The Maccabees started out like most of us...

1 Tevet | 7th candle of Hanukkah 5780

I couldn't find any pictures of Hanna in front of her family, so here's a picture of my Hannukiah. - HDG

The Hasmonean family, known as the Maccabees, started our like most of us. They were under siege by the Syrian Greeks, who more than anything else wanted to crush the Jewish spirit. They were outnumbered, out-gunned (pardon the anachronism; the right word, probably "out-arrowed," doesn't work according to our modern-day online dictionaries), and scared. But they had one thing going for them that, in the end, would win the day: They were zealous for the ways of HaQadosh Baruch Hu.

But, back to the events that preceded the victory. Above all things, our enemies hated our holy practices. So, one of the things they did was insist that every Jewish bride sleep with a Greek regional governor the night before the wedding, spoiling the holiness of that woman for her husband-to-be.

When Hanna, the sister of the Maccabees, was about to get married, she did something so shocking that her family was about to kill her. I like the way Tamar Yonah tells the story here in her inimitable fashion.

Hanna only avoided death at her brothers' hands by shaming them: You would let me be taken by the filthy Greek governor, but you want to kill me for my "shameful" behavior? In the process, she caused them to turn on their enemy, the Greek occupiers of the Jewish nation.


How do we Jews of Israel apply this today? Is there any issue similar to this one in our day?

Allow me to propose that there is at least one: the Land of Israel itself. Or, herself, if you will. It seems that we as a whole are ashamed to come out politically for the possession of the Land in her entirety, and this may be the biggest issue in the upcoming elections, if they take place (many individuals are not ashamed, but for whatever reason we are not taken seriously.). I may elaborate on this later, with the help of G-d. This is not to be taken as a promise or a vow.

I leave you with this thought, for now: The current surge in antisemitism, and its solution, is related to our ability to take back what land we can here in Eretz Yisrael so that the escaping Jews can settle in it. Yes, I said SETTLE. The goyim have made it a dirty word so that we would be ashamed to take more than a postage-stamp sized country, even when we are chased with bombs, incendiary balloons, knives, swords, guns and even machetes, even while they deny Jews the right to live in Judea (or JEW-dea) with the threat of putting us on trial for war crimes.