The events behind the festival of Chanukah constitute one of the best stories in all of Jewish history. But one aspect of that story usually gets left out of most accounts of the holiday’s origin.
Most frequently emphasized is the war of the people of Judea against religious persecution ordered by a king of the Greek-culture Seleucid Empire that ruled the land of Israel in the early second century B.C.E.
Chanukah commemorates how the Jews, commanded by Judah Maccabee, recovered the Second Temple — which had been taken and used for polytheistic worship — and rededicated it to Jewish worship with a celebration that began on the 25th of the Jewish calendar month Kislev and lasted eight days.
Not usually mentioned is that the war did not end with the Temple’s rededication. It continued for about two decades, off and on. Moreover, for the Jews the aim of the war changed, from preserving religious freedom within the empire to seeking full political independence from it.
Under the rule of Judah’s brother Simon, independence was achieved. So began the second fully independent Jewish state in the land of Israel. It was ruled by Simon’s descendants until Judea became part of the Roman Empire. The independent Jewish state lasted about 77 years, a period modern Israel has not yet equaled.
Independence lost
There may be a lesson for today in how this second Jewish state lost its independence. Two of Simon’s descendants in the first century B.C.E. were the brothers Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, who were allied with different Jewish religious-political parties and became bitter rivals for the throne.
Both brothers sought the support of the rising Roman Empire through Roman general Pompey. Pompey ended up capturing Judea for Rome.
In his chapter on this era in the 1988 book “Ancient Israel,” Lee I. A. Levine of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem raised the inevitable question: Could Judea have resisted Rome, or at least maintained its independence, if the brothers and their parties had not been such fierce rivals? “By demonstrating a unified stand and a willingness to cooperate, their kingdom might have survived much longer and remained more intact than it in fact did,” Levine wrote.
Today, Jews in Israel and the Diaspora appear riven by a dispute that looks as bitter and ferocious as that between the ancient brothers and their parties. At issue is what Israel should do with the West Bank/Judea and Samaria territories plus East Jerusalem that it captured in the 1967 Six Day War, and what, if anything, Diaspora Jews should do or say about this issue.
Partisans of one camp say Israel must allow the Palestinian Arabs living there to “realize their national aspirations” and create their own independent state. They say the “occupation” is corrupting Israel by compelling it, “in violation of international law,” to rule as a colonial power discriminating against Arab natives; that Israel will end up becoming an “apartheid” state if it cannot or will not give the Palestinian Arabs full citizenship rights; and that Israel will lose — is already losing — political and economic support from other nations that it needs for survival, and is losing the emotional support of many Diaspora Jews.
Partisans of the other camp say Israel must absorb those territories and never allow creation of a Palestinian Arab state there. They say these territories have vital political, economic, military and Jewish religious significance; that the Palestinian Arabs’ “national aspirations” seek Israel’s destruction and not merely their own independence, and their state will become a base for terrorist attacks upon Israelis; that Israel is not violating “international law” because sovereignty over these territories is disputed, and “international law” does not have automatic moral authority especially when it is interpreted and applied by countries and international bodies hostile or indifferent to Israel.
Many Jews in both camps believe that not following their policies will prove disastrous. This fear is likely what leads some members of these camps to demonize the other and become unable to discuss opposing positions rationally. Some in the first camp call members of the second “racists,” “fanatics,” “imperialists” and “fear mongers;” and some members of the second call members of the first “self-hating Jews,” “Jewish anti-Semites,” “traitors” and “useful idiots helping Israel’s enemies.”
And some members of both do not want members of the other to present their views in a community newspaper like The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle.
I fear that the mutual hostility of the two camps is causing Jews to feel increasingly alienated from other Jews. And while history never exactly repeats itself, past precedents like the Hyrcanus-Aristobulus rivalry do show the kinds of calamities that could result.
I do not believe we can stop disagreeing with each other, nor feeling passionate about our positions. Nevertheless, even with everything that is at stake, we should be able to agree to disagree. Nobody knows for certain what consequences will follow from either of the two camps’ policies; and most of the Jews advocating them do so in the good faith and sincere belief that they want what is best for Israel and the Jewish people.
And that is why holders of both positions should be able to argue their cases in the pages of The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle.
The Chronicle has policies about frequencies that an individual writer may appear. Because this is a monthly that publishes only 12 issues a year, the editor and the publishers have decided that once every six issues should be sufficient for any individual Chronicle reader to have a letter to the editor or an opinion article published. We hope this will provide opportunity for a wide range of views and prevent any one person from seeming to dominate the space devoted to opinions.
And we especially want The Chronicle’s opinion pages to be a space for civil dialogue, and respectful, even if impassioned, disagreement. The word chanukah means dedication, and The Chronicle’s default position is that we are all dedicated to seeking and advocating what we believe promotes the flourishing of the Jewish community.
Chag Chanukah same’ach.
