as well: centuries after their rebellion, the temple that they had rededicated was ultimately destroyed by the Romans. The Rabbis tell us that it was because of sinat chinam —baseless hatred of Jews towards other Jews. Even on purely historical grounds, they’re not wrong: it was quite possibly a lot of infighting between the various sects that prevented the Jews from mounting any credible defence against the Romans. Sinat chinam is something we can combat today simply by trying to understand each other better. You may still disagree with the gun-toter, but you might see that they have many fears, and that those fears humanize them. You might think that a gun isn’t a security blanket, but for them it is. And it might help you not hate them. You may think that every Palestinian agrees with Hamas, but speak to a Jew who regularly socializes or does business with Palestinians and you might see why they have sympathy for them. I have full faith in the IDF and their ability to unite Israelis together in battle. But I do not see that unity in our community more broadly. It can’t possibly be to our benefit to have bitter internal strife over who is more authentically Jewish, the right or the left. There are so few times we should exclude people from the community that we should never even think of it. To quote the Holy Bard of Montreal, Leonard Cohen: Anyone who says I’m not a Jew Is not a Jew I’m very sorry But this is final I have no idea what might happen in Israel or Gaza, either over the short or the long term. A decisive military victory or loss might have unintended consequences that I will not try and guess at. But I do know that perhaps we should not be celebrating military victories the way we used to. In an article on thetorah.com written long before the current war, Malka Simkovich, a scholar of early Jewish history, points out that “the rabbis effectively rebranded the holiday so that instead of glorifying Hasmonean mil- itary prowess, the holiday instead glorifies the unconditional and miraculous divine light that Jews can depend on, even in the gloomiest of darkness.” Let’s take a minute to remind ourselves of this, and maybe bring a little more light into this gloomy time. n
some fairly radical tactics in their path to victory. Forcible circumcision of Jews who wanted to assimilate was not unheard of. Neither was killing Jews who did assimi- late. These practices started to fade away in Talmudic times, making way for a more heterogeneous, inclusive understanding of the Jewish faith. Famously, the redactors of the Talmud included many diverging and sometimes contradictory legal opinions on the ques- tions they discussed. This became a hallmark of Talmudic writing: not just a final verdict but the whole often messy discourse that preceded it was deemed important. The losing opinions were and are still seen to have value because the process matters as much as the outcome—and the holders of losing opinions were wise and arrived at their views through careful reasoning, just as the victors in legal debates did. Even proponents of what seem to be heresies and radical assimilation are included in Jewish tradition, with rabbis looking for ways to keep them in the fold. And yet, today we find ourselves excluding and excluding and excluding. This will do lasting damage to our commun- ity and to our individual psyches. We are no longer asking ourselves why an individual has an opinion. We are no longer assuming the best in others. The Maccabees did this. But the Mac- cabees also did something novel during the rebellion, something that saved many lives. Jews were dying in attack after attack because the Seleucids had figured out that they wouldn’t fight back on the Sabbath. So the Maccabees ruled that preserving life was paramount—that it trumped the usual rules—and began fighting every day, includ- ing on the Sabbath. This is the source of our present-day discussions about pikuach nefesh : it’s why we are commanded to break almost every rule that usually binds us in order to save a life. This can be a powerful lesson for us, not just about the sanctity of life that Judaism espouses, but about our capacity to hold space for opinions that aren’t ours. While the Maccabees were ostensibly on the side of tradition, this approach to preserving life was by no means standard at the time. Maybe we too need to start by not disparaging ideas and opinions that we think are wrong. At the very least it may help us to understand where others are coming from and why they believe what they do. The Maccabean victory sowed the seeds for something much bigger and unintended
The Torah can be used to prop up a very wide spectrum of opinions, and yet the acceptable spectrum of opinion has become increasingly narrow.
if they don’t believe that Palestinians are all members of Hamas who all want every Jew dead, not just from the river to the sea but across the globe. Then there are the endless arguments over which organization made which statement, what it did or did not include, and why. This is not helping. At all. We have come a long way from the Maccabean approach. We often forget, or were never taught, that they employed
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