — December 24, 2008 @ 3:53 pm