SHEYIBANEH BEIT HAMIKDASH...
A series of articles on Beit HaMikdash-related topics by Catriel Sugarman 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.

The "Silly Season"!
The silly season! A hackneyed expression perhaps, but IMHO, eminently appropriate for this time of year, when the mass media, written and electronic, simply overwhelm us with the most object nonsense about Chanuka. Celebrated professors, pundits whose knowledge of history and of Yahadut is reputed to be "encyclopedic", assorted "opinion molders", miscellaneous "intellectualim" of various stripes, "infallible" columnists and lubricious politicians literally vie with each other in their attempts to enlighten us as to what the true message of the Feast of Lights is. It seems - so we are told - that, despite appearances to the contrary, the Maccabee's triumph was actually a victory for pluralism and religious tolerance. The lighting of the Menora is in reality a sign of mutual respect and peaceful coexistence between neighboring peoples! Sanitized and sterilized, Chanuka is now an enlightened holiday and people who belong to the Tzibur Hana'or - the "enlightened community" - can light Chanuka candles with a clear conscience. I recently had the dubious privilege of hearing a saccharine-sweet children's program on the radio all about Chanuka. It seemed that in the days of the "Maccabim", Yeladim VeYeladot - the boys and girls of Israel - were very attached to the "Tekasim Hayafim" - pretty ceremonies! However, the sugary announcer did not explain exactly what these pretty ceremonies were. She did not tell her little listeners that the Maccabees fought for the observance of Shabbat, Limud HaTorah and Torah observance, Mila, Kashrut, the suppression of Avoda Zara, the integrity of the Avoda in the Beit Hamikdash and the liberation of Eretz Yisrael. The stirring message of "Mi LaShem Eilai!" was totally absent. From the tone of her mellifluous words, I got the impression that the Maccabees fought and died so that their juvenile descendants could put flowers in their hair, dance around the maypole, and eat jelly-filled Sufganiyot. The fact is that the brutal truth is very different. Against great odds, the Maccabees fought a deadly serious war for national and spiritual survival on all fronts. Though sadly, we frequently try to delude ourselves, the same war continues today, unabated.

Unlike previous conquerors, the Greeks encouraged additions to their ranks by the process of cultural assimilation; there were no racial or national barriers. The Greeks, threw open the doors of their new bouncy cosmopolitan civilization to all. The Greeks were the world's best architects, artists and sculptors; they wrote magnificent plays and composed melodious music. Their philosophy, science, mathematics, rhetoric were far more advanced than that of the torpid drowsy civilizations of the East. The Greeks lived a more refined life and enjoyed a higher standard of living than their oriental subjects. The gleaming new marble Greek cities planted in the East by Alexander and his successors - Ptolemaic, Seleucid or Roman - radiated Greek mores, culture, and philosophy throughout the "known world". The brilliance of the all-encompassing dazzling Greek civilization had another effect. By luring away the literati - the educated classes - from their ancient moorings, the local cultures began to wither away. Deprived of their leadership, the local cultures stagnated and finally ceased to exist! In Babylon, under the corrosive influence of the seductive Hellenic civilization, the ancient Babylonian civilization atrophied and entered a long twilight that ended in extinction. Generation after generation, the number of Babylonian priests who were able to read and write the sacred cuneiform script and perform the hallowed rites in the venerable Babylonian temples continually decreased; the latest extant cuneiform tablet was written in 76CE. High priests from all over the oikoumene hastened to "modernize" and "update" their temple rites to assuage Greek taste. Even the primordial Egyptian cults were largely Hellenized; a bastardized syncretism - theocrasia - was the inevitable result.

II Mac. 4:12 gives an excellent description of how this insidious process in Am Yisrael began. Young Kohanim, "despising the Temple, and neglecting the sacrifices, hastened to… the place of exercise… not setting by the honors of their fathers, but liking the glory of the Grecians best of all." Josephus notes how the aristocratic Tobiads and their "enlightened" friends "retired to King Antiochus (IV) and informed him that they were desirous to leave the laws of their country (i.e. the Torah), and the Jewish way of living… and to follow… the Grecian way of living." Soon in certain circles, Yerushalyim Ir Hakodesh and the Mikdash were starting to look dingy indeed, positively antediluvian. The steady "brain drain" of the "best and the brightest" sustained by local cultures throughout the oikoumene over generations and centuries, eventually caused them to falter, atrophy and die.

Noting this worldwide phenomenon, Josephus shrewdly comments, "Of the nations, some still preserve the names given to them by their founders, some have changed them, while yet others have modified them to make them more intelligible to their neighbors. It is the Greeks who are responsible for this change of nomenclature; for when after ages, they rose to power, they appropriated even the glories of the past, embellishing with names which they (the Greeks) could understand and imposing on them forms of government (and religion), as though they were descended from themselves'" (Antiquities I,5,5). Professor Fergus Millar, comments that by Roman times (only two centuries later, CS), "We might be tempted to suppose that a 'Syrian' identity will best have been preserved in the context of 'native' temples and cults, perhaps attended by a traditional or hereditary priesthood. But no dynasties of 'Syrian' priests are traceable at all; and in the most remote of rural or mountain-top locations, the temples that we can find, are built in the Graeco- Roman style and marked with Greek inscriptions (The Roman Near East pg.505). This would have been the fate of the Beit Hamikdash had the Chashmona'im not opposed the iron phalanxes of Antiochus IV. The brief period of independence of the war-prone Maccabean state, despite all its religious, social unrest and corruption, gave Yahadut the respite it needed for internal consolidation. Even when Eretz Yisrael eventually fell into the hands of the pro-Hellenic Romans, Yahadut was by then strong enough to maintain itself and flourish despite persecution, horrible defeats and even the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash. Yahadut had a major advantage over other local cultures. In contradistinction to the hide-bound sacerdotal civilizations of Egypt, Babylonia (and our own Sadducees who restricted religious learning only to members of the priesthood), the far-sighted Sages (a.k.a. the "Pharisees" or Chazal) established institutions of learning and urged all Jews "to occupy themselves with words of Torah." Under the patient tutelage of Chazal, the written Torah and its Oral Tradition (denied by the Sadducees), became the heritage of all Am Yisrael and not just the property of a small coterie of Mikdash-based Kohanim. Professor Millar concludes, "The only priesthood known from the Near East under Roman rule which represented both an actual and a conscious inheritance from a distant, pre-Hellenist past, was the Jewish High Priesthood in Jerusalem…" (ibid.) That Yahadut exists today is the legacy of the Chashmona'im. <to be continued>

Catriel's book in progress: The Temple of Jerusalem, A Pilgrim’s Perspective; A Guided Tour through the Temple and the Divine Service