ISN’T IT TIME WORLD LEADERS DISCOVER THE MEANING OF HANUKAH?…SEE NOTE PLEASE
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.8040/pub_detail.asp
Isn’t It Time World Leaders Discover the Meaning of Hanukah?Ruth King
THIS COLUMN APPEARED IN FAMILY SECURITY MATTERS IN DECEMBER 2007…THE MORE THINGS CHANGE…..RSK
Hanukah, known as the “festival of lights,” will be celebrated for eight consecutive days beginning this week, starting today (December 1). Because of its proximity to Christmas, Jewish families throughout the entire Christian world will concentrate on the joyous and child friendly gift-giving tradition, good food and sweets and nightly lighting of the menorah while ignoring its serious and historic tale of Jewish heroes who fought for their faith and principles.
They forget that the word Hanukah actually means “rededication.”
In 168 BCE, the Greek-Syrian King Antiochus 1V assembled the Jews of ancient Palestine and forced them to bow to idols and eat the flesh of pigs, and he forbade all Jewish ritual and recitation of the Torah. He seized and profaned the First Temple in Judea by turning it into a shrine for the worship of Zeus. Many Jews accepted the terms in the false belief that they could adapt and survive and find peace and acceptance.
Mattathias, a Jewish priest refused and stepped forward to reject Hellenist demands. He was soon joined by an army of Jews, led by his son Judah Maccabe, who would rebel against the Greek-Syrian King. The Maccabeans, as they were known, fought for three years and prevailed against their enemies in 165 BCE.
When they reclaimed the holy temple, they removed all pagan and Hellenist objects but found only enough oil to light the temple for a single day. Miraculously, in spite of the tiny amount of oil, the lights burned for eight days – and hence the eight day celebration and lighting of eight candles in the menorah.
After ousting Antiochus, the Jews rededicated the Temple and thus the holiday is named Hanukah and dedication to faith is the most important message of the eight day festival. Babylonia, the Hittite Empire, the Philistines, and the Hellenists are long gone, but Jews survived their tormentors and millennia of oppression, dislocation, murder, forced conversion, and genocide because of this dedication to their faith.
But on this Hanuka of 2010, there is a terrible irony. While we sing and celebrate in freedom in America, throughout the Islamic world the holiday is forbidden. And in Israel where this epic victory was won, the Jewish people again abandon their patrimony and faith in search of a delusional accommodation with enemies bent on erasing Israel. Even the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is being claimed by the same Moslem forces that ransacked and destroyed all non Moslem holy sites in Jerusalem from 1948 until 1967. A United Nations organization recently declared that Rachel’s Tomb, and ancient Jewish shrine is a mosque.
Jewish towns and cities in the Judean hills where the Maccabeans fought and won are being evacuated to make room for Jihadists whose intentions have been made very clear by the events in Gaza where synagogues and churches were burned and razed within days of the Israeli withdrawal. In the West Bank, in Nablus, in October 2002, under the indifferent eyes of the highly touted Palestinian Authority, Joseph’s Tomb mentioned in the book of Joshua, was looted by a Moslem mob that systematically destroyed and burned every remnant of the shrine and adjacent religious school into a heap of rubble, painted the remains green and declared it a “holy Moslem shrine.”
More recently in September 2010, the Waqf, the Muslim religious authorities who control the Temple Mount area, engaged in wanton destruction of Jewish antiquities on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Hebron, the cradle of the Jewish faith, is being turned over to the Moslems who fouled the holiest shrine, the Tombs of the Patriarchs.
In 1967 when Israel unified Jerusalem, unimpeded access to all Christian shrines was restored; pilgrims to Bethlehem and Nazareth were welcomed; the Stations of the Cross in East Jerusalem were opened to hundreds of thousands of tourists and worshippers from all over the globe, with Israeli protection and sensitivity.
Mindless of Islam’s historic rampage against all “infidel” holy sites, today’s new converts to the lure of “peace” abandon all of them…Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Baha’i…to fanatics who do not worship Zeus or pagan idols; they worship hate.
Because we live in America, we celebrate all Jewish holidays with good wishes from Christian friends but in Israel, the locus of our faith and prayers, the lights are flickering and this time there will be no eight-day miracle…because the Arabs have all the oil.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Ruth S. King is a freelance writer who writes a monthly column in OUTPOST, the publication of Americans for a Safe Israel.
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