This is Hanukkah season. In Hebrew schools across the country the Hanukkah story will be told, and the story usually goes like this: The wicked king Antiochus IV Epiphanes attacked the innocent and pious Jews of Judaea, imposing Greek ways, proscribing the observance of Jewish practices and profaning the Temple of Jerusalem. Judah the Maccabee and his sturdy brothers (known collectively as the Hasmoneans) went to war against Hellenism, against the king and against those Jews who supported the king and his policies. They triumphed. In 164 B.C.E. they reconquered Jerusalem, put an end to the religious persecution, purified the Temple and instituted the festival of Hanukkah to commemorate their victory. In this existential struggle between Jews and Greeks, between Judaism and Hellenism, the Jews triumphed. According to this Hebrew school version of the events, which mirrors the popular Jewish understanding, the Hasmoneans saved Judaism from Hellenism.
Recently some critics have accepted this version of the events but have turned the story on its head. Whereas every Hebrew school student knows that King Antiochus was the bad guy, and that the Hasmoneans were the good guys, according to these critics the opposite was the case. Antiochus represents Greek enlightenment, the Hasmoneans Jewish particularism and ritualism. According to Christopher Hitchens, in a much-discussed essay he wrote last year for the online magazine Slate, the Hasmoneans were simply anti-Hellenist religious fanatics. For Hitchens, Hanukkah represents the “victory of bloody-minded faith over enlightenment and reason.” The Hasmoneans waged a “successful… revolt against Hellenism”; Hitchens wishes that they had lost.
Now, let us freely admit that some of what the Hasmoneans did was not pretty; wars and revolutions are usually not pretty. But let us at least get our facts straight. No matter whether we think that the Hasmoneans were the good guys or the bad guys, the fact is that the Hasmoneans were not opponents of Hellenism. The Hasmoneans did not save Judaism from Hellenism so much as they showed the Jews how to live with it.
The Hasmoneans faced two kinds of opponents within Jewish society. First were those who completely supported the Greeks, perhaps even to the extent of not objecting when the Greeks introduced a pagan cult object into the Temple and prohibited the observance of Jewish laws and customs outside the Temple. These Jews, who were in bed with the Greeks both politically and morally, are usually called “Hellenizers” in modern scholarship. At the other end of the spectrum were those Jews who wanted to have nothing to do with either the Hasmoneans or the Greeks, and who ran off into the desert in order to escape the capital city and its sinful ways. These Jews, who were anti-Hasmonean and anti-Greek in equal measure, founded the settlement at Qumran near the shores of the Dead Sea, ultimately giving us the Qumran scrolls. (I am telescoping events slightly, since the Qumran settlement was probably not founded until the 140s B.C.E. or so.)
The Hasmoneans steered a middle course, abjuring the Hellenism of the Hellenizers and the anti-Hellenism of the Qumranites. Their goal was to find a way to live with Hellenism, to combine a secure Jewish identity with Hellenistic culture.
The Hanukkah narrative in the first book of Maccabees, written by a Jewish supporter of the Hasmonean dynasty at the end of the second century B.C.E., illustrates this point well. Perhaps most striking is the institution of the Hanukkah festival itself: “Then Judas and his brothers and all the assembly of Israel determined that every year at that season the days of dedication of the altar should be observed with joy and gladness for eight days, beginning with the twenty-fifth day of the month of Kislev.”
Whence did the Hasmoneans get the idea to institute by popular acclaim a yearly festival celebrating their great victory? Not from the Torah; in the Torah God gives festivals to the people of Israel. The Israelites do not choose festivals for themselves. Nor from the biblical histories (Joshua through Kings), which are full of stories of conquest and victory but which never describe a biblical hero as instituting a festival.
No, the twin ideas that an assembly of the people has the power to institute an annual festival, and the idea that an annual festival is an appropriate way to mark a great victory, are ideas that came to the Hasmoneans from Greek culture. This is how the Greeks celebrated their great victory over the Persians in 479 B.C.E.; they instituted an annual festival at Delphi.
The narrative of First Maccabees has other examples of Hasmonean Hellenism. In 140 B.C.E. the Hasmonean party elected Simon, brother of Judah, as high priest. This, of course, is an un-Jewish idea; the popular election of a high priest is rooted in Hellenism, as is the inscribing of decrees of the people’s assembly on bronze tablets and affixing them to pillars for all to see. The book also contains a dossier of documents in which the Hasmoneans try to establish kinship between the Judaeans and the Spartans. As long as the Temple and its rituals, the Law and its requirements, were not touched, the Hasmoneans were not afraid to enrich Judaism by incorporating Hellenistic ideas and practices.
American Jewish society today has both Hellenizers and anti-Hellenizers. Our Hellenizers are the large numbers of Jews who are not interested in Jewish observances; they have assimilated into the American mainstream, abandoning the hallmarks of Jewish distinctiveness, becoming simply Americans of Jewish background. Our anti-Hellenizers have fled not to the desert but to increasingly insular religious enclaves. They attempt to keep American culture and American mores at bay, contending that the Torah has a monopoly on truth and that Jews have nothing to learn from Western culture.
The Hasmoneans, however, show us a third way: observance of traditional rituals, loyalty to the Torah and Jewish distinctiveness, enriched by the ways of the Greeks, a Judaism made beautiful by the beauty of Hellenism. This is the lesson of Hanukkah.
Shaye J.D. Cohen is the Nathan Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard University. He is the author, most recently, of “Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised?: Gender and Covenant in Judaism” (University of California Press, 2005).
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excellent article dr. cohen. your analogy to today's observers is quite perceptive. and of course, your assessment of the origin of the qumran community is on the money! ;-) thanx for the article!!
excellent article dr. cohen. your analogy to today's observers is quite perceptive. and of course, your assessment of the origin of the qumran community is on the money! ;-) thanx for the article!!
It should only be true that American Jewish life would be "a Judaism made beautiful by the beauty of Hellenism". The intention of Prof Cohen is that Jewish distinctiveness should be influenced ("made beautiful") by the beauty of the American culture. This point of view assumes that one's primary culture and identity is Jewish, and now Americanism will leave its impact on this core Jewishness. Alas, this is not the situation in the American Diaspora. One's primary identity is American, and this has been the reality for a number of generations already. American Jews who participate in Jewish community life (i.e. "not assimilated" by their own self-definition) are generally illiterate in Hebrew, do not know more than just a meagre knowledge of the Jewish text and the history of the Jewish people, couldn't even recite the names of the months of the Jewish calendar, etc. This is not the case for their American culture. An American Jew - no matter what his academic profession might be - knows the cultural wealth of the American world. He's entirely at home in his American identity - and very much less at home in the Jewish world (unless his profession is Jewish studies). One of the illusions of American Jewish life is the statement in this article that a large number of American Jews "have assimilated into the American mainstream..." (as if there are those who have not assimilated into the American mainstream)! Assimilation has occurred already. It is a fact of life - not for "large numbers" - but for the overwhelming majority. Prof Cohen is criticizing the "haredim" (the "anti-Hellenizers" who cut themselves off from the American world), and he is criticizing the "Hellenizers", those who have abandoned the "hallmarks of Jewish distinctiveness". The third way, however, has to be re-invented. An American Jewish educational system has to be created in which a primary Jewish identity is given to the next generation. A primary identity means fluency in Hebrew and the renewal of a Diaspora Jewish creativity in our own language. A primary identity means Jewish peoplehood - i.e. the renewal of the understanding that the Jews are a nation in exile, not merely Americans (or Canadians or Argentinians) who go to synagogue. Then, with this renewed primary identity, we could speak of "making it more beautiful" with the added beauty of American culture.
This middle ground is unsustainable. The assimilated Jews will eventually be gone from the community. The middle gound people are not having a replacement number of offspring. That leaves the unassimilated. Their 'enclaves' are exploding with children. What happens to an 'enclave' who's population almost doubles every decade. It doesn't stay an 'enclave' for long.
Shaye Cohen underestimates the conflict between the Persian Imperial elite in Judea and the wannabe Hasmonean/Herodian Hellenistic elite. I explain this issue in Connecting Hanukkah, Christmas, and `Idu-l-Adha.
The URL is http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/01/connecting-hanukkah-christmas-and-idu-l.html .
I am not sure that the Hasmoneans can serve as a model for American Jewry, but I believe that they do for world Jewry as a whole. In other words, the "third way" that Prof. Cohen looks for can be found in Zionism - the use of a "generic", not specifically Jewish organization structure (the modern nation-state) as a means to preserve Jewish identity even as it allows for change and transformation. The challenge for the American Jewish community, for the last 60+ years, has been to figure out how to incorporate the lessons and successes of Zionism into their mindset while somehow avoiding the Zionist ideological imperative for aliyah.
BTW, I forgot to add - Yehuda's comments on this article are right on the mark (I almost always find myself in agreement with him whenever I see his replies to op-ed articles in the Forward). A stronger emphasis on Jewish cultural literacy, Hebrew fluency, and national (vs. sectarian) identity may receive lip service from the major Jewish organizations, but are rarely translated into programs for meaningful communal change (Birthright Israel and the Ben Gamla charter school in Florida are the only really innovative examples that come to my mind right now).
the jews embraced hellenism. after all what else was there? we live like greeks today
Intresting article but the two proofs brought for the Hasmoneans incorporating Hellinisim are problamatic 1) that they instituted a holiday like the pagans. - Purim is also a holiday that was instituted by the Rabbis. That transpired some 350 years before Hellinism, while the Helens (Greeks) were nothing more than little barbarians. 2)Hasmonean party elected Simon, brother of Judah, as high priest - The Kohen Gadol often times was succeeded by his son as was seen in 1 Samuel 2:23. Mattitiyau the patriarch of the maccabees was Kohen Gadol. If the Kohen Gadol's son is not fit for the job the leader of the generation has the right to chose the most suitable priest for Kohen Gadol To make an inference that there was an anti-Hasmonean faction of comparable size o the Hasmoneans or Hellenizers is as you pointed out merely speculation and not at all supported by any evidence, except circumstantial. Everyone including the Talmud agrees that the later Hasmoneans were plagued due to usurping the kingship as well as for their internal strife. That can be said but to say that they incorporated Hellenism is a bizarre statement and poorly documented. Furthermore you state "They [orthodox]attempt to keep American culture and American mores at bay, contending that the Torah has a monopoly on truth and that Jews have nothing to learn from Western culture." The Sages teach us, If one tells you that their is wisdom amongst the non-Jews you can believe them. If they tell you that there is Torah amongst the non-Jews you can not believe them. Surely e can learn from the non-Jewish world assuming they have something worthwhile to learn. I give you a D-
For those who are interested, in his book Selected Essays, Rabbi Shimon Schwab has an interesting debate between two positions: The Torah Only camp which says that there is only Torah and nothing else and the Torah Im Derech Eretz Camp which polstulates that man can integrate modern society and Torah. What is fascinating is that Rabbi Schwab is the one who takes both sides and brings objections and proofs. At the end he asks so who is right and he answers that both are right but both need to be of pure intention (umilvad sheyichavain leebo lashamayim). I would also call your attention to an essay in Volume 7 of Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch-The value of secular studies. Rabbi Hirsch (in yet another brilliant essay) warns that trying to impose a Torah only approach without helping the child confront and deal with the secular world is similar to keeping a child indoors for 12 years of his life and then watching him catch a cold the moment he walks out the door. The problem is that the child has not developed an immune system.
Is it really possbile that the Hasmonean brothers would have been able to retain an affinity for aspects of Hellenism at one and the same time as launching a suicidal attack on the Greeks with every ounce of their being? Doesn't even begin to make psychological sense.I agree with Daniel that the proofs are spurious. Quite apart from that, anyone who takes classic rabbinical thought as being authoritative would be unable to avoid the extent to which the rabbbis expressed the negativity of Greek thought and culture. They called Hellenism 'darkness' as opposed to the 'light' of Torah. Other opposites are Greek 'tumah' and Jewish 'tahara', Greek 'chillul' and Jewish 'kedushah'. Just look at al hanisim. How exactly do all those integration fans out there manage to synthesise light with darness, tumah with tahara? These are polar opposites which destroy each other.