We're now within the eight days of Hanukkah, which commemorates the rededication of the temple after Judas Maccabee defeated Antiochus Epiphane's general Lysias and retook Jerusalem. It is an irony that the only scripture that tells this story is 1 Maccabees, found only in the Catholic canon of the bible.
Early in the morning on the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month, that is, the month of Chislev, in the year one hundred and forty-eight, they arose and offered sacrifice according to the law on the new altar of holocausts that they had made. On the anniversary of the day on which the Gentiles had defiled it, on that very day it was reconsecrated with songs, harps, flutes, and cymbals.
All the people prostrated themselves and adored and praised Heaven, who had given them success. For eight days they celebrated the dedication of the altar and joyfully offered holocausts and sacrifices of deliverance and praise. They ornamented the facade of the temple with gold crowns and shields; they repaired the gates and the priests' chambers and furnished them with doors. (1 Maccabees 5:52-57)
Antiochus embodied the cynical religion of the politician: faith, not as an end and a good in and of itself, but as a political tool. He felt that by homogenizing all religious belief, he could gain control of all the people. For if you can get the gods to agree with you, surely you can get your subjects to.
What the Jewish people accomplished, in staring down the Hellenic impulse to make everyone believe the same thing, is a thing they accomplished for everyone. For the first time in history perhaps, a people declared that their right to remain who they were, the right to be culturally distinct, was worth fighting for. In this battle, self-preservation became more than bodily survival; it became a people's right to retain unique characteristics.
It is not just today's Jews who owe those long-ago rebels a great debt. All of us do.
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