Chanukah: The Sequel, Or, How The Maccabees Mucked Things Up

Last updated on: December 7, 2010 at 1:52 pm by Jeffrey L. Falick

Chanukah: The Sequel, Or, How The Maccabees Mucked Things Up 2010-12-07T13:52:00-05:00 Jeffrey L. Falick

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

I was getting ready to write about what happened after the Hasmonean / Maccabean war when I saw J.J. Goldberg’s column in the Forward. He did it for me:

We don’t 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.

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’s 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 – JF].

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’s Temple victory.

It’s not like I don’t celebrate the holiday…and I’ve already explained why I do. I just think it’s important to remember that the tales we tell about it are a vast oversimplification. I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with using this time of year to reflect on how our second shot at Jewish sovereignty went so terribly wrong. Such reflection certainly couldn’t hurt as we navigate our third such attempt at Jewish autonomy, the modern State of Israel.

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Taking Chanukah Too Seriously

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