{"id":617,"date":"2010-12-07T13:52:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-07T13:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2010\/12\/chanukah-the-sequel-or-how-the-maccabees-mucked-things-up.html"},"modified":"2010-12-07T13:52:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-07T13:52:00","slug":"chanukah-the-sequel-or-how-the-maccabees-mucked-things-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2010\/12\/chanukah-the-sequel-or-how-the-maccabees-mucked-things-up.html","title":{"rendered":"Chanukah: The Sequel, Or, How The Maccabees Mucked Things Up"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Well people are going to start thinking I\u2019m some kind of Chanukah scrooge, but one of the reasons I\u2019m a Secular Humanistic Jew is my love of history.\u00a0 I\u2019m simply more interested in getting as close to the true stories behind the legends than I am in going along with the fictions.<\/p>\n

I was getting ready to write about what happened after the Hasmonean \/ Maccabean war when I saw J.J. Goldberg\u2019s column in the Forward<\/a>.\u00a0 He did it for me:<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t talk much about what happened after the lamp was lit, though. In fact, the rededication of the Temple did not end the war. Fighting continued for another two decades, claiming the lives of one Maccabee brother after another. The last surviving brother, Simon, was finally acclaimed prince of an independent Jewish state in 141 B.C.E. Thus began the century-long reign of the Hasmonean dynasty of Simon and his descendants. It was a century riddled with enough assassinations and palace intrigue to put the Medicis to shame, along with endless foreign conquest and repeated civil wars.<\/p>\n

Simon himself was murdered in 135 B.C.E., along with two of his sons, by his son-in-law. Among his descendants and heirs, one murdered his own mother and four of his brothers; one succeeded his brother and then murdered the brother\u2019s entire family, and two apparently drank and debauched themselves to death. One of them held a banquet for 800 leading rabbis and then crucified them before slaughtering their horrified wives and children [more accurately, the victims were Pharisees who opposed the Hasmoneans taking up both the throne and High Priesthood and siding with the Sadducees; we have multiple sources attesting to this \u2013 JF<\/i>].<\/p>\n

Three Hasmonean kings waged long, bloody wars of conquest and forcibly circumcised entire conquered populations (the males, that is). Two brothers fielded armies against each other to claim the crown, and then invited the Roman general Pompey to come and settle their dispute. Pompey agreed and proceeded to occupy the country in 63 B.C.E., ending Jewish sovereignty just 102 years after Judah\u2019s Temple victory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s not like I don\u2019t celebrate the holiday\u2026and I\u2019ve already explained why I do.\u00a0 I just think it\u2019s important to remember that the tales we tell about it are a vast oversimplification.\u00a0 I also don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything wrong with using this time of year to reflect on how our second shot at Jewish sovereignty went so terribly wrong.\u00a0 Such reflection certainly couldn\u2019t hurt as we navigate our third such attempt at Jewish autonomy, the modern State of Israel.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well people are going to start thinking I\u2019m some kind of Chanukah scrooge, but one of the reasons I\u2019m a Secular Humanistic Jew is my love of history.\u00a0 I\u2019m simply more interested in getting as close to the true stories behind the legends than I am in going along with the fictions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,22,23],"class_list":["post-617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogentries","tag-chanukah","tag-jewish-history","tag-jewish-holidays"],"yoast_head":"\nChanukah: The Sequel, Or, How The Maccabees Mucked Things Up<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Well people are going to start thinking I\u2019m some kind of Chanukah scrooge, but one of the reasons I\u2019m a Secular Humanistic Jew is my love of history.\u00a0 I\u2019m\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2010\/12\/chanukah-the-sequel-or-how-the-maccabees-mucked-things-up.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chanukah: The Sequel, Or, How The Maccabees Mucked Things Up\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Well people are going to start thinking I\u2019m some kind of Chanukah scrooge, but one of the reasons I\u2019m a Secular Humanistic Jew is my love of history.\u00a0 I\u2019m\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2010\/12\/chanukah-the-sequel-or-how-the-maccabees-mucked-things-up.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Atheist Rabbi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-12-07T13:52:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeffrey L. 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