intended to increase the knowledge, interest, and anticipation of the reader, thereby hastening the realization of our hopes and prayers for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Beit HaMikdash.

Thoughts on the Chashmona'im
Most people have a certain knowledge of the "Chanukah story". The "wicked Greek kingdom" banned the observance of Mitzvot (Shabbat, Mila, Limud Torah, etc.) upon pain of death and introduced Avoda Zara into the Beit HaMikdash. Inspired by the venerable Matityahu and emboldened by the military genius of his illustrious son Yehuda the Maccabee, Am Yisrael took up arms and G-d "delivered the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the impure into the hands of the pure and the wicked into the hands of the righteous". Yehuda and his army, "came to the Holy of Holies, cleansed the Temple and kindled lights in the courtyards of the Sanctuary." Once again Am Yisrael could study Torah and observe Mitzvot without fear!

However, Yehuda's victory was not the end; it was only the beginning.
With the sudden collapse of the Babylonian Empire which had destroyed Bayit Rishon and Jerusalem and exiled its people (538 BCE), and the rapid rise of the new world power Persia, the Middle East underwent a sea change. The Judean exiles, with their undamp- ened longing for the restoration of the Beit HaMikdash were psychologically ready when Cyrus, King of Persia, authorized the rebuild- ing of the Mikdash and encouraged the exiles to return home. But restored, Lilliputian, landlocked Judea was surrounded by powerful enemies: the Samaritans to the north; the Edomites to the south; the Ammonites to the east and to the west were the old Philistine coastal cities, soon to be Hellenized. During the period of Persian rule, Judea extended roughly from Beit-Horon and Beit-El in the north, to Beit-Zur in the south, and from (but not including) Gezer to Emmaus to Modi'in in the west to the Jordan River, the area adjacent to Jericho and the Dead Sea in the west. Altogether the total area was less than 2800 sq.km.

Though the seed of national revival had been successfully replanted and the Mikdash soon rebuilt, the miniscule revived province of Judea remained a speck in the vast Persian Empire. The small community grew slowly, and the Jews began to filter into the areas of Eretz Yisrael contiguous to Judea. The diminutive borders of Judea had not appreciably changed when, 150 years later, Alexander the Great appeared in Eretz Yisrael with his armored phalanxes nor were they altered during the endless Diadochian wars which followed his death. While after his victorious campaigns, Yehuda HaMaccabee succeeded in driving the foreigners out of Jerusalem (except for the Akra, a fort in the middle of the city) and the Judean hill- country, he was unable to pierce the iron ring of enemies choking the little country.

However one of Yehuda's brothers, Jonathan, later succeeded in annexing Ekron, the first Maccabean conquest in the Shefeila and he also acquired three Samaritan districts. Another brother, Simon, seized Beit Zur the key fortress in the south, Gezer and most important, the port of Jaffa. Judea would no longer be landlocked and would enjoy all the commercial advantages to having "an outlet to the islands of the sea". However, it was the three much maligned, later Maccabeans, Yochanan Hyrcanus, Yehuda Aristobulus and Alexander Yannai who transformed "Palestine" into Eretz Yisrael. As the Jewish historian Joseph Klausner put it, "But for these victories, a Jewish Eretz Yisrael could never have come into being: the Jewish state must have remained a tiny district called "Judea" lost within the greater expanse of Syria… It was through these Maccabeans alone that… "Philistia" became the Land of Israel." As a result of the military prowess and political savvy of these leaders, the Jewish nation was able to break out of the confining Judean hills and spread throughout the entire country. Their ideology was that of their dauntless predecessor Shimon HaMaccabee.

When ordered to "return" newly restored Jaffa and Ekron to the Seleucids, Shimon did not give speeches about "security needs". His proud reply was, "We have not taken foreign soil, but only the inheritance of our fathers, which fell into the hands of our foes unjustly, and now the land has returned to its first owners" (I Mac. 15:33,34). Klausner con- tinues, "But for the heroism of the Maccabees, the heathen must, finally, have swallowed up the Jews."

The Chashmona'im have never been too popular among scholars and historians. These professors' cultural and theological biases are often all too obvious. The horrendous crimes committed by their favorites such as Alexander the Great (e.g. the wanton destruc- tion of major cities like Tyre, Gaza, Persepolis and the selling of the few pitiful survivors into slavery, etc.) or the Romans (the destruction of Carthage, Jerusalem, the crucifixion of thousands of prisoners on a regular basis, etc.) somehow fade away when compared to the "wars of fire and sword" waged by the Maccabees. E.R. Bevan, in his historical study "Jerusalem Under the High Priests", seems to be disappointed (He almost sheds tears!) that the Jews would stoop so low as to fight for their lives and actively defend what was most holy to them against murderous attack. He pontificates, "It appears to me a question whether it was not at great spiritual cost that the Jewish people allowed itself to be launched by the sons of Hasmon upon a career of carnal strife.

For the Jewish community could not be amenable to the same laws as ordinary nations…" (p.98). According to Bevan, we are neither a people nor a nation; we are merely a "community". (Elsewhere he calls us a "church".) He also describes the Maccabean wars. "Under the blasts of the Jewish conquests, civilization in Palestine withered away. Where there had been prosperous cities were heaps of ruins, fields went back to brushwood, and roaming bands of marauders had free course in the land…" (p.128). In the "The Harvest of Hellenism", one of the real classics in the field, F.E. Peters sees the Chashmona'im's heroic struggle to maintain the integrity of Judaism in the face of murderous Hellenist assaults as proof that "the Maccabees were partisans who thrived on factionalism; every Seleucid attempt at the reconciliation of parties was thwarted by the Maccabees' unwillingness to compromise on the religious question (p. 288). Paul Johnson, a well-known contemporary scholar, wrote a fascinating best seller entitled, "A History of the Jews". In many respects this book is actually "pro-Jewish", but even Johnson could not restrain himself when he "confronted" the Maccabean era. "The Hasmoneans spoke for a deeply reactionary spirit within Judaism. Their strength lay in atavism and superstition, drawn from the remote Israelite past of taboo and brutal physical intervention of the deity... Against this background of intellectual terror by the religious mob, the secular spirit and the intellectual freedom which had flourished… were banished from Jewish centers of learning" (pg. 105).

This kind of grandiloquence from such erudite scholars, who simply don't "get it", should only make us appreciate and cherish all the more the familiar words of thanksgiving. "These lights we kindle 'upon' the miracles and wonders, the salvations and the battles which You performed for our forefathers in those days in this time…"
acatriel@netvision.net.il, (02) 652-7531

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