Friday December 11, 2009

I've Been Thinking:

Tonight, across the world, Jews will light the first Hanukah candle. When we think of Hanukah, we most often focus on the crucible of oil and the miracle. Not to diminish the miracle of light, that is only a small part of the story.

Hanukah was a battle for religious freedom against the religious intolerance of the Syrian Greeks.

The war waged by the Macabees was truly fought with swords and arrows, but it was more than a military operation, it was a war of culture and media. It was a conflict between a small religiously observant enclave and pagan masses. This clash of culture was without a doubt one of the most dramatic in Jewish history.

It was a conflict of tradition versus modern society that split families and pit family members against each other. What tipped the scale for the Macabees were the laws that were passed forbidding all Jewish observance and the absolute rejection by the Syrian Greeks of any type of religious Jewish life.

To the Syrian Greeks it was all a game, they were convinced that they defeated the few Jews because they were more modern. In the end it was the Syrian Greek culture and reign that fell. It fell because the culture and spirit of the Macabees was not simply encased in a building the Greeks desecrated but in behaviors and teachings handed down from generation to generation.

Some things cannot be taken away, not even by edict, intimidation or terror.
The Syrian Greeks learned that lesson the hard way.
Happy Holiday.

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