David Brooks, in his Op-Ed piece in the NY Times, was upset to learn that Chanukah isn't about Religious Tolerance or whatever he grew up to believe, but about civil war and the survival of Judaism.
He
of course paints the heroes of the Chanukah story, the Maccabees, as a
bunch of religious fanatics/Talibanist fighting the moderate Greeks who
were looking to "synthesize" the Greek and Jewish cultures together.
Anyone with an internet connection can read the original texts and see what was really happening.
According to Josephus[34]:
"...he [the Greek King Antiouchus] compelled the Jews to dissolve the laws of their country, and to keep their infants uncircumcised, and to sacrifice swine's flesh upon the altar; against which they all opposed themselves, and the most approved among them were put to death. Bacchides [the Greek appointed General] also, who was sent to keep the fortresses, having these wicked commands, joined to his own natural barbarity, indulged all sorts of the extremest wickedness, and tormented the worthiest of the inhabitants, man by man, and threatened their city every day with open destruction, till at length he provoked the poor sufferers by the extremity of his wicked doings to avenge themselves."By denying the Jews their right to worship in their own faith, forcing them to abandon circumcision, defile the Temple with swine and appointing a barbaric general, the Greeks attempted to erase Judaism and the belief of monotheism.
Maybe that's why George Washington, upon learning about Chanuka from a Jewish soldier at Valley Forge said, "Perhaps we are not as lost as our enemies would have us believe. I rejoice in the Macabees' success, though it is long past...It pleases me to think that miracles still happen."
Some background:
The story of Chanuka begins during...
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1 comment:
Brooks is an ignorant, self-satisfied, smug twit.
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