I would like to share a critical point about Chanukah, now that the chag is over. It’s not just about Chanukah. The ideas are relevant year-round. We must not confine discussions relating to the Maccabean Revolt to annual Chanukah celebrations, since the original noble war to preserve the Torah’s sanctity continued well beyond the miracle of the oil. Since the battle against Hellenism will surely continue until the arrival of Moshiach, we must wage war against Hellenism in every generation, in a manner that recalls our unrelenting war with Amalek.
Since the time when the Greeks first polluted our waters, the greatest dangers from Hellenism were not from those who first infected us, but from those “mityavnim” within the Jewish camp who nurtured and propagated these ideas. And so it remains today in the modern State of Israel. We have Hellenists in high positions who pay homage to Jewish history, while replicating the sins of our internal enemies of yore.
We find modern day Jewish Hellenism on an individual level and on a national level. It is both pagan and secular. Classically idolatrous and secularly idolatrous. Pagan idolatry manifests itself with the overt and covert efforts of classical missionary activities in Israel and abroad, as well is the more prominent and forms of superstition and segulos, forbidden beliefs, “New Age” kabbalah, fraudulent wonder-workers, and the tragic affinity that many secular Israeli’s have for the goyish concepts of India and the Far East.
In Israel, we find secular idolatry within the perverted strains of thought of “Peace Now” and “Yesh Gvul”, both the card-carrying version, and the more common everyman version, courtesy of The Ministry of Education’s unrelenting war on Israel’s Jewish youth. The “Peace Culture” has never gone away. Too many young Israelis relate more to Hindu notions of veganism than to anything found in Torah. Pacifism and the Dalai Lama are more appealing to them than Moshe Rabbeinu, or Heaven forbid, King David.
We find Hellenism in a leftwing Israeli Supreme Court that attacks Jews and torah and among the “Princes of Peace” who never seem to go away, and our weak-kneed leaders who readily apply the most oppressive punishments of administrative detention and torture (in the absence of proof )to punish good Jews. We find Hellenism within the breast of a Prime Minister who rewards Arab terror and punishes Jewish justice, who appeases and releases murderous Arabs, and who responds to Arab terror by installing road blockades to protect Jews from becoming roadkill.
Moreover, all parties are guilty of sin. The Likud shnorrers from evangelical xtians who offer exorbitant sums of money for the price of a foothold in the door and prime real estate. Labor prefers the coffers of leftists and European socialism. Yet neither party is averse to dipping into the funds of the other group.
Tragically, we find Hellenism in the Torah camp of those peculiar orthodox Rabbis who grabbed the missionaries hand in the name of goodwill, and gave them a new and historically unprecedented vehicle to proselytize, infiltrate, and destroy the sanctity of Am Israel. Rabbinical approval, even if offered by a handful of “religious” Rabbis is the kind of haskamah they never had. Other versions of “religious Hellenism” are found in the camps of the “open orthodox” who want to abrogate mesorah and Halacha to satisfy modern liberal agendas, and among simpletons who drink from strains of biblical criticism as if these pseudo-academic assertions were themselves divinely revealed.
Remember the Maccabees! The original Maccabees and not those who later debased the sanctity of their righteous Zaidy’s war. The true Maccabees fought valiantly against gentile and Hellenized Jew despite the odds against them, and that is what we celebrate. Not a victory per say since the battle still rages. Ironically, many of those who once fought for Torah and still purport to do so, are now aligning with the modern day equivalent of our ancient enemies. We must continue the spiritual battle to retain and preserve Jewish concepts and to keep them pristine from treif oil.
The Maccabees were not progressives. Matityahu made that very clear, when the aging High Priest cut down a Jew who publicly defiled G-d’s name with a desire to engage in idolatry. As such, we can easily surmise that Matityahu would have a big problem with missionaries in Israel, or foreign houses of worship in general. If we are to be truthful.
The Maccabees were not feminists (classical or the JOFA variety), pluralists, humanists, Woman of the Wall militants, advocates for gay rights, or for murdering babies in utero. The Maccabees were not defending indigenous rights to the land. The Maccabees were zealots preserving Torah. They were extremists. They were fundamentalists. They were correct but their expression would not be palpable to the modern ear and eye of the Jewish liberal. History sanitizes the actions of such men. Like the zealots of Masada, and the warriors of the Bar Kochba, modern day Jews would not celebrate the Maccabees. Nor would the authorities place them in Administrative Detention, unjust as the punishment so often is. There would be a new “hunting season”.
The only way to redeem Chanukah and resurrect its message is to first destroy the false narrative of Chanukah, and then study and apply the authentic ideas and concepts of Chanukah. To be cognizant that the Hellenist knife is still at our throats and that Hellenism endangers the soul and the body. Today, some of the enemy swords come from the camps of paganism and others from the world of secular “humanism”. Yet the most formidable of all, are those who identify as religious Jews even as they attempt to besmirch everything Jewish and denigrate Halacha. All in the name of Halacha of course. As such, the alliance of those who celebrate a virgin birth and those who are scrupulous when it comes to only using virgin olive oil for their candles is perhaps the most obscene of all.
From the coarse, aggressive, street missionary, to the smiling bearded “Harvester,” to the well-dressed CUFI representative, the spiritual assault comes from many fronts, some obvious, some denied and ignored by Jews for a litany of reasons. The physical equivalent would be a war with all the major Arab countries, ISIS, Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah and all the various offshoots, coupled with a nuclear Iran fixing Israel in her crosshairs. Unfortunately, matters of the soul are much less apparent. Or deemed to be less important among small minds who view power, profit, and political pragmatism to be superior to spiritual survival.
In an atmosphere of spiritual depravity and endless assaults on the Jewish soul and body, Matityahu would surely be fuming with righteous zeal were he around today. He would see the need for a revitalized Judean Hammer, because sometimes a war hammer is necessary.
Metaphorically speaking of course.