“The eternal light of Jewish freedom was never extinguished. Today, it shines brightly in the Middle East’s only democracy, and its example continues to inspire people of diverse faiths.”
Hanukkah celebrates the Jewish war for independence in the second century B.C. Although many gentiles know about dreidel games and menorahs, the history is unknown to most gentiles and even some Jews.
The ignorance is surprising, since the books that tell the story, the first and second books of the Maccabees, are part of the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Slavonic bibles. Although not canonical in the Jewish and Protestant traditions, the Maccabees story helped inspire the Jewish guerrillas who fought the Holocaust, Great Britain’s Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the American Revolution.
So here’s the story of Hanukkah, as told in the books that have stirred so many freedom-fighters. The first book of Maccabees is a reasonably good history, much of which is confirmed by other classical histories and records. Like almost all classical-period histories, the book has a highly partisan point of view. The second book of Maccabees, which retells some of the same story, is less complete as history but superior as literature.
By David Kopel
