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Members of the 841st Engineer Battalion will soon deploy to Afghanistan.With Santa hats and dreidels, organizers spread holiday cheer at Miami Jewish Health System's Christmas party...in the middle of Hannukah. "Hannukah is the festival of lights -- all lights," said organizer Leslee Geller, who is Jewish. "Just because you're Jewish, doesn't mean you can't give Christmas to someone else." She and MJHS gave Christmas to 60 soldiers and their 54 children -- complete with food, holiday music, dancing, and presents. Jeremiah Alveranga, 2, was speechless. He walked, tugging the leg of his dad, Sgt. Patrick Alveranga. "I hope I leave...

The Jewish people not only defeated the Greeks on the battlefield, but we defeated them spiritually as well. In fact, the spiritual struggle was the true heart of the conflict. In Greek philosophy, the power and wisdom of man was preeminent. In the Greek worldview, there was no room and no need for G-d. All that needed to be accomplished could be accomplished by man, on his own, with no assistance at all. This is why the Greeks so desperately wanted to crush Judaism. In the case of other conquered peoples, the Greeks were benevolent to their new citizens. They...

With this awareness of the powerful miracle of spiritual renewal that is such a vital part of Chanukah, we can understand the message of the Talmud's teaching (Shabbos 21b) that even the types of oil and wicks which cannot be used for lighting the Sabbath candelabra, are acceptable for use in the Menorah for Chanukah. The Chassidic work, Me'or Einayim explains: Even those souls who are so far removed from the Torah's teaching and practice that the light of the Sabbath cannot inspire them or draw them closer, can be touched by the light and inspiration of the Chanukah Menorah....

And so we have a semiofficial celebration of Hanukkah, complete with menorah, to celebrate not the ignition of a light but the imposition of theocratic darkness. Jewish orthodoxy possesses the interesting feature of naming and combating the idea of the apikoros or "Epicurean"—the intellectual renegade who prefers Athens to Jerusalem and the schools of philosophy to the grim old routines of the Torah. About a century and a half before the alleged birth of the supposed Jesus of Nazareth (another event that receives semiofficial recognition at this time of the year), the Greek or Epicurean style had begun to gain...

Menelaus would have been proud. He was the Hellenistic high priest installed by Antiochus who championed the battle against traditional Jews that brought about the holiday of Hanukka. Not much has changed - it would seem - in 2,000 years. Instead of the Greeks and the secular Jews combining forces to stifle Jewish observance, today it's Labor MK Ophir Paz-Pines. He has introduced a bill in the Knesset that would effectively punish an adult who brings a minor closer to mitzva observance or Torah study. Invite a teenager to put on tefillin, and you could be prosecuted.

Chanukah reminds us that Judaism sees everything as a miracle. But Hellenism saw nothing as a miracle. To the Greeks, a miracle was an absurdity. To them, only what was reasonable, logical, and rational could be real. Miracles were illogical and, therefore, not possible. The Greeks could never see the light of Chanukah, the light of miracles, because they only believed in the light of logic and reason. According to the Greeks, the world always existed, it never was created. History is an inevitable process — the present and the future are linked to the past and are the necessary...

In 2nd Century B.C.E, the Greek Seleucid Emperor Antiochus Epiphanes began a systematic campaign against Judaism, which he saw as an obstacle to the spread of Hellenist philosophy in Israel. He forbid certain forms of religious observance (such as circumcision, for example) — disobedience was punishable by death. He desecrated the Temple by sacrificing pigs there, and he put up a statue of the Greek god Jupiter in the Holy of Holies. Enraged, Mattathias the Maccabee and his five sons recruited a small army of Jews and launched a guerrilla war that is commonly known as the Maccabean revolt. After...

Well, with tonight's nightfall the festival of Chanukkah is finally here. And it is because of this, and because of the peculiarly savage nature of the "chr*stmas wars" this year, that I wish to share my thoughts with my fellow FReepers. In our current climate Chanukkah is simply the first of the rival "artificial" holidays that the forces of secularism have adopted to destroy chr*stmas and the piety it represents. Since I am not a Jew (and am a former chr*stian) this misunderstanding (not only by conservative chr*stians, but by liberals as well) is very painful to me, because I...

The Chanukkah story is merely a quaint tale about wars of antiquity, right? The battle for the soul of society continuesIt would seem a promising premise for story about Chelm, Jewish folklore's fabled town of the clueless. The resident philosopher sagely informs his fellow citizens that since he can't perceive his own face directly he must not have one. Besides, he explains to the townsfolk, as anyone can plainly see, what seems to be his face clearly resides in his mirror. The Chelm tale idea is inspired not by hopeless simpletons but by celebrated scientists. Like Yale psychology professor Paul...

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...

A BRITISH rabbi has endorsed the sending of “Chrismukkah” cards to celebrate the Jewish and Christian festivals of Hanukkah and Christmas. A Jewish-Christian couple in the US are promoting a joint Chrismukkah celebration to resolve difficulties of religious etiquette for the thousands of people in interfaith marriages. They are suggesting that the 12 days of Christmas and eight days of Hanukkah be combined into a 15-day festival with a theme of “Oy joy! Merry Mazeltov!” They are marketing Chrismukkah cards, featuring a white-bearded Chrismukkah Man in a red cap, a reindeer with an eight-branched menorah for antlers, a kosher fruitcake,...