…the heroes of the Jewish story fought not only against a foreign persecutor. They also fought against fellow Jews who””perhaps more attracted to the cosmopolitan and sophisticated Greek culture than to the ways of their ancestors””cooperated with their rulers….
Over time, the stories of the persecutions that led to this war came to serve as models of Jewish faithfulness under excruciating persecution. In the most memorable instance, seven brothers and their mother all choose, successively, to die at the hands of their torturers rather than to yield to the demand to eat pork as a public disavowal of the God of Israel and his commandments….
“Hanukkah” means “dedication.” Originally, the term referred to the rededication of the purified Temple after the Maccabees’ stunning military victory. But as the story of the martyrs shows, the victory was also associated with the heroic dedication of the Jewish traditionalists of the time to their God and his Torah. If Hanukkah celebrates freedom, it is a freedom to be bound to something higher than freedom itself.
Superb article by a marvelous Jewish biblical scholar, who is a committed, observant Jew (i.e., who keeps the Law). Although Levenson has written many fine books, one of my personal favorites is his classic short theology of the OT (Jewish Bible), called [b]Sinai and Zion[/b], that focuses on the Mosaic and Davidic covenants and the dialectic between them.
It’s worth recalling that Jesus himself is portrayed in the Gospel of John as keeping Hanukkah in Jerusalem (John 10).
David Handy+
And using Hanukkah to point to the promise fulfilled in their midst.