The Importance of Hanukkah
At sundown on December 14th, the Jewish holiday Hanukkah will begin and last for eight nights. For all its festiveness, it is a solemn holiday in Judaism that celebrates the Maccabean Revolt, and the reconsecration of the Temple at Jerusalem. Orthodox and Catholic Bibles recount the Revolt in the Book of Maccabees.
I quote from the Encyclopia Britannica's three-page article on it:
Throughout the 2nd century BCE (Before the Common Era, or BC), the city-state of Jerusalem-Judah lay between the two great powers of Egypt and Syria. The Ptolemies ruled in Egypt and the Seleucids in Syria. These were residual states that had been left when Alexander the Great's empire had broken up 20 years after his death. Antiochus (Antiochus IV Epiphanes) ruled Syria from 175 to 164 BCE. . . .
He aimed to rid the world of the annoying (and to him peculiar) exclusive "nonconformist" religion of the Jewish people, in order to unify his vast and racially heterogeneous empire. . . .
In Antiochus's day, the Syrians were devotees of the culture of Greece. Antiochus sought to continue what he regarded as the "civilizing" colonization of Alexander. For him, culture meant the pursuit of the restless, inquiring, creative spirit of Greece . . . based on the assumption that "man is the measure of all things".
The Jewish view of life, on the other hand . . . regarded Hellenism (Greek culture) as a form of nature worship . . . as the spiritual continuation of the religion of the Canaanites. . . . The Canaanite gods, the Jews asserted, were merely mythologizing the anger, hate, lust, envy, and greed of unregulated human hearts. . . .
Finally, in 168 BCE, Antiochus invaded Jerusalem and desacralized the Holy of Holies in the Temple.
A number of Jews, under their leader Jason the high priest, took the easy way of conformity. . . . Later in the same year . . . Antiochus went too far. His final act of spite . . . was to rededicate the Temple in Jerusalem to the Olympian god Zeus. . . .
The home of Mattathias, a priest at Modein (Modi'in), quickly became the center of resistance. . . . He and his family took to the hills. Many joined them there, especially the Hasideans, a pious and strict group deeply concerned for the Law of Moses.
In December, 164 BCE, three years after Antiochus had defiled it, Judas (Maccabeus) recaptured Jerusalem. Judas then had blameless priests clean the Holy Place and erect a new altar of unhewn stones. He then reconsecrated the sanctuary.
Let the Maccabean Revolt serve as the starting-point of a new era for Americans. Let it remind the critics that America's own "exclusive, nonconformist religion" served the needs of the nation for over 200 years, and can serve it a lot longer if we let it.
We have a Constitution to limit the actions of citizens and their government. We don't believe that "Man is the measure of all things" because that view justifies the modern-day "mythologizing of anger, hate, lust, envy, and greed of unregulated human hearts".
Our Constitution, and its Judeo-Christian roots, believe that a society needs structure and limits to keep it unique and strong. The Maccabeans proved that we can renew our strength by reclaiming that value system.
Succeeding generations of Jews celebrated the Maccabeans by creating the holiday "Hanukkah", i.e. "Dedication". Likewise Americans must rededicate their value system to supercede the silliness of "Tolerance and Diversity". Bring back America's "exclusive, nonconformist" stance.