Much of what we learned (or, perhaps, didn’t learn) in religious school when we were young is not quite the whole truth. This is not a bad thing; it is a consequence of making education appropriate for the age level of the student. What is bothersome, though, is that too many of us duck out, disappear, after bar/t mitzvah - after several years of nothing more substantial than apples & honey on Rosh Hashanah only to resurface (hopefully) again as poorly educated adult Jews. In my experience, this phenomena is acutely manifest with regard to the story of Hanukkah.
Most of us seem to have learned that the Hasmonean uprising was a response to the religious persecutions of the Seleucid king, Antiochus IV, who started his Hellenizing campaign against the innocent Judean citizens of his empire either out of greed or to homogenize the religion of his empire & stamp out Judaism. However, in 2 separate accounts of these events recorded in the apocryphal books of the Maccabees, not part of our bible, we learn otherwise. The book of I Maccabees (1:11-15) suggests that Antiochus was approached by the Jews, themselves, desiring such changes & II Maccabees (4:7-17) presents an even more intriguing possibility; that the process of official Hellenization was started by the High priest himself!
Mattathias was willing to risk martyrdom (I Macc.2) rather than abandon the tradition, though there is no evidence that he would have died. The uprising begins only when another Jew offers to abandon God’s covenant. Indeed, when many of the Jews fled & were pursued by the Syrians, the soldiers promised amnesty if they would embrace the king’s law. It would appear, then, that the Hasmonean uprising does have something to do with religious freedom. But, as historians would inform us, the goals of the Hasmonean uprising were either never definitively stated or, more likely, underwent constant revision. If the uprising was staged merely to preserve religious freedoms, then it should have properly ended with the rededication of the Temple & that little cruise of oil in 164 BCE. It didn’t; it evolved into a war of independence, an attempt to leave the Seleucid Empire & establish an autonomous Jewish state.
At one point, I Maccabees relates an interesting tale: The Jews, hiding in caves, refused the offer of amnesty. Refusing to violate their covenant with God, they were unwilling to defend themselves because it was the Sabbath, regarding any fighting on the Sabbath, even in their own defense, as a violation of the covenant in its own right. To protect themselves on the Sabbath would be an embrace of the very principle against which they took action in the 1st place! All of them: men, women, & children perished.
When Mattathias, Judah, & their intrepid band learned of this, they mourned the dead & made a pact not to repeat this mistake. I Maccabees (2:39-41) states that they concluded: “If we all do as our brethren have done & refuse to fight with the Gentiles for our lives & for our ordinances, they will quickly destroy us from the earth.” So they made this decision that day: “Let us fight against every man who comes to attack us on the Sabbath day; let us not all die as our brethren died in their hiding places.”
Self defense, as its name implies, does not entail leaving one’s security in the hands of others. Perhaps that includes God’s hand as well. In doing so, too many innocent people die needlessly &, as the Maccabees correctly surmise, preservation of self & of principle is not achieved. If a group is going to perish irrespective of the actions they take, should they not, at least, try to defend themselves & not passively submit? This is the lesson that the intrepid Maccabees learned. It is a lesson that modern day Israel should take to heart. Consistently we have seen the inefficacy of UN peace keeping, American intervention, & “peaceful” Palestinian negotiations in the Middle East. Jews, Israelis, MUST protect themselves & not rely on the so-called good intentions of others. Only 80 years ago we saw how the world stood idly by & let Jews be herded into death camps & today Palestinian terrorists would carry on Hitler’s noble work. Why should modern day Israel repeat the same mistake? The depredations of Palestinian terror, of former Jordanians wishing to murder & maim, should be met with swift reprisal & not merely swept under the carpet.
In his Lord of the Rings trilogy (book 3, The Return of the King - with all of its Christological references) JRR Tolkien has the princess Eowyn of Rohan utter a remarkable line. It goes something like: “It needs but one foe to breed a war, not two, Master Warden, & those who have not swords can still die upon them… And it is not always good to be healed in body. Nor is it always evil to die in battle, even in bitter pain. Were I permitted, in this dark hour I would choose the latter.” Enough said, war may be futile indeed, but sometimes there is no choice. When war is thrust upon you, fight to defend yourself. Eowyn (Tolkien) got it right.
In my youth I was convinced that there were, indeed, 2 sides to every tale. Today I tend to agree with the Lady Eowyn of Rohan.
Shalom uverakha (peace and blessing),
Rabbi Ronald B. Kopelman
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