The following article below was published as a Facebook Note and
is being republished here with the author’s approval: By
Benjamin Dictor December 8, 2012 The modern retelling of the
story of Hanukkah is similar to that of most Jewish holidays.
The storyboard adopts the exhausted themes of victim/victor and
the relentless and indiscriminate persecution of the Jews. The
story is fairly one-dimensional: “King Antiochus IV sought to
obliterate the practice of Judaism in the Kingdom of Judea.
After a military invasion, Judea was occupied until the
Maccabees rose up and defeated the occupying force, restoring
Judaism to the Kingdom.” As materialists we must question this
myopic focus on the suppression of religion as the primary point
of conflict. Today, the story is told in an attempt to further
the founder’s myth in support of a Jewish Theocratic State while
the underlying story of the struggle for national self-
determination is often glossed over and forgotten. Hanukkah is
not simply about the struggle of the J