Thread by @GREENESJ333

@rlefraim wrote, "HANUKAH AND THE JEWISH NATION

And the need to Define, Understand, and Cleanse

I’m not going to rewrite the story of Hanukah. You can find that everywhere stories of differing historical depth and detail.
1) #Hanukkah #HappyHanukkah
#hanukkah2019

The Jews who objected 2 the aggressiveness of the Greek-Syrian regime in its attempts to destroy Judaism & objected to the tactics of those upper-class Jews who collaborated a/the regime against the culture & beliefs of their own people rose up & fought 4 what they believed & won

Their victory inspires Jewish youth today, but for most of the 2000 years of exile, this was not always the case. The Book of Maccabees was excluded from the Tanakh by our Sages lest it inflames Jewish youth & endangers their Jewish communities....3) #Maccabbees

after those instances when the story and the promise of return to Eretz Yisrael spawned pogroms in Egypt and Turkey.

But, in any case, today, the story is one of resistance to tyranny, religious freedom, and miracles, and yet, their victory was not complete. 4) #Israel

While they defeated the enemy. The enemy did not completely lose -- as Hellenism had already seeped into Jewish culture, creating a problem that has been there ever since.

Our Sages were very concerned about the influence of Hellenism on Judaism and the Jewish people.
5)

Throughout the years, around the Holiday of Chanukah, Jewish kids have been told the story of the conflict between Hellenism & Judaism in very basic terms. The Greeks’ culture was all about the body and its beauty and sports and they worshipped pagan gods... 6)

in contrast to the Jewish concern with learning and morality and worship of the one Hashem.

The problem is that this comparison is too basic, too limited, to provide any real understanding of the incompatibility, the enormous gulf, between the two cultures...7)

in terms of how each views man’s place in the universe and what that means religiously, culturally and behaviorally and how each impacts what happened in history and what we are. 8)

Hellenism, Greek culture, is the basis of all Western thought (as we have always heard). We can see its essence through its mythology. In short, mankind is helpless in this world, long-suffering & held hostage to the whims of capricious gods & in need of a hero to save the day.

Humans are the invention of the gods to dispose of as they wish, subject to their will, and who must beg for favors as supplicants believing with all faith that this is the only way to influence the gods that they fear.
#Hellenism

This European ideology is at the root of both Christianity & Islam, the former needing an intermediary to bridge the gulf btwn mankind mired in sin - with access to Heaven after death being the objective, requiring submission to belief that conforms to the ruler’s theology, 11)

in Christianity requiring belief in an intermediary and in Islam, submission to whatever interpretation is handed down by leaders. In short, belief required first and foremost, and the objective being after death. 12)

Judaism, in contrast, sees the Jewish People as a partner with G-d, perhaps a junior partner, but still a partner, as the descendants of Jacob who fought & was renamed Yisrael. 13)

Judaism emphasizes personal responsibility & proper behavior consistent w/the gift from Hashem of Torah. There is no capricious gods manipulating fate & man does not beg for favors nor does mankind need heroes, nor intermediaries, to save them. 14)

We are in “awe” of HaShem, not in “fear” of HaShem.

Perhaps we will be ready for Moshiakh, not during a time of stress & danger, but only after we Jews recognize what we have absorbed of Hellenistic thought & cleanse ourselves of it,...15)

and cleansing ourselves of the fears and psychology of the shtetl and ghetto, and finally understanding what makes Torah a special gift of civilization, and what is intended to differentiate us from other peoples, and move on to a better future as a light unto the nations. 16)

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