Many think of Hanukah as a fight for religious freedom. While religious freedom was at stake, it was part of a broader battle in behalf of the concept of national identity. The Maccabees, local Judeans who spearheaded the revolt against the overpowering northern Syrian Greeks and who inspired the grassroots, did so for the overarching cause of retaining Judea’s identity and Jewish character, which were under assault by those trying to denude Judea of its distinctiveness.

The story begins in the waning years of the Greek empire, 150 years after the death of Alexander the Great. The eastern branch of the Greek empire was headquartered in Antioch, Syria and under the Seleucid monarch, Antiochus. He expected all countries under his jurisdiction to surrender their national sovereignty and independence and its citizens begin seeing themselves as citizens of the world, the Hellenic world. 

At first, there were the usual military attacks by the Seleucids against Judea. But that changed. Instead of undertaking costly military campaigns to accomplish this, Antiochus, circa 175 BC, reasoned it would be easier and less conspicuous to bring Judea under heel by simply de-Judaizing it, by forbidding Israel’s core and distinctive religious practices and educating its children in the mores of the hedonistic gymnasium. It worked.

In the beginning, many Judeans were lulled into feeling that the multicultural push would not endanger their own culture and distinctiveness and were actually open to the benefits of global Hellenism. Soon, however, the Seleucid’s moved beyond multiculturalism to demonizing the Judean and Jewish way of life as anachronistic and an impediment to Hellenistic fraternity and progress. Religious observance -- that part of the religious milieu that was distinctively Jewish -- and religious teachers were outlawed. 

Antiochus went so far as to desecrate the Temple in Jerusalem (known as the Beit Ha’mikdash) by installing images of Zeus on its holy platforms and altars. This was meant to be more than a defilement of Israel’s religious ethos, but a pulverizing of its very national identity as well, since the Temple was the religious and civic symbol of Jewish nationhood. The goal was to sweep away Judea’s sense of nationalism and replace it with trans-nationalism, a loyalty and conformity to global Hellenism.

Moreover, it was a brazen transformative act, one specifically aimed at redefining and changing the concept of holiness so important and central to the residents and ancestors bequeathed the land between the Mediterranean and Jordan. The Syrian-Greek social engineers understood that when you redefine the historic morals and animating principles of a people and country, the nation has been conquered. 

The Maccabee family, headed by Mattityahu and his five sons, rose up and said: “No More!” Through guerilla tactics they defeated the Syrian soldiers stationed within the borders. They began as a small group who immediately attracted hundreds of other patriots. After many skirmishes, they finally reached the Temple in Jerusalem, captured it, cleaned and purified it, and re-lit the Menorah whose oil shouldn’t have lasted longer than its one-day’s supply, but miraculously burnt for eight days.

Lighting the candles of the Menorah commemorates the miracle in the Temple

Photo credit: Gil Dekel

Some of the Maccabees perished in battle. But in the end, the Maccabees achieved a military conquest on the ground, a spiritual victory in the Temple, and an ideological affirmation in the hearts and souls of their countrymen. A dedicated few, as during our Revolutionary War, can pull off miracles.

Why, however, did it take a small band of ancient Minutemen to rise up against the invaders? Where were Judea’s rulers, its powerful elites? Why was the rebellion left to the grassroots? It is because the elites had already been co-opted and had succumbed to the power and glamour of the Seleucids. They had forsaken their own countrymen, had bought into fashionable transnationalism, and were amply rewarded, elevated, and honored by the Syrian-Greek rulers. They were on the side of Seleucid and wanted a neutered and uber-cosmopolitan polity. They were what we call the “Deep State” and globalists, a cadre of government insiders who identify more with the prevailing world ruling class than with their own countrymen.

Historians tell us that Menelaus, a powerful Judean eager to shed Judea of its distinctively Jewish character, strategized the infiltration of Syrian Greeks into Judean institutions.

Worse, a large segment of the priestly cast, the clergy who worked in the Jerusalem Temple, sided with the transnationalists and, reports indicate, it was they who made possible Antiochus’s placement of Zeus in the Temple. Many even betrayed Mattityahu and his five sons.  The Maccabees and their partisans battled not only an enemy from without but enemies from within, including civil servants and old-line families. These were the multi-culturalists, the cultural Marxists of their time.

After the victory, sovereignty was restored; a sense of pride and nationalism obtained, and the Maccabees became the new rulers and the kings of Israel, its royalty. They called themselves the Hashmanoim. For almost a century, the efforts and effects of the original Maccabees prevailed. But after a century, Mattityahu’s great, great descendants were lured away by the same notions and enticements of transnationalism and betrayed to the Romans the very Judea handed to them by their Maccabee forebears. This perfidy ended much worse. The Temple was not simply temporarily defiled as before, but in 70 AD destroyed by the Romans completely.

Rabbi Aryeh Spero is author of Push Back: Reclaiming our American Judeo-Christian Spirit, president of Caucus for America, spokesman for the Conference of Jewish Affairs, and a frequent guest on Fox News.