Here’s What the Hanukkah Story Can Teach Us About Today’s Culture War

As the Hanukkah story teaches, the only thing worse than a culture war is surrendering the freedom to live by your values without a fight.

The story of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah is actually the story of a culture war—one similar in many ways to the conflicts raging in modern America.

The need to engage in and prevail in a culture war is a central lesson of the holiday, and the fact that ancient Israelites did so paved the way for Jewish continuity and survival over the last two millennia. If we want to ensure that the unique and positive aspects of the American Experiment will similarly persist, we need to remember this Hanukkah lesson.

Hanukkah commemorates the miraculous success of the ancient Israelites led by Judah Maccabee in defeating the much larger forces of the Seleucid Empire and rededicating the Holy Temple. But the conflict did not entirely or even primarily involve the expulsion of a foreign occupying army. Instead, the main enemy that the Maccabee forces repelled was the insidious displacement of Jewish observance with Greek culture and religion.

For example, statues of Greek deities were erected in the Temple. The slaughtering of pigs replaced Jewish sacrifices and rituals in the Temple. Public authorities also constructed gymnasiums throughout the land so that children could be educated in Greek practices of physical contests.

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