MISUNDERSTANDING THE MACS

Joseph's Farah's brief history of Channuka is fine until way at the end, when he presents a tidy, little sum-up of the holiday:

It's a commemoration that should be an inspiration to all freedom-loving, God-fearing people around the world.

First, the Macabees didn't love freedom. As soons as the Greeks were gone, the Macabees set up a monarchy, which is harldy conducive to freedom as the word is understood today, and as Farah surely means it. The Mighty Macs were fighting for the right to practice their own understanding of their own religion. They had no intention of providing freedoms of any kind to other faiths, or even to co-religionists who might have wanted to practice a different sort of Judaism. Hasidim or Reformers, for example, would have been most unwlecome in MacabeeLand.

I also don't agree that god-fearing, non-Jews, must find inspiration in the Macabee's triumph. If I was (god-forbid) an evangelical Christian eager to establish Gods Kingdom on Earth I don't think I'd be very happy to learn that Jews fight back, and sometimes win. Christians, I expect, would much prefer a story that ends with the Jews docily converting and celebrating Christmas.