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Mel and the Maccabees
beliefnet ^ | 12/06/04 (received in e-mail) | David Klinghoffer

Posted on 12/06/2004 6:28:52 PM PST by Zionist Conspirator

The Hanukkah story could be the script for Mel Gibson's next biblical epic. Will it cause the religious tensions 'Passion' did?

Anyone who took offense at Mel Gibson’s "The Passion of the Christ", with its depiction of Jewish leaders condemning Jesus, should get ready soon to be offended all over again. Gibson, it is reported, has his heart set on doing a movie version of the story commemorated by Hanukkah. His text will be the novel "My Glorious Brothers" by Howard Fast. Ironically, this book is a sentimental favorite with the older-generation Jewish audience that also tends to be the main financial supporter of Gibson’s primary antagonist, the Anti-Defamation League, which led the drive to condemn "The Passion" as anti-Semitic. The Fast novel tells the story of Jewish heroes, circa 167 B.C.E., who defeat Greek oppressors of the Jewish people, retake the Jerusalem Temple, and relight the great menorah.

So what’s so offensive? If this sounds, on the contrary, like a mollifying gesture to ADL national director Abraham Foxman, you might want to look a little more closely at what Hanukkah is actually about.

Many Jews grew up thinking of Hanukkah (which in 2004 falls on December 8-15) as an innocuous children’s festival. Actually the Maccabean revolt was deadly serious business, and it recalls one of the great tensions in our own modern American society: the conflict was between what today one might call religious fundamentalists and the secular elite.

Here’s what happened. Jewish Palestine had fallen into the clutches of the Greek kingdom of the Seleucids, with their tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes, headquartered in Syria. While the Greeks were not anti-Jewish per se, they had little patience with the perceived particularism and parochialism of Judaism. (I say "perceived" because Judaism’s vision, when properly understood, is in fact highly universal.) The Greek vision was one of mutual theological acceptance. They were relativists, in the sense we know today, believing that not only the God of Israel but all the gods should be worshipped at the Jerusalem Temple--and believing that dissenters from their “tolerance” deserved to be suppressed.

Religiously committed Jews, however, were less troubled by the Greek Syrians themselves than by Jewish “Hellenists” in Palestine, and in the holy city itself, who had thrown in their lot with the Greeks. This was a way of social climbing. By embracing Greek culture, with its aggressive relativism, ambitious Jewish elites hoped to improve their own social standing in Greek eyes. They embraced Greek customs that religious Jews found disturbing – exercising naked in the gymnasium, with an emphasis on discus-throwing in the nude, or (far worse) effacing their circumcisions through a surgical operation involving cutting a flap a skin around the penis and letting it hang by weights. In his standard history of the period, "Alexander to Actium," Professor Peter Green calls this “select club of progressive Hellenizers” a “specially favored cosmopolitan class dedicated to social and political self-advancement,” seeking “sociological privilege and status.”

It all starts to sound like a Tom Wolfe novel. The secular elite were so determined to drive their religious fellow countrymen, whom they regarded as socially inferior, from the capital that finally they took the step of outlawing Jewish practice in Jerusalem itself. The Hellenized Jews burned books of the Torah, made circumcision a capital offense, and sacrificed a pig on the Temple altar.

This drove the religiously faithful--the “fundamentalists,” as the Hellenizers would have called them if they had spoken modern American English--to revolt. Pitting Jew against Jew, the resulting civil war was led by the Maccabee brothers, who whupped the forces of “liberal polytheism,” as Green puts it. The conservatives, he continues, “were stronger, and more numerous, and the more passionate in their beliefs: they stood firm in the face of odds, and were prepared to make sacrifices, indeed to die, for what they held most dear.” Shades of the 2004 presidential election? Maybe so. And this conservative victory is what Jews for 2000 years have celebrated at Hanukkah.

The same conflict reflected in the Hanukkah story is still being enacted down to our own time. Though every Jewish festival has its unique relevance to our contemporary lives, Hanukkah’s relevance is especially provocative and especially political.

When the news of Gibson’s interest in Howard Fast’s novel was picked up in the media, Foxman reportedly told Fast’s widow he would “feel more comfortable putting it in the hands of Mr. [Harvey] Weinstein than Mr. Gibson.” The irony is delicious. Weinstein is the Hollywood producer who co-founded Miramax and made X-rated art movies like "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" and "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" as well as, more recently, "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Kill Bill: Vol. 2." If Harvey Weinstein and motion pictures had been around in 167 B.C.E., Weinstein would have been the guy making “controversial” films about naked discus-throwing.

How secular liberals, Jewish and otherwise, will respond to the new Gibson effort is an interesting question. "The Passion" proved to be an embarrassment for the ADL and others who predicted that the film’s supposed anti-Semitism would expose America’s Jewish community to medieval-style perils. Of course, no such thing came to pass. All that the protests succeeded in doing was to ensure that many, many more people would see Gibson’s film than would have done so had there (without the ADL’s efforts) been no controversy to begin with.

For the folks who made such an aggressive and pointless fuss about "The Passion," there would seem to be two choices. The first is, once again, to raise a ruckus about how Gibson again casts Jews (in this case the secular liberal Hellenizers) as bad guys, and accomplish nothing positive. The other is to let Gibson alone. Personally, not myself being a big fan of the overlong, gratuitously violent "Passion," I would like to see him get back to the kind of spiritual thriller that caught his imagination when he starred in M. Night Shyamalan’s fabulously gripping "Signs."

Letting Gibson alone would maximize the chances of our avoiding a whole string of heavy-handed, biblically-inspired historical dramas with contemporary relevance. Undoubtedly the controversy sparked by the release of "The Passion" pumped up ticket sales, with many viewers feeling, not without reason, that Gibson had been persecuted just like Jesus was. Without the aura of martyrdom around the new film, perhaps it will be recognized for what "The Passion" actually was--a kind of film that doesn’t put Gibson’s considerable gifts to their best use. This, all around, seems the best strategy.


TOPICS: Current Events; History; Judaism; Religion & Culture; Religion & Politics; Theology
KEYWORDS: chanukkah; culturewars; foxmansnightmare; fundamentalists; hellenists; melgibson
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Here's hoping that somewhere underneath all the bull about Chanukkah and Judaism being in favor of "pluralism" and opposed to "intolrance" the true meaning of Chanukkah may nevertheless shine through--even for us lonely Noachides in the heartland surrounded by chr*stmas and bombarded with ADL-ACLU nonsense about "the meaning of Chanukkah" on the boob tube.

A film by Mel Gibson picturing the Maccabees as the fundamentalists they were (and their enemies as the liberals of their day) would be a most delicious irony.

1 posted on 12/06/2004 6:28:52 PM PST by Zionist Conspirator
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To: Alouette; SJackson; veronica; yonif; Yehuda; Nachum; malakhi; Bella_Bru; hlmencken3; ...


2 posted on 12/06/2004 6:30:51 PM PST by Zionist Conspirator (If Chanukkah celelbrates "religious freedom," why did Mattityahu cut the man's head off???)
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To: Zionist Conspirator

What is Foxman thinking? Weinstein is a modern-day Hellenizer.


3 posted on 12/06/2004 6:32:58 PM PST by maro
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To: Zionist Conspirator

I am looking forward to seeing this film.


4 posted on 12/06/2004 6:34:37 PM PST by escapefromboston (manny ortez: mvp)
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To: escapefromboston

anyone read My Glorious Brothers?? I never heard of it.


5 posted on 12/06/2004 6:35:11 PM PST by escapefromboston (manny ortez: mvp)
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To: Zionist Conspirator

I'll see any movie made by Mel.

This could be really good.


6 posted on 12/06/2004 6:35:58 PM PST by NeoCaveman (http://route-82.blogspot.com (Now with 20% more stuned beebers)
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To: dennisw; Cachelot; Yehuda; Nix 2; veronica; Catspaw; knighthawk; Alouette; Optimist; weikel; ...
If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.
7 posted on 12/06/2004 6:37:16 PM PST by SJackson ( Bush is as free as a bird, He is only accountable to history and God, Ra'anan Gissin)
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To: 1bigdictator; 1st-P-In-The-Pod; 2sheep; 7.62 x 51mm; A Jovial Cad; A_Conservative_in_Cambridge; ...
FRmail me to be added or removed from this Judaic/pro-Israel ping list.

WARNING: This is a high volume ping list

8 posted on 12/06/2004 6:41:32 PM PST by Alouette ("Fundamentalist Islam" -- not "fun" just "demented"...)
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To: Zionist Conspirator
Fundamentalism is always bad.

But there's hope.

Dreihen (teetotum to the anglos) will soon be played in casinos throughout the nation. :>)

9 posted on 12/06/2004 6:41:44 PM PST by SJackson ( Bush is as free as a bird, He is only accountable to history and God, Ra'anan Gissin)
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To: Zionist Conspirator

I always thought Howard Fast was a communist.


10 posted on 12/06/2004 6:42:36 PM PST by Alouette ("Fundamentalist Islam" -- not "fun" just "demented"...)
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To: Alouette
I always thought Howard Fast was a communist.

By golly, I was right!

11 posted on 12/06/2004 6:44:49 PM PST by Alouette ("Fundamentalist Islam" -- not "fun" just "demented"...)
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To: Zionist Conspirator
The main thing is that Gibson will make a film featuring people of faith standing up for their belief in the one true G-d of Israel. Hmm, sounds a lot like The Passion to me!

I'm looking forward to seeing this film.

12 posted on 12/06/2004 6:45:39 PM PST by Ciexyz (I use the term Blue Cities, not Blue States. PA is red except for Philly, Pgh & Erie.)
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To: Zionist Conspirator
I love those Maccabees. Its a great story. However, I think the author of this article has got some facts wrong. The Maccabees were not stronger or numerically more powerful. They fought against all odds to defeat the Greeks.

Those Maccabee brothers and their daddy were a tough bunch.

13 posted on 12/06/2004 6:56:51 PM PST by Moorings
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To: Zionist Conspirator
Letting Gibson alone would maximize the chances of our avoiding a whole string of heavy-handed, biblically-inspired historical dramas with contemporary relevance. Undoubtedly the controversy sparked by the release of "The Passion" pumped up ticket sales, with many viewers feeling, not without reason, that Gibson had been persecuted just like Jesus was. Without the aura of martyrdom around the new film, perhaps it will be recognized for what "The Passion" actually was--a kind of film that doesn’t put Gibson’s considerable gifts to their best use. This, all around, seems the best strategy.

"How we going to keep Christians down on their farms, after they've seen Passion?"

The great unwashed goys might even enjoy movies about secular vs. religious Jews, and then....oy vey! (slapping head). They'll have a take-an orthodox-Jew-to-lunch, and pogroms for the rest

14 posted on 12/06/2004 6:56:53 PM PST by xJones
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To: Zionist Conspirator
I just went to Amazon and read the review and short synopsis of My Glorious Brothers and it sounds like a great read and, with Mel producing and directing, it should be an incredible movie.

Here the Amazon link:

My Glorious Brothers

15 posted on 12/06/2004 7:25:57 PM PST by weenie ("A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants." -- Churchill)
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To: Zionist Conspirator
Why is the term "Palestine" used for Judea or Israel?
Klinghoffer should know better. Or is Beliefnet openly palestinianist?
16 posted on 12/06/2004 7:26:30 PM PST by rmlew (Copperheads and Peaceniks beware! Sedition is a crime.)
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To: Zionist Conspirator

The problem with Gibson making a film about Chanukkah, in which the Orthodox Jews are the heroes and the Hellenized Jews are the villians, is that it was Hellenized Jews, such as Matthew, who became the first Christians.

Judah Maccabee would not have looked upon Christianity any more kindly than he looked upon Dionysus-worship.


17 posted on 12/06/2004 7:28:02 PM PST by Inyokern
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To: xJones; Moorings; Ciexyz; Alouette; SJackson; dubyaismypresident; escapefromboston; maro
Here the Amazon link (if you want to read the reviews):

My Glorious Brothers

18 posted on 12/06/2004 7:31:30 PM PST by weenie ("A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants." -- Churchill)
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To: weenie
From one of the reviews:

Many Christians would be better able to understand why the Hebrew nation is so fiercely nationalistic about their homeland if they read this book. This same material appears in the Douay Bible of the Roman Catholic church. Two books that appear in the Old Testament of this bible that are not in the Protestant Old Testament are 1 Machabees and 2 Machabees.

Macabees 1 and 2 are good reading. Talk about a battle.

19 posted on 12/06/2004 7:36:56 PM PST by NeoCaveman (http://route-82.blogspot.com (Now with 20% more stuned beebers)
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To: weenie
I just went to Amazon and read the review and short synopsis of My Glorious Brothers

Does it mention anything about Howard Fast being a member of CPUSA?

20 posted on 12/06/2004 7:40:27 PM PST by Alouette ("Fundamentalist Islam" -- not "fun" just "demented"...)
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