A Miracle called "The Jewish People"

 

“Every day, many a miracle happens to the sons of Israel. Were it not for G-d’s miracles, we should -Heaven forbid! – have perished long ago” – Yonatan Eibschutz

“There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein

Our long and eventful Jewish history is without doubt a testimonial to the first quote. Channukah, but one example, is always reminiscent of G-d’s marvels, past and present. Our entire Jewish existence, I believe, is a unique phenomenon. Each Jew, irrelevant of whether they regard themselves as such or not, is a miracle.

Some Jews, unfortunately, fail to see their lives as such. They are the ones Einstein is referring to in the former part of his quote. Others, like myself, live our lives as Jews “as though everything is a miracle,” as though each and every one of us is a wonder on their own.

Before anyone jumps at me and accuses me of arrogance or practicing some form of  “Jewish elitism,” let me explain.

As many of my readers know, both my parents were Shoah survivors. To have come out of the abyss, from the netherworld, to have survived its infernal fires, to have been reborn, gather the shambles of one’s life and build a bigger better temple, raise a family and rebuild trust in a vile world is miraculous. That, coupled with resuming to live one’s life as though “everything is a miracle,” eventually turns one into a miracle.

The fabric of our Jewish history is woven with many such astounding stories. “Miracle” is our Jewish middle name.

Much to my dismay, though, some fellow Jews continue to regard our existence as the first part of Einstein’s words suggest. “We were always meant to be a small nation,” told me a Jewish acquaintance once when I bemoaned that we are losing too many Jews to assimilation. According to her, there is nothing miraculous about our two thousand years of enduring, persecution, pogroms, discrimination and forced conversion. These were, if I follow her logic, merely some milestones to ensure that we fulfilled our destiny to remain a small nation. What a slap in the face of our Jewish heritage such a view is. In her perspective, so it seems, we are just like everyone else, just a nation among the nations with no unusual history, no unique set of beliefs and no Torah. She is, of course, entitled to hold that belief.

I, however, refuse to prescribe to that kind of a notion. I believe in miracles.

I consider my parents’ survival and the survival of many of our Jewish brothers and sisters through hard and dangerous times, a miracle. Moreover, to have been born to a miracle, by default, makes one a miracle. I am a daughter of two miracles. Hence, my birth, my gift of Life is, itself, a miracle.

Furthermore, I hold the view that a miracle should never be wasted. To preserve one’s life as a miracle, one needs to recreate miracles, spend their time on this earth, strive relentlessly and act constantly in a way that would keep the miracle going.

In the words of our wise Talmud, “Hope for a miracle but don’t depend on one.” (Megillah 7b)

In other words, miracles do not just happen. One should never depend on them.

In my words, one should keep the faith, never give up and create a fertile ground for miracles to transpire. That, too, as our few millennia old Jewish history, has proven, is attainable .

May this Channukah season be full of miracles and every blessing to all

The real victory Jews celebrate on Channukah

It has always seemed to me that Chanuka does not receive the appreciation which it deserves. Dreidles, jelly donuts, jokes about calories, perhaps because we are dealing with one of the later holy days of the modern era.

But Chanukah is the genuine independence day. On Chanukah, the Jewish People was saved not from physical annihilation but from slow extinction and disappearance into the creases of history, as it happened to many other nations.

The most dangerous enemy on Chanukah were not the Greeks. With them history would have got along: they come, flex a muscle, gradually slide into fadeout and disappear like the rest of them. The big and serious problem was posed from the enemy within, the . Militarily, they were insignificant. They were merely the spoiled and sly protégés, but a shared diabolical interest was forged between them and the Seleucids regime.

The Hellenizers, the elite of they, not only wanted to adopt the Hellenistic lifestyle and in many cases 

also the pagan religious customs of the Greeks, but also wished to turn it into the prevalent norm.  The Greeks, of course, were eager to assist their allies to turn Judea into another Hellenistic entity among many. They issued forced conversion edicts, forbade circumcision and Shabbat observance, the heart of the Jewish faith. Had the revolt not erupted and the Hellenizers been successful in their plan, there would be no more Jewish People. It would have disappeared within no more than two or three generations.

Many a times, the question of what happened to the Romans arises, how could there remain not a 

single Roman out of such a powerful empire? The answer is that they did not disappear, they lost their identity in a long process which started before the physical liquidation of the capital of the Western Empire in 476 CE. Even this was, incidentally, carried out by allegedly "Roman" soldiers, that is, a barbaric army which was enlisted for money or lands. The agreement was not honoured, they burned the club and a minute later, there was not one Roman left, at least not on the Western side since no one of the Empire's residents cared whether they are called Romans of Hotentotes. They were a rabble, a mob of nations, tribes, languages and religions. One just changes the name of the sponsor printed on the shirt and moves forward.

Throughout history, even during genocides, the victim was never eradicated entirely. Nations disappeared because they assimilated among other populations and after a few generations there was no trace of them, they had no unique traits to distinguish them from others. That is precisely what the revolt of the Maccabees stopped and prevented.

The war had three stages:  the first, the rebellion was the most important one and the one we celebrate. During it, the Temple was rededicated. It ended with the defeat of Nikanor – religious autonomy was reinstated, the edicts cancelled and the goal achieved.

The second stage started when Judah, the Maccabee dismissed the corrupt high priest Alcimus who summoned his Seleucid patrons who sent an army of 20,000 soldiers headed by the warlord Bacchides against Juda's 800 men.  Judah was killed, the Greeks took partial control over the land. However, Judah's brothers restored the army on the eastern front of the Jordan river until a few years later, Bacchides was defeated by Yonatan and Shimon and left the land not before he unleashed his anger and carried out a small massacre over the Hellenizers as he saw them as responsible for his defeat. Bacchides, it is noteworthy to mention was pressured to fight Yonatan and Shimon by the hellenizers who wanted to do away with the rebels which, as we saw, was a bad idea. Hence Bacchides’s decision to massacre some of them. The Greeks maintained control over a few fortified cities, among them Jerusalem, even though Yonatan who situated himself in the nearby, Michma

The last stage was the most chaotic of them all since upon the onset of the internal struggles in the Seleucid kingdom, each side tried to pull the Hasmoneans to his side and ingratiated them with appointments, gifts and titles. Finally, Trifonas the traitor, the last Seleucid ruler who still tried to cling on to Judea, pretended to be a friend in order to slyly capture Yonatan and demand ransom money in exchange for him. Shimon paid, but Trifonas murdered Yonatan and tried to invade the country. Shimon's army came out against him and the Seleucid turned around and escaped.

This incident signifies the onset of the political independence of Judea. Two years later, Dimitris the II, who returned to his country, officially recognized the independence of the Jewish state under the ruling of Shimon. These two events are not mentioned in our history and even their precise date is not known as they are considered less significant

There are those who claim that the Hasmonean kings were “hellenizers” themselves, and as proof 

they cite the fact that they adopted a Greek way of life as well as their names – Alexander, Horkanus, Aristobelus etc. This is inaccurate. The difference between calling oneself Alexander and Hellenizers, in the sense of pre-revolt, is the same as between eating MacDonald’s and becoming a Christian.

Coins that are minted in our times carry an image of rays of plentitude, the same as those minted by Yochanan Horkanus. It is a pagan symbol which is more pagan than pagan. It originates from the 

story of the goat that nursed Zeus, the godhead in the Greek mythology. So what?

Neither Horkanus nor us are idol worshippers, but there are always natural influences on our lives, 

language and terminology from our surroundings – this is insignificant. The main problem on the eve of the rebellion was the attempt to outroot that Jewish faith in the wider sense, the popular kind, not  whether anyone wore a fashionable Grfeek dress or listened to Aris San.On Channukah we celebrate 

the main victory, the removal of the threat of cultural annihilation. 

Political Independence  was but a by-product much later because then, as today, the losers did not sit idly, but continued to apply pressure  and hoped to win "this time around," Each such effort merely created a chasin of events which brought about their final and absolute defeat and strengthened the Jewish state.