December 2001 - כִּסְלֵו .. טֵבֵת תשס״ב Kislev..Tevet 5762

When I was a child, my father would take his football players to college campuses to see the possibilities that existed outside of the inner city. A couple of times we went to the Military Academy at West Point. I vividly remember the cadets marching on the parade grounds. Our cadet guide pointed out all of the statues of great generals that surrounded the parade grounds. All of the statues were of Americans except for one, the statue of Judah Maccabee. Our guide explained that Judah Maccabee is included in the military textbooks as the Father of Modern Warfare. By orchestrating the first guerrilla war against the Seleucids (Syrian-Greeks), Judah Maccabee changed the way war was fought against superior occupying forces.

To the Seleucids, Judah Maccabee must have been considered a terrorist. He broke the rules of ‘civilized’ warfare (an oxymoron if there ever was one) by attacking at night, ambushing troops in mountain passes, and by hit and run attacks in which the ‘troops’ retreated and hid among the civilian population. Of course to the people of Israel, Judah and the Maccabees were freedom fighters with great courage to take on the most powerful army in the world.

Thirteen years after the beginning of the war between the Seleucids and the Maccabees, the Syrian-Greeks eventually gave up the occupation and went home. The Maccabees had only won a single major victory during the war in which they recaptured Jerusalem about three years into the war. For the rest of the thirteen years, the Maccabees would attack the Seleucid troops in unconventional ways inflicting casualties, and the Seleucids would inflict severe consequences on the Maccabees and the civilian population harboring them. To the people of Israel, the retaliations of the Seleucids must have induced terror and resentment.

Most occupations in history have ended in one of two ways. The indigenous population fighting for their homes against a superior occupying army keeps inflicting casualties until it is no longer worthwhile for the occupier to remain. For example the British were driven out of the American colonies by a guerrilla war. Similarly the US was driven out of Viet Nam. The other possibility also occurred in history. The occupier is impossible to defeat and the occupied adopt the culture and identity of the occupier. For example the British have assimilated the Irish and the Scots, and the US has absorbed Texas, California and the Native American tribes.

Only one thing seems to have changed in modern times. In the Middle East, wars against the Superpower, United States, and the superpower, Israel, have introduced a new target for those conducting a guerrilla war, civilians. Guerrillas become terrorists when the intentional target is the civilian population of the enemy. When bin Laden, Hamas or Islamic Jihad send suicide bombers against innocent noncombatants this is clearly not a guerrilla strike. It is terrorism. On the other hand some people excuse civilian targets as collateral damage. Civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and civilians in villages and cities in which the terrorists take refuge, have unfortunately become ‘military’ targets in order to force the enemy to capitulate.

Is there any answer to the violence and death of war and occupation? There is one more model of resistance against an occupying empire. That is the example of Gandhi. The non-violence of the Mahatma forced the British to relinquish control of India. No one could call Gandhi a terrorist.

In the end, the rabbis did not want to celebrate the military victory of the Maccabees. They created the story of the miracle of the oil to take the spotlight off of the war, and to refocus it on the Temple and the religious life of our people. This year as we light the menorah and wars rage in the Middle East and Afghanistan, let us remember that our tradition does not celebrate military might or even military success. Judaism celebrates the triumph of the spirit. “Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, says the Eternal God of hosts.’ (Zechariah 4:6)

Hag Chanukkah samayach.

—Rabbi Harry A. Manhoff, Ph.D.

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