c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the National Interreligious Affairs Director of the

American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ The eight day Jewish festival of freedom, Hanukkah, begins on Tuesday night, Dec. 23. Unfortunately, in our over-heated consumer society, Hanukkah is frequently lumped together with Christmas as part of the ubiquitous winter season of gift giving called”the holidays”.

In such a mushy mixture of religion and culture, both festivals suffer as their authentic messages become obscured amidst the twin clouds of forced gaiety and superficial cheer.

This is especially true of Hanukkah which celebrates the victory of a small band of Jewish fighters who in 165 B.C. successfully recaptured Jerusalem from the powerful Greco-Syrian empire and reconsecrated the Holy City to the service of God. Hanukkah is the Hebrew word for”dedication”.

Ironically, the historic sources for Hanukkah, the Books of the Maccabees, are not in the Hebrew Bible, but they are included in Roman Catholic Scriptures. The books tell the dramatic story of how the Greco-Syrian Emperor, Antiochus IV, attempted to snuff out Judaism, a minority religion in his vast kingdom.

Instead of offering his subjects political unity with full rights for all, Antiochus forcibly demanded a uniformity of thought and practice. He made illegal the teaching of Torah, ritual circumcision, the dietary laws, and other forms of Jewish ritual and liturgy. Worst of all, the emperor placed a statue of the pagan god, Zeus, within the sacred precincts of Jerusalem’s Holy Temple.

While many Jews were willing to jettison their traditional religious heritage in favor of the majority culture, Antiochus failed in his scheme because Judah Maccabee, the Jewish guerrilla leader, defeated the emperor’s army after three years of fighting.

Many scholars maintain Judah Maccabee’s military victory not only guaranteed Judaism’s survival, but Hanukkah also made possible the rise of Christianity 200 years later. It is argued that without a viable Jewish religion and culture in ancient Israel, the Christian religion might never have emerged.

What is sometimes overlooked in the re-telling of the Hanukkah story is just how appealing and dazzling the majority Greco-Syrian civilization was. I now understand why my childhood teachers never told me about the seductive glory of Antiochus’ mighty empire. Luminous jewels, luxurious clothing, and sumptuous furs were plentiful. Majestic architectural splendors abounded within the empire, including the mighty Colossus of Rhodes.

Euclid’s geometry, Ptolemy’s astronomy, and Aristoxenus’ harmonics dominated the science of the empire. Literature was filled with poetry, plays, biographies, histories, and satires. Physical beauty and athletic prowess were greatly idealized (sound familiar?), and the empire’s philosophers grappled with the same problems as do our great thinkers: life, death, truth, and our place in the universe. The Greco-Syrian world was not unlike our own civilization.

But the empire of Antiochus had no truly living religion. The ancient system of capricious gods and goddesses had lost most of its vitality. In that spiritual vacuum, superstition, cynicism, and skepticism reigned.

Historians tell us exotic cults and fetishes permeated the empire. Magical stones, far away stars, and beautiful human bodies were adored, even worshipped. Everything and nothing was believed, both at the same time.

In the midst of that bewildering and enticing society was a small group of Jews who were unwilling to abandon their covenant of faith with the God of Israel. Linked to this covenant was the rock-solid belief that God demanded a prescribed eternal set of moral principles of behavior.

It was Judah Maccabee’s father, Mattathias, who provided the battle cry for faithful Jews to resist the emperor. Although uttered over 2,100 years ago, Mattathias’ words have been a call to arms for many oppressed groups throughout history and represent the true meaning of Hanukkah:”Though all the nations under the king’s dominion obey him and fall away from the religion of their fathers, and yield to his commandments, I and my sons and my brethren will continue to walk in the covenant of our fathers. God forbid that we should forsake the Torah and its ordinances. We will not hearken to the king’s words to desert our religionâÂ?¦whoever is zealous for the Torah and the covenant, let him follow me!” END RUDIN