Many believe that Chanukah is about a military battle: the untrained, unprepared small band of Jews defeated the great Greek army, pushed them out of the Holy Temple, and celebrated by lighting the Menorah and eating latkes. Israel even has a whole Maccabiah Games, a mock Olympic Games for young Jewish athletes from around the world, in purported tribute to Judah Maccabee. This sadly misses the point.
The true battle commemorated on Chanukah was more ideological than physical. The heroes of Chanukah rejected the ideology celebrated by the Olympics: striving for and valuing physical perfection. In fact, the original Olympic athletes competed in the nude, to show their perfected physical form! To the Greeks, the Jewish rite of circumcision was a desecration of the human body.
Of course, this was only one part of the ideology that the Maccabees rejected. The Greeks set up an idol in the Holy Temple and expected the Jews to worship it. They tried to destroy the Jewish calendar: observance of Sabbath, the new month, and the holidays. They forbade keeping kosher. And, to be certain, they prohibited Torah study, that which preserves the Jewish nation.
Many Jews willingly joined the Greeks, while others succumbed to the pressure. Thus the war was not simply between Jews and Greeks, but was just as often a civil war between Jews. The Maccabees and their small group were those who rejected the new, Greek ideas and their efforts to replace Torah.
Through thousands of years of domination and exile, what has set the Jews apart is the same stubborn refusal to succumb to new ideals and ideologies, no matter what claims others have made to physical or moral superiority.
Today is not so different. Go out in the street and you will “learn” that it is intolerant to uphold Biblical definitions of marriage, bigoted to keep biological men from playing in women’s sports, and colonialist occupation to allow Jews to live in their Holy Land. And, as with the Hellenists of earlier times, there are even groups of Jews that back all of those positions.
The Maccabees taught us that Jewish ideals are those that come from Torah, not our own opinions. We light the Menorah, and observe that a little light can dispel the darkness. May the light of the Menorah, and of Torah, fill all our homes during this great and holy time!
