You left out the part about them wanting to celebrate a second Sukkot because the one they had celebrated in that year was in the mountains, so they celebrated it at the Temple after it was rededicated.  Eight days of Sukkot... Eight days of Hanukkah...

 But I do think you're right in that the true miracle of Hanukkah is people willing to fight and die for a cause, especially when the odds are against them.  How many times have we actually been the likely winner when we fight?  Yet compare that to how often we've been victorious.

Almond, you are wrong. The true meaning of a holiday is contained in how and what is celebrated. Chanukkah is as much a celebration of suicide murdering as Thanksgiving is a celebration of the genocide of the American Indians. Some people might celebrate the genocide of the Indians at their Thanksgiving dinners (ala Robert Jensen) but to most people it is a holiday that honors generosity, gratitude and charity. If you and your wife celebrate Chanukkah by revering the brutality of war and the murder of innocents you are free to do so but it's clear that your wife missed some crucial ideas in her conversion process and that you learned nothing about Judaism when you were raised. Note also that when you are basing conclusions about Judaism and its beliefs you should actually use Jewish sources.

One crucial bit that she (and you) should know is that not everybody's actions in the Bible are considered to be moral. Another bit is that Judaism is a progressive religion and that means that as we move forward in time we learn more and more on how to behave morally. The moral code of the past seems brutal by today's standards. Hopefully it will always be so. The one thing you may have right is that the moral code of Osama and his lackeys is about two millenia behind our own.

To the editors of Jewcy: This ignoramus makes some suggestions that are just disgusting. You should be above publishing them. For example, the allegation that Channuka is a celebration of brutality and murder that is intentionally misrepresented to the world is typical of the drivel you would find in the protocols of the elders of zion. I like Jewcy but if I see more of this crap you'll have lost a devoted reader.

check me

http://jewschool.com/2004/12/08/who-are-todays-maccabees/ 

Yet another non-affiliated individual who likes to look for any given
reason to have nothing to do with observing/celebrating. His arguments
aren't worth the webspace they're posted in. Anyone who has a couple of
brain cells to rub together for warmth knows this isn't what happened.
What does an individual full of absolute hatred who wishes to destroy
the world outside of his own have to do with people defending their
rights??? The Maccabees were on the DEFENSIVE during the battle. Bin
Laden decided to attack and kill thousands of people who never did
anything to him. I would be more than happy to engage the author in a
discussion but know that will never happen.

The people who write self loathing rubbish such as this rarely stand
up for themselves knowing that a simple preschooler clearly has a
better grasp on the reality than they do. As a self described
"assimilated and non-observant Jew" on what basis is your education
that you are able to make these claims? For that matter which observant
Jew crossed you so that you felt the need to try and attack those that
believe? Jews have never believed that it is our right to destroy our
enemies, rather defend our lives and fate. The Maccabees did not seek
out the Greeks they were being killed and their homes, the temple and
everything else in their life was being stripped from them by an
oppressor. They did not go an invade those in other lands nor did they
attempt to rule their enemies.

I hope your wife has better sense than to take your word for these
things and accept your opinions as fact. If she actually wants to learn
about the religion, she should seek out her own information from
reputable sources.

"Jews have never believed that it is our right to destroy our
enemies, rather defend our lives and fate."

 Tell that to the people who lived in Jericho before Joshua showed up.

--Z

Do us all a favor and convert to Christianity since you're already half-way there.  You know nothing about Judaism.  Your wife's conversion is a sham.  The minute you two break-up she'll be back to being a good Jew-hating Christian shiksa.  Judaism doesn't need two anti-semites pretending to be Jewish.  Stop annoying real Jews and celebrate Christmas with your shiksa and now or future Gentile children.

There's a logical hole in your premise.  Either you're Orthodox and interpret the bible literally, and this seems unlikely.  Or you've reached some understanding of yourself as a Jew which isn't wholly dependent on the words of the Bible.  Your comparison to OBL only makes sense if you pretend that the moral norms are constant over time.  Suicide bombing, like polygamy and stoning adulterers, is not a part of modern morality.  I have always heard that, after the Holocaust, the Maccabees and the story of Massada were resurrected because they depicted Jews who fought back.  Can you really begrudge us that?  For me, Chanukah is a holiday about Jewish survival, despite civil war and constant opression.  We are the miraculous oil that lasts (no, not literally).  B'yamim hahem, b'zman hazeh.

I get your point about suicide bombers willing to die for their cause.  OK.

But, um, who is the empire and who is the victim?

To compare Al Qaida and the so-called "insurgents" to the Maccabees, and therefore the Greeks to the US or UN or {fill in your good-guys of choice} is insane.

You pretend to say that the US invaded the Midle East and slaughtered those peaceful Muslims, who were just minding their own business.  That Bush exiled their religious leaders and replaced them with his own hand-picked, bastardized pretenders.  And that those poor, put-upon Muslims dared to fight back because their prophet told them to.

You wanna draw a comparison?  OK, only if ancient Israel was evangelical, had its designs on world domination, developed clearly superior military power, invaded Athens, Cairo, Babylon, Rome, suppressed their people, and tortured to death a thousand innocents for every rebel.

The torture you cite from the Book of Maccabees is indeed gruesome, and is very close to what was taking place in Baghdad before {thank G-d} the regime change.  You libs like to think such 'torture' takes place in Gitmo, where the detainees' rights are protected more than US citizens.

Dream on.

Hag Sameach.

Some interesting comparisons here, but there are a couple of logic flaws.

Firstly, I hate to sound like a post-modern cultural theorist, but you are applying current moral standards to a very different era, when slaughtering one's enemies was quite usual. Parts of the Bible are extremely bloodthirsty, with vast amounts of smiting, slaughtering and exterminating, so there's not much point focusing solely on the Maccabees. (Of course Auschwitz, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Darfur etc show the hypocrisy of our supposed respect for the laws of wars.)

The main difference is, of course, that OBL seeks terror and murder for its own sake. The deaths of thousands of innocent civilians is an end in itself. The Maccabees were fighting for survival.

visit: adamlebor.com

Some interesting comparisons here, but there are a couple of logic flaws.

Firstly, I hate to sound like a post-modern cultural theorist, but you are applying current moral standards to a very different era, when slaughtering one's enemies was quite usual. Parts of the Bible are extremely bloodthirsty, with vast amounts of smiting, slaughtering and exterminating, so there's not much point focusing solely on the Maccabees. (Of course Auschwitz, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Darfur etc show the hypocrisy of our supposed respect for the laws of wars.)

The main difference is, of course, that OBL seeks terror and murder for its own sake. The deaths of thousands of innocent civilians is an end in itself. The Maccabees were fighting for survival.

visit: adamlebor.com

So Osama Bin Laden is a crypto Jew?

Don't bastardize our history like that. How can you call yourself a jew?

This is what Chris Hitchen looks like wearing a yarmulke
http://christopherhitchenswatch.blogspot.com/2007/11/hitch-in-shul.html

your reply was dead on!

Actually, Osama could not appreciate Hanukah, because he could not endorse how we remember and commemorate the events of the Maccabee revolt.  Rather than celebrate martyrdom and war, the Rabbis placed the focus of the holiday on non-violent, spiritual renewal.  The Rabbis were well aware of all the problems the author points out, which is why he decided to exclude these books from the Jewish biblical canon (and why Mel Gibson made noises of making a Maccabee film).

There is insightful revisionism, and then there is the type that simply proves that black is white and gets you run over at the next zebra crossing.  This is the latter. 

Holy F***ing S**t.

Why don't you just sew your foreskin back on?

And just rename your magazine "Goycy" while you're at it. Nothing Jewish about it, as far as I can tell.

"And just rename your magazine 'Goycy' while you're at it."

http://www.goycy.com

They're a sister site of ours

Judging by the contents and attributable tone noted, your negative attitude (re: Christmas shiska and non-jews, ) reeks of racism....shame on you, you are without a doubt an anti-christian , again shame on you.

The truth always is hard to confront, the history is not as glorious as you may wish it were, but rather very bloody and extremely violent.

Goycy! Shame on you for expressing such a racist and derogatory term. Only racist resort to demeaning others, agai, shame on you.

days in College. He has now added Judaism to his bete noirs.

The point about Hannukah is that it celebrates the fight against an Imperial power the  Seleucid Greeks which had been oppressing them.

It was the Seleucids who denied the Jews their right to practice their religion and not the Jews who tried to stop them from practicing theirs.

Hitchens. the former friend of David Irving, is not a trustworthy source on any topic.

Joey seems very young to me.

is our ability to look at ourselves critically and call a gimmel a gimmel. So, it turns out our forefathers were the fundamentalist fanatics of the 300 BCs. Maybe it will help us to stop seeing the world in such a facile way: the lovers of freedom and bringers of democracy who with us or the terrorist evil-doers who are against us. You don't even have to look that far back to remember when Zionists used terror to get the Brits out of Palestine. Sure, the camp survivors were trapped in a hard place between immigration quotas and the squatters who who stole their homes, which was a scandal. But the walled ghettoes of the Gaza and West Bank today are also a scandal. Maybe we don't need to reject the facts as self-hatred or wallow in them, either. Maybe this knowledge can help us drop our moral righteousness as the eternal victim and see ourselves in the more realistic light cast by the menorah. Maybe we can start to move past our collective trauma and apply the empathy our long experience confers. When I celebrate Hannukah I think of the unlikely connection to the past that we maintain through tradition and a long blood line. We are the scrappy children of many progroms and ever more begats. I hope we keep trying to do better. Shalom.

"You don't even have to look that far back to remember when Zionists used terror to get the Brits out of Palestine."

It wasn't "terror" that got the Brits out of "Palestine."

Had the Brits not gone through WW2 they would have annihilated the Jewish terrorists just as they did the Iraqis in the 1920's.

The British were never passive victism and neither are the Arabs.

The Arabs had many a chance to make peace with the Jews but they opted to destroy the Jewish State instead.

Self criticism is one thing, blaming oneself for wrongs commiteed against us is a sign of masochism not self criticism.  

Judeosphere has post a summary of many of the "Jewish conspiracy" stories being bandied about on the web. Here is a sample:

"The Zionist-Conspiracy-O-Matic"

"Here's an experiment: Pick any event in history and type it into Google. Next, type the word "Zionists" and hit the search button.

Yes, you'll find at lease ten web pages that prove the Zionists are behind everything. Now, I know that we're "responsible" for the War on Terror, War in Iraq, and both World Wars...but I'm always surprised to learn that we're also responsible for the destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia, Pokemon, and Hurricane Katrina."

http://judeosphere.blogspot.com/2007/12/zionist-conspiracy-o-matic.html

and here someone's witty take on it:

"Zionist conspiracies at your fingertips"

http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2007/12/08/zionist_conspiracies_at_your_fingertips.php

Almond has it exactly correct.

The Greeks had a hetergenious and cosmopolitan social model in the ciy states (polis). WE conveniently leave out that central temples were civic centers for many religious groups and thet Judiasim itself had a very healthy variety of groupings at the time. What the Macabees hates was not "Greek" imperialism, but the openess and variety of JUSAISM in the region! That this was caused by freedom of religion within the Greek controlled areas. The Macabees hated freedom of relgion. They hated multicultralism and pluralism.

They would hate every Jew alive today and murder us like they murdered their brothers. Why? Because Judaism today is a fusion of ancient Judaism and a powerful Hellenistic influence. We would be thoroughly alien -- and Thoroughly "Hellenized" to the Macabees.

Almond is accused of self hating? No group was more quintisentially self hating than the Maccabees.

Here in the US Judaism and our people flourishes and are safe precisely because the US follows the Greek polis religious pluraity and tolerance!

Abravanel

"The Macabees hated freedom of relgion. They hated multicultralism and pluralism.

 They would hate every Jew alive today and murder us like they murdered their brothers. Why? Because Judaism today is a fusion of ancient Judaism and a powerful Hellenistic influence. We would be thoroughly alien -- and Thoroughly "Hellenized" to the Macabees."

Nonsense, you are projecting today's idea of multiculturalism to an earlier time.

The Seleucids were as narrow minded as you say the Macabees were. They did not represent the Greek Polis.

There is a difference between adopting Greek Hellenistic influences and giving in to the values of an Imperial power power. Multiculturalism if its real works both ways.

Remember also, Abravanel, that   the  Macabees in power did themselves become "Hellenized." The difference is that it happened from within and wasn't imposed from the outside.

There is also the fact that the Greeks influenced the very structure of Jewish institutions at the time.

Even the name Sanhedrin if of Greek origin, as the French Jewish philosopher Levinas noted. Jews then and now did not reject foreign influences. The very idea of fusing Jewish values with those of other cultures goes back to antiquity.

A better model of the struggle within Judaism at the time would be that which took place in Imperial Russian between the "Westernizers" and the "traditional" Russian nationalists.

Comparing the Macabees to Bin Laden is anachronistic,  simplistic and completely off base.

Islamicism is 21st century phenomenon a fusion of values between Islam, Fascism, and Bolshevism and modern technology.  

nice post, but the comment thread is much funnier.

It's as if all my crazy grand uncles came alive to remind me why I hate their Zionist crap and all their stupid provincial philo-semitic 'culture' so much.

Peace, brother. 

"It's as if all my crazy grand uncles came alive to remind me why I hate their Zionist crap and all their stupid provincial philo-semitic 'culture' so much."

 My crazy uncle was an antizionist and your remind me of him.

There are some interesting replies, here, even if I don't agree with them.

 And, btw, crazy anonymous uncle,  Hanukah isn't Zionism. Most zionists I know are secular and don't confuse religion with political culture.

The thesis of the article is born straight out of the  bastard birth of the American Leftist Jew. With total rejection of the "burden" of Torah Judaism, non-acceptance by Christians, hidden Jewish guilt, and searching for a new cause to raise a banner, the Leftist Jew was born in America. With 21st century knowledge of history, science, governments, societies, etc., it is both an incredible lack of thought and , intelligence, as well as a complete lack of understanding Jewish Heritage, to compare the plight of the Macabees and that time in human history to a present day madman responsible for the destruction innocent lives on September 11, 2001.  

"Weirdly, I happened to have the New American Bible at home, a Catholic version of scripture that includes both books."

Further, it is this type of writing that provides fuel to those fanatical opportunists who would rather see all Jews destroyed, then living in peace.  Hitler wanted all Jews dead. Even those who assimilated into German culture and lost a great deal of their Jewish identity. Why, because he knew the Jewish spark, the Jewish soul,  still lied within them. Chanukah is about survival of the Jewish people. We are alive today and should be proud.

I am a lefty Jew, no guilt, no wish to dies out, no wish to assimilate, love Jewish holidays, love Israel, love the Hebrew language.

I also know ignorant nonsense when I read it, and Steve Almonds column was unoriginal nonsense.

Chanukah is a beautiful holiday and neither Hitchens nor Almonds unhistorical hysterical attacks on it will ever change that.

Chag Sameach, y'all! 

If I didn't know what site I was on I'd swear it was a typical anti-semetic propaganda site (including the comments). Comparing the Macabees to Al Qaeda. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

You're assumptions are flawed because they leave out one important one: the Greeks were outlawing Jewish religious practices. A person couldn't practice Judaism without threat of death. What made this unique is that up until this point the world WAS generally accepting of religious pluralities. This was one of, if not THE first religious war in history. If the Macabees had failed there would be NO JUDAISM TODAY, not one of us would be here.

IS THIS REALLY WHY BIN LADEN IS FIGHTING? Is he fighting religious persecution? Quite the opposite, and it is disgusting to equate the two.

Oh, and even though we get a lot of great things from the Greeks, morals and values were not one of them. The Greeks practiced empire-wide infanticide (condoned by Socrates) and generally had no regard for human life. Read WORLD PERFECT to get a sense of what life was like. Give me a break. I am not religious, but why do so many non-religious Jews hate religious ones more than the enemy trying to anhilate us?  Somebod please explain that to me.

The Zionist-Conspiracy-O-Matic is hilarious, which is more than I can say for the sloppy self-hatred in this article.

I have only discovered Jewcy for myself this morning, but already found plenty of drivel like this. Check out "Muslim! Now Available in Insult Form" for a quick example. Typical of Jewish apostates to rush to exonarate all those who hate Jews, while at the same time to sling mud over the most revered Jewish traditions. Seems to be a paarticularly Jewish phenomenon! Read David Mamet's (famous Pulitzer winning writer) new book The Wicked Son, it does a pretty good job at explaining this buffling phenomenon.

that all apostates do this, not just the Jewish ones. But if the Jewish ones are indeed more adamant than the others, then perhaps the most revered Jewish traditions are unusually irritating in some manner. Or something. There must be a rational explanation to the phenomenon, would you agree?

Don't Jews complain more than others about everything?

a revered tradition?

* Maccabees fought a foreign Greece-Assirian- Seleucid occupier of their land in order to bring peace and freedom upon their national homeland   ** AlQaida's Osama Bin Laden is fighting against non-Islamic entities in order to force Islamization on the infidels. The US " Maccabees" defend their entity from an out-side enemy that risk them inside and outside their political-national borders. * Maccabees didn't kill civilians but fought the Greek—Seleucid armies. ** AlQaids's Osama Bin Laden intend to kill civilians in purpose (known Islamic 'quality'). * Maccabees fought guerilla (against armed invader) war only.** AlQaida is fighting guerilla war here and terror "war" there. * Eleazer was not " a Biblical version of the suicide bombers" because there is no any Biblical version of a suicide bomber.  Suicide is forbidden in Judaism. Eleazer didn't intended to be killed in mission but had no choice but to risk himself in order to defeat the "armored vehicle" elephant of the enemy's commander. ** Muslims intending willingly to suicide bomb themselves in order to kill women and kids. The suicide is not necessary to achieve mission but a Muslim religious virtue.  * Maccabees were a national religious underground warriors limited to fight only within their national soil borders.** AlQaida is multi national, global Islamic net to achieve control on the world. * The Jewish mother and her seven sons who refuse Antiochus’s order to eat pork is Not a suicide bombing of the enemy. The situation of the mother and her sons wasn't occurred by their wishful choice. The mother didn't kill their oppressors and dies. The mother tried to keep her belief principals for her, In order to prevent harassment and not to create one. (there are 3 'Yehareg ubal Yaavor' in Judaism, a commandments one must be willing to give up their life for: bloodshed,/massacre, incest and idol worship. Any way this incident is not hailed in the Jewish culture. ** AlQaida's Islam kills and suicide its terrorists in order to spread and enforce their religious values upon the infidels. There is no more extreme difference between the two concepts and entities. I wonder under what political agenda Steve Almond shrinks himself to please?  Hanukkah is Not about a violent insurgency and unchecked aggression that infects those who are convinced that God is on their side but a resistance to the "enlighten" foreign intervention conquer and concept that think it could change the world for "the better" by imposing it s values for force. The Falsetinian Arabs are the  Greek—Seleucid of today.