Who Can Retell? Three Different Hanukah Stories

From the Book of Maccabees

In those days [of religious persecution by King Antiochus], a priest named Mattathias moved from Jerusalem, and settled in Modiin [a provincial town]. He had five sons, John, Simon, Judah called Maccabeus, Elazar, and Jonathan. When he saw the blasphemous things that were going on in Judea and Jerusalem, he said with a heavy sigh, “Why was I born to witness the ruin of my people and the ruin of the Holy City, and to sit by while it is being given up to its enemies, and its Temple to aliens?”

Mattathias and his sons tore their clothes in mourning… Later the king’s officers, who were forcing the people to give up their religion, came to the town of Modiin, to make them offer an idolatrous sacrifice. When many Jews, among them Mattathias and his sons, gathered together, the king’s messengers said to Mattathias: “You are a leading man, great and distinguished in this town, surrounded with sons and brothers; now be the first to come forward and carry out the king’s command as all the peoples, all the men of Judea and those who are left in Jerusalem have done. Then you and your sons will be counted among the Friends of the King and will receive silver, gold and many royal commissions.”

Then Mattathias answered and said in a loud voice: “Even if all the peoples in the king’s dominions listen to him and forsake each of them the religion of their ancestors, I and my children and my siblings will live in accordance with the covenant of our ancestors. God forbid that we should abandon the Torah and the ordinances. We will not listen to the message of the king, nor depart from our religion to the right hand or to the left.”

When Mattathias finished speaking, a Jew went up before everyone’s eyes to offer the pagan sacrifice on the altar in Modiin as the king commanded. Mattathias saw him and was filled with zeal. Mattathias shook with emotion and could not contain his anger, and ran up and slaughtered him upon the altar. At the same time Mattathias killed the king’s officer who was trying to compel them to sacrifice, and tore down the altar. Thus he showed his zeal for the Torah, just as Pinchas [the zealous priest] did (Numbers 25).

Then Mattathias cried out in a loud voice in the town, “Let everybody who is zealous for the Torah and stands by the Covenant follow me.” And he and his sons fled to the mountains and left all they possessed in the town.

(A religious innovation, that led to victory.) When Mattathias and his friends learned of [the massacre], they grieved bitterly and said to one another: “If we all do as our brothers have done and refuse to fight [on Shabbat] against the pagans, for our lives and for what we believe is right, they will very soon wipe us off the face of the earth.” On that day they reached this decision: “If anyone attacks us on Shabbat, let us fight against them and not all die, as our brothers died in the hiding places.” (I Maccabees 2: 29-41)

Hanukah And Zionism, from A Different Light: The Big Book of Hanukkah by Noam Zion

"Hanukkah is an ancient festival, but a modest one. The Festival of the Hasmoneans is a new holy day, but full of high spirits and popular gaiety.

What was Hanukkah?… ‘ a memorial for the Miracles’… the lighting of the little candles… at home, potato pancakes and playing cards for the adults, spinning tops for the toddlers.

And what is Hanukkah now? – The Festival of the Hasmoneans, a holiday filled with cheering, a big national holiday which is celebrated by the Jewish people in all its dispersions with parties and speeches, songs and ballads, hikes and parades… This is our Festival of the Hasmoneans as it is today."

The great victory of Judah Maccabeus, whose memory is honored in every Jewish house and every Jewish heart during the eight days of Hanukkah, was the triumph of the Jewish tiller of the soil. It was not the city of Jerusalem nor the ranks of the wealthy and large landowners, but the obscure village of Modiin in Judah, with its peasants whose plot of land was their all, that produced Mattathias the Hasmonean and his sons, who saved Jewish culture and perhaps the whole Jewish race from destruction. We have here an historic fact which speaks more than all the theoretical arguments in the world for the importance of national land and agricultural workers who literally draw their bread from their soil by the labor of their hands, for the sake of the culture, the freedom, the life of the nation. Zionism knew how to raise the Feast of Hanukkah, that feast of small candles, which shed their eternal light from the past into the future, to the height of a new national symbol. Can one ever forget that fine sketch. “The Menorah”, by the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl? The picture of Herzl standing wrapped in troubled thought, in front of a menorah, is one of the most beautifully symbolic in the life of the leader. But it seems to me that this festival has come to tell the people, through its two thousand year old symbol, of the principle of land redemption, and the creation of a class of workers on the soil that shall serve as a basis for the future existence of the race.- Joseph Klausner

A Psalm Becomes a Zionist Song, From A Different Light: The Big Book of Hanukkah by Noam Zion