Mage246
Not by Jewish standards and beliefs. Maybe he would have been better received among Buddhists.
Happy hannukah
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Mage246
Well, it's not a very good policy.
Anyways, this is a Hannukah thread (that's unnecessary), not a Christmas thread. No more of your Jesus nonsense.
Anyways, this is a Hannukah thread (that's unnecessary), not a Christmas thread. No more of your Jesus nonsense.
Mage246
I think you just tend to read more into my posts than is merited by their content.
For anyone wondering why hanukkah is only a minor holiday, I wrote an essay/rant about it when it started.
Here:
Here:
As anyone conscious and aware in America knows, Christmas dominates the “Holiday” season. Everywhere you look, you see a Christmas tree, or Santa Claus, or an annoying Salvation Army bell-ringer outside Wal-Mart. It might be natural for us Jews (or any non-Christians) to feel a bit shafted in this type of environment. Luckily for us, Judaism has a conveniently timed holiday to compete with Christmas, right? Hanukkah is the logical surrogate winter holiday, full of holiday cheer and festivity, plus Jewish children get 8 days of presents instead of one. Ignoring the fact that holiday cheer inherently has no meaning besides that which is assigned to it, and the fact that 8 pairs of socks doesn’t count as presents for each night, Hanukkah is actually a pretty terrible choice for an anti-Christmas.
Hanukkah, literally meaning Dedication, is a relatively minor military holiday commemorating the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucids in 166 BCE, allowing them to rededicate the desecrated temple and set up an independent government. Josephus records the story as Judas Maccabeus “striking hard” against Antiochus IV Epiphanes and “driving him back”. He then goes on to say how the Jews recapture the Temple Mount and cleanse it, shortly followed by Antiochus’s death. However, he leaves a son, Antiochus V, as heir.
Any other story might end here, with the implication that Antiochus V realizes he can’t retake Judea and leaves them alone. However, real life hardly ever follows move plotlines, and all is not well in Judea. Antiochus V gathers “fifty thousand foot soldiers, some five thousand horses, and eighty elephants”, and marches into Judea. He collides with Judas’s forces at Beit Zechariah, and Eleazar, Judas’s brother, is killed. The manner of his death is interesting, as he identifies the most richly decorated war elephant, assumes it to be carrying Antiochus V, and plunges his spear into its belly, killing it. It falls on top of him and he is crushed to death. Josephus condemns his action, dismissing it as a mindless act in pursuit of glory. Antiochus V goes on to win the battle, and even occupies Jerusalem for a few days before leaving a sizable garrison in the city and returning to Syria.
Judas is killed in battle at Elasa, and so is John a few days later, bringing the total of dead Maccabee brothers to three. Jonathan assumes leadership of the fledgling Judean rebel state at this time, and successfully negotiates a cessation of hostilities between Antiochus and himself. However, he is captured and killed by the Syrian regent in charge of Antiochus, and the war flares back up again. With his four dead brothers as four very good reasons as to why not to negotiate with the Seleucids, Simon Maccabeus takes the mantle of leadership, and destroys every Seleucid campaign sent into Judea, driving them out of the country for good. An enthusiastic populace encourages him to accept the position of High Priest, which he is already qualified for, having been born into the priestly Hasmonean family. They also, in time, declared his grandson king, which he was not qualified for, since the political leadership and religious leadership were established as two separate offices and were meant to remain separate. Thus begins the dissatisfaction of the Rabbis with the Hasmoneans.
Although Simon laid the foundation for roughly 100 years of Judean independence, it was not a peaceful century. The Hasmonean dynasty was doomed to fail, it would seem, since Simon’s grandson Aristobulus murdered both his mother and his brother. Later, perhaps as divine retribution, he literally vomited his own organs onto the spot where his brother was killed and died. Another brother of Aristobulus, Alexander took the mantle of high priest and king and promptly set about killing a brother that probably didn’t deserve it. After that, he fought a number of wars with his neighbors, including a civil war against a small group of Jews who supported the Rabbis instead of the Priests. This was a three pronged war involving Seleucids and two groups of Jews. The rebels found that it was better to live with an unsavory Jewish king rather than a tyrannical Seleucid government, and so joined forces with Alexander and pushed the Seleucids out of Judea again.
This kind of government punctuated by fratricide and wars continued on until the Romans were summoned by one faction of a Jewish civil war (again) and decided that they’d rather control the place than let the Jews do it themselves. Conveniently, they installed Antipater as governor, whose son Herod the Great became king of Judea, whose son Herod Antipas became King of Judea as well. This is the same Herod Antipas that executed Jesus and John the Baptist. So while the two stories are linked somewhat indirectly, they’re hardly similar.
So why is Hanukkah only a minor holiday, and undeserving of such elevation in the commercial eye? For one thing, the Hasmonean dynasty was regarded as distasteful at best and outright heretical at worst by the Rabbis who established the holiday. For this same reason, 1 and 2 Maccabees are not included in the canonical Jewish scripture. For whatever reason, fratricide, heresy, and constant conflict doesn’t seem to make for a desirable governmental body. Who knew? Moving away from the historical and religious reasons for keeping Hanukkah a minor holiday, presents were not part of the Hanukkah holiday tradition. The original tradition was to give money, with the stipulation that some fraction of it be donated to charity. Thus, we have the remnant of this custom, chocolate Hanukkah gelt.
Don’t interpret this essay as an attack on Hanukkah, since it is one of my favorite holidays, but more of a reminder on why it’s a minor holiday and should be treated as such. It’s one thing to celebrate the victory of an underdog rebel group over an oppressive tyrannical government, but it is quite another thing to ignore the eventual results of that victory, which indirectly led to both the destruction of the temple (ironic) and the fracturing of Jewish society at the time. But hey, without Hanukkah, there might have been no Christ, and therefore, no Christmas. So celebrate Hanukkah how you want, but keep it within reason. Chag Chanukah sameach l’kulam.
Hanukkah, literally meaning Dedication, is a relatively minor military holiday commemorating the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucids in 166 BCE, allowing them to rededicate the desecrated temple and set up an independent government. Josephus records the story as Judas Maccabeus “striking hard” against Antiochus IV Epiphanes and “driving him back”. He then goes on to say how the Jews recapture the Temple Mount and cleanse it, shortly followed by Antiochus’s death. However, he leaves a son, Antiochus V, as heir.
Any other story might end here, with the implication that Antiochus V realizes he can’t retake Judea and leaves them alone. However, real life hardly ever follows move plotlines, and all is not well in Judea. Antiochus V gathers “fifty thousand foot soldiers, some five thousand horses, and eighty elephants”, and marches into Judea. He collides with Judas’s forces at Beit Zechariah, and Eleazar, Judas’s brother, is killed. The manner of his death is interesting, as he identifies the most richly decorated war elephant, assumes it to be carrying Antiochus V, and plunges his spear into its belly, killing it. It falls on top of him and he is crushed to death. Josephus condemns his action, dismissing it as a mindless act in pursuit of glory. Antiochus V goes on to win the battle, and even occupies Jerusalem for a few days before leaving a sizable garrison in the city and returning to Syria.
Judas is killed in battle at Elasa, and so is John a few days later, bringing the total of dead Maccabee brothers to three. Jonathan assumes leadership of the fledgling Judean rebel state at this time, and successfully negotiates a cessation of hostilities between Antiochus and himself. However, he is captured and killed by the Syrian regent in charge of Antiochus, and the war flares back up again. With his four dead brothers as four very good reasons as to why not to negotiate with the Seleucids, Simon Maccabeus takes the mantle of leadership, and destroys every Seleucid campaign sent into Judea, driving them out of the country for good. An enthusiastic populace encourages him to accept the position of High Priest, which he is already qualified for, having been born into the priestly Hasmonean family. They also, in time, declared his grandson king, which he was not qualified for, since the political leadership and religious leadership were established as two separate offices and were meant to remain separate. Thus begins the dissatisfaction of the Rabbis with the Hasmoneans.
Although Simon laid the foundation for roughly 100 years of Judean independence, it was not a peaceful century. The Hasmonean dynasty was doomed to fail, it would seem, since Simon’s grandson Aristobulus murdered both his mother and his brother. Later, perhaps as divine retribution, he literally vomited his own organs onto the spot where his brother was killed and died. Another brother of Aristobulus, Alexander took the mantle of high priest and king and promptly set about killing a brother that probably didn’t deserve it. After that, he fought a number of wars with his neighbors, including a civil war against a small group of Jews who supported the Rabbis instead of the Priests. This was a three pronged war involving Seleucids and two groups of Jews. The rebels found that it was better to live with an unsavory Jewish king rather than a tyrannical Seleucid government, and so joined forces with Alexander and pushed the Seleucids out of Judea again.
This kind of government punctuated by fratricide and wars continued on until the Romans were summoned by one faction of a Jewish civil war (again) and decided that they’d rather control the place than let the Jews do it themselves. Conveniently, they installed Antipater as governor, whose son Herod the Great became king of Judea, whose son Herod Antipas became King of Judea as well. This is the same Herod Antipas that executed Jesus and John the Baptist. So while the two stories are linked somewhat indirectly, they’re hardly similar.
So why is Hanukkah only a minor holiday, and undeserving of such elevation in the commercial eye? For one thing, the Hasmonean dynasty was regarded as distasteful at best and outright heretical at worst by the Rabbis who established the holiday. For this same reason, 1 and 2 Maccabees are not included in the canonical Jewish scripture. For whatever reason, fratricide, heresy, and constant conflict doesn’t seem to make for a desirable governmental body. Who knew? Moving away from the historical and religious reasons for keeping Hanukkah a minor holiday, presents were not part of the Hanukkah holiday tradition. The original tradition was to give money, with the stipulation that some fraction of it be donated to charity. Thus, we have the remnant of this custom, chocolate Hanukkah gelt.
Don’t interpret this essay as an attack on Hanukkah, since it is one of my favorite holidays, but more of a reminder on why it’s a minor holiday and should be treated as such. It’s one thing to celebrate the victory of an underdog rebel group over an oppressive tyrannical government, but it is quite another thing to ignore the eventual results of that victory, which indirectly led to both the destruction of the temple (ironic) and the fracturing of Jewish society at the time. But hey, without Hanukkah, there might have been no Christ, and therefore, no Christmas. So celebrate Hanukkah how you want, but keep it within reason. Chag Chanukah sameach l’kulam.
Mage246
Another thing to note about Hannukah is that a significant number of Jews sided with the Seleucids in the war. Making it a civil war as well. Yay for civil war!
For your own benefit, I think I should let you know that I am utterly indifferent to your attempt at trolling. I was playing along to see if this went anywhere interesting... but so far not yet
. Since I don't actually dislike you, I just figured I should let you know.
rejenorst 说:Mage246 说:
I know. But I still sense unhappiness in that hardened cynical facade you put up
Well *hugglez* anyway.
For your own benefit, I think I should let you know that I am utterly indifferent to your attempt at trolling. I was playing along to see if this went anywhere interesting... but so far not yet
. Since I don't actually dislike you, I just figured I should let you know.Mage246
Eh, not that I can see after rereading it again.
Mage246 说:rejenorst 说:Mage246 说:
I know. But I still sense unhappiness in that hardened cynical facade you put up
Well *hugglez* anyway.
For your own benefit, I think I should let you know that I am utterly indifferent to your attempt at trolling. I was playing along to see if this went anywhere interesting... but so far not yet
I was actually not trolling though I can see how it might have come across.
Oh Mage, why do you often feel the need to poke people with that Grandmaster pole of yours?
BattleOfValmy
Why doesn't Mage have an avatar. His non-conformity is unsettling.
Mage246
It involves Pavlov, a bathtub filled with butter, and a rabid raccoon.
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