Fest o’ lites
Yesterday dusk marks the beginning of Hanukkah. Garrison writes:
In 168 BCE, the Greek king Antiochus IV had
conquered the area around Jerusalem, and he demanded that
all the people under his rule worship Greek gods. He
outlawed Jewish rituals, seized the holy temple of
Jerusalem and turned it into a temple for Zeus. Torahs were
burned in the streets, and Jews were forced to bow before
idols and eat forbidden foods or be tortured to death.
...
A group of Jewish rebels called the Maccabees [hammer --Daev] fought back,
and after three years of guerilla warfare they defeated the
Greek soldiers and reclaimed the temple. In order to
rededicate the temple to God, they had to relight the holy
lamp, which they had traditionally kept burning to
symbolize the eternal covenant between God and the Jewish
people. They could only find enough consecrated oil to burn
the lamp for one day, and they knew it would take eight
days to make more. They lit the lamp anyway, and according
to legend it burned miraculously for eight days.
...
Some historians believe that if the Jews had
not fought back and reclaimed their temple, monotheism
might have been stamped out, and the monotheistic religions
of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam might not exist today.
Shudder to think! No Judaism, Christianity or Islam? What would this world have come to?!!
Well, maybe in that case, two days ago there really and truly wouldn’t have been anything going on in the world worth reporting other than the Centenial of the Kitty Hawk flights.