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 Much Maligned Later Chashmona'im
I wish to dedicate this Yibaneh Hamikdash column to Rav Ya'akov Epstein z"l whose 34th Yahrzeit falls this month. Rav Epstein was the Mora D'asra of Cong. Beth Israel of Syracuse, NY during my adolescent years in the early 60s. Guide and mentor to an innovative, award-winning but obstreperous NCSY chapter, he implanted a love of Torah and Eretz Yisrael in our hearts. YEHI ZICHRO BARUCH

We all recall the "Chanuka 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 HaMakabi, 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 sterling victory was not the end; it was only the beginning. By no means did Yehuda HaMakabi's lighting the Menora in the re-sanctified Beit Hamikdash, as important as it was, conclude the "Chanukah story". On the contrary! We are still fighting the exact same battle for Torah and Eretz Yisrael that our intrepid and heroic ancestors did 2200 years before we were born!
With the sudden collapse of the Babylonian Empire which had destroyed Bayit Rishon and the rapid rise of the new world power Persia, the Middle East underwent a sea change. The Judean exiles, with their undampened longing for the restoration of the Beit Hamikdash were psychologically ready when Cyrus, King of Persia, authorized the rebuilding of the Mikdash and encouraged the exiles to return home. But restored, lilliputian, landlocked Yehuda was surrounded by powerful enemies: the Samaritans to the north; the Edomites to the south; the Ammonites to the east, and the Philistine cities on the coast. During the period of Persian rule, Yehuda extended from Beit-Horon and Beit-El in the north, Beit-Zur in the south, from (but not including) Gezer to Emmaus to Modi'in in the west, and the Jordan River and the area adjacent to Jericho and the Yam Hamelach in the east. As the community grew, Am Yisrael tenaciously began to restore the Jewish presence in areas of Eretz Yisrael contiguous to Yehuda. Nevertheless, 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 appreciably altered during the endless Diadochian wars which followed his death. While after his victorious campaigns, Yehuda HaMakabi succeeded in driving the foreigners out of Jerusalem (except for the Akra) and Harei Yehuda, he was unable to pierce the iron ring of enemies choking the small state. However one of Yehuda's brothers, Jonathan, succeeded in acquiring three Samaritan districts and in annexing Ekron, the first Maccabean conquest in the Shefeila.

Another brother, Simon, seized Beit Zur the key fortress in the south, Gezer and most important, the port of Jaffa. Yehuda would no longer be landlocked and would enjoy the commercial advantages to having "an outlet to the islands of the sea". However, it was the much-maligned three later Chasmona'im, Yochanan Hyrcanus, Yehuda Aristobulus and Alexander Yannai who, for all their faults, transformed "Palestine" into Eretz Yisrael. The Jewish historian Joseph Klausner wrote, "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 their military prowess and political savvy, the renascent Jewish nation surged out of the Harei Yehuda redoubt and spread throughout the entire country. Their ideology was encapsulated in the words of their dauntless predecessor Simon HaMakabi. Ordered to "return" newly liberated Jaffa and Ekron, Simon did not prattle about "security needs" at stage- managed press confrences in front of bevies of sycophants. His manly retort was, "We have not taken foreign soil, but only the inheritance of our fathers, which fell into the hands of our foes unjustly, now the land has returned to its first owners" (I Mac. 15:33,34). Klausner noted, "But for the heroism of the Maccabees, the heathen must, finally, have swallowed up the Jews."

The Chashmona'im have never been particularly popular among historians. The cultural and theological prejudices of these erudite gentlemen are often all too obvious. The horrendous crimes committed by their favorites such as Alexander the Great who wantonly sacked major cities like Tyre, Gaza, Persepolis and sold the few pitiful survivors into slavery, or the Romans who destroyed Carthage and Jerusalem and who delighted in crucifying thousands, somehow pale into insignificance 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, is deeply disappointed, even saddened, that the Jews would stoop so low as to fight for their lives and actively defend what was most holy to them against savage attack. He laments, "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). "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 Harvest of Hellenism, one of the real classics in the field, F.E. Peters sees the Chashmona'im's heroic struggle 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. "Pro-Jewish" in many respects, 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 celebrated 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…"

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