Greek Hellenic imperialism-cum-colonialism, like a variety of totalitarian experiments in history, engaged in the 'politics of truth' on a vast scale. Cultural arrogance and political haughtiness galvanized a policy of unbridled repression of Jewish freedom in the Hebrew homeland. The pagan gymnasium on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the Greek campaign against the Torah throughout the country strove to impose a homogeneous cultural modality in the Orient.

The nationalistic and proud Jews in Judea under the leadership of the Hasmonean clan rejected attachment to the metropolitan civilization that emanated from Athens, Alexandria, and Antioch, despite its seeming amenities and advantages.¹ This narrow particularism would be castigated as reactionary by the modern dogmatists marketing their 'politically correct' wares. But the Modi'inist Jews were emboldened by a healthy and correct instinct which recognized that, borrowing a phrase from Eric Voegelin, "the death of the spirit is the price of progress."²

The high civilization of Hellenic culture, art, and architecture, no less philosophy and science, cannot be presumed to represent the quintessence of morality or truth. The politics of oppression and conquest have in fact often gone hand-in-hand with -- what otherwise qualify as -- sophisticated civilizations. Culture and barbarism flourished within the fabric of Hellenism and Islam, medieval Catholicism and modern Nazism. In sum, the sanctification of the Greek state was idolized in place of the transcending kedusha (sanctity) of the Jewish people.

THE NATION-STATE versus THE UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE

The notion of the unity of mankind has been thwarted since the sons of Noah fathered the multiplicity of peoples in the world. But mankind has since the Tower of Babel struggled to reunite the parts, and portray the harmony and integrity among all the sons of Adam on earth.

The mechanism for unity is power in the service of one single and legitimate ideal. The Maccabees, perhaps aware of the permanent Jewish dilemma of living in history but striving to reach beyond it, represented an authentic expression of the Torah imperative and the national élan in opposition to assimilation within the encompassing fold of Hellenic universal society. The special custom of circumcision and the unique sanctity of the Sabbath provide the native spiritual ground of Jewish identity, while any leveling universalistic and monolithic culture must entail the uprooting of identity and the denaturalization of the spirit. The Jews are a people, not a dissolving appendage of an alien civilization or a branch of a foreign imperial tree. Thus, the Hasmonean guerrilla war in the mountains of Judea and Samaria (yes, Judea and Samaria!) was in effect a re-enactment of the paradigmatic Jewish exodus from universal and repressive civilization.

Egoism and pride arm the universalist impulse with the core rudiments of oppression and conquest. It is the humility of small peoples, certainly the solitude and silent mode of Jewish existence in history, that bequeaths to mankind a message of true tolerance and the hope for coexistence.³

The nation-state has exercised a vigorous resilience no less than in reaction to the spread of a universalist power or idea in history. The Maccabee war of liberation against a Greek colonial army in Judea, and in Jerusalem itself which was captured fully in 141, drew from the legacy and legends of Joshua the Judge and David the King, on the hard path of warfare and victory. The Israeli capture of the Beit-Horon road, the Gophna hills, and the Levona ascent in 1967 was, we might say, a modern revival of the Maccabee war of liberation. The virtual indignity, yet necessity, of having to fight in one's country for one's own earthly patrimony from foreign conquerors should not go unnoticed. The Jews just want their land, not that of other peoples.

The contemporary debate concerning nation-states and universal civilization resounds with the echoes of ages long past. Samuel Huntington has recognized that, "Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs," even while larger civilizations will clash along the fault lines of global politics.⁴ The denial of a universal civilization is an interpretation, but not a fact according to Francis Fukuyama whose conviction posits the "triumph of the West, of the Western idea, which is enveloped within the notion of liberalism.⁵ V.S. Naipaul concluded in a like vein that a universal civilization has been unfolding for a hundred or more years, destined to incorporate the four corners of the world.⁶ Hellenism then and Americanism now are singularly common universal powers and pretensions in the face of whom the nation-states can appear as awkward and troublesome remnants of a 'primitive stage' in political development.

The nation-state, however, embodies the boldness of native people hood and the vitality of coherent identity that bind the purposes of the nation with the power of the state. It is this combination in Scotland and Slovakia, most impressively in modern Germany and Japan, also in post-Soviet Russia and China despite minority populations, that avoids the confusion of multiculturalism. James Kurth has argued that the future will belong to such integral and true nation-states.⁷ Israel is or can be that kind of state in the Middle East, prevailing against the regionalist/universalist Muslim and Arab empires, and overcoming their predatory lusts against the Jewish state.

THE JEWISH RIGHT TO THE LAND

When the Maccabees went to war in the name of Jewish religious freedom and political independence, they were able to exploit the dormant energies and education of an old and tried people in history. The national right to Eretz-Israel was the geographic cornerstone of Abraham's promise and of Moses' yearning. The Hasmonean rebellion was ignited by a particular family of kohanim (priests), whose Temple role and teaching function forged their firm spiritual strength. This religious leadership of the national uprising provided the war with exuberant faith in the justice -- and necessity -- of the struggle. The Gush Emunim pioneers in Samaria from the mid-1970s, on the very same hills of Maccabee exploits, reproduced the old theme of spiritual patriots in redemption of the homeland from foreign presence.

For the Jew, serving G-d means to be fearless in the face of men and observing the Torah is the testimony of his right to the land of Israel. It is the Covenant of the Law that obliges the Jewish people to dwell in Eretz-Israel, rule the land, and fulfill the sweet ways of the Torah fully therein. Ruling over non-Jews in the land does not evoke a moral quandary, because the purpose of the national enterprise is submission to G-d and not the conquest of men. One must be worthy to rule, and when one is, then rule is a duty and a right. But when the Jews are not worthy to rule, then they have abandoned their covenanted mission and abused their power over others. Therein lies the tremendous need for remedying Israeli society today, recovering its moral composure and aesthetic image, for itself and in the eyes of others -- Muslim Arabs no less.

 
A PHILOSOPHY OF JEWISH HISTORY

The patriotic Maccabees were true to Torah while their Hellenized Jewish brothers betrayed faith and fatherland. Before Antiochus IV imposed the anti-religious edicts on the Jews of Judea, Menelaus and others of his ilk had already strayed from the Jewish path, instigated official repression of Torah observance, and proposed that Jerusalem be fashioned into a Greek polis. Thus, Seleucid cultural imperialism drew its mantle of legitimacy from the traitorous 'court Jews' and 'temple officialdom' who pushed for a complete Hellenization policy. This cosmopolitan Jewish elite favored assimilation, lacking the will and conviction to persevere as proud Jews within the larger cultural landscape of the East.

The history of the Jews is in its fundamentals internal history. The history of 'the Jews and the nations' constitutes a later organization of the historical materials as an enveloping layer of events surrounding the inner essence of matters. This inner history is twofold: 1) Between G-d and the people of Israel based on the Torah covenant of reward-and-punishment; and 2) Between Jews and Jews involving the solidarity or betrayal of unity and peoplehood. It is within these parameters that the entire panorama and drama of Jewish history is cast. According to this philosophy of Jewish history, the non-Jews are peripheral participants whose role is merely a consequence rather than a cause of all that affects the Jewish people over time.

It is the 'enemy within', or the renegade at odds with his own people that provides the leitmotif throughout Jewish history. In pharaonic Egypt, Datan and Aviram broke Jewish ranks and opposed the leadership of Moses and his mission to liberate the Hebrews from the yoke of servitude. On the edge of Cana'an, ten spies faltered on the political dividing line separating the realization of freedom from renewed slavery. With the return to Eretz-Israel from the Persian exile, Sanbalat inveighed against Nehemia who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem in the hope of re- establishing national Jewish independence. The Hasmonean rebellion against Hellenist persecution encountered the traitorous machinations of 'fifth column' Jews, like Eliyakim in Judea.

This is the shameful record: assimilationists under the guise of emancipated intellectuals, marxists parading a facade of humanitarian pathos and leftists posing their morality but in alliance with the enemies of their people. The inner malaise, I suspect, will be with us till the end of days.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The Maccabee tale is a warning on many fronts. It teaches that assimilation precedes and prepares the ground for catastrophe in ways that we cannot always decipher and foresee. Alien powers sometimes offer assistance and open their doors to Jewish participation but, in the end, become the insidious enemies of Jewish well-being. For the Romans granted Jewish autonomy, but later expelled the Jews from their land. The British declared their support for Zionism, but later turned on the Jews with bayonets and the hangman's rope. The Americans contributed to strengthening Israel, but advocate the diminution of the state and the Arabization of the land. The Maccabee experience also implores us to understand that Jewish freedom requires Jewish power, because the power to rule serves to sustain the light of liberty.

The Hasmoneans were zealots for Torah and Zion when they launched their fight for freedom against the Greek imperialists in Judea. In the 1940s within British-mandate Palestine, a small but principled Brit Ha-hashmonayim namesake movement propagated a similar campaign against foreign rule in Eretz-Israel. Time had not altered the basic parameters characterizing Jewish existence in the homeland.

The pages of the Ha-hashmonay publication prior to 1948 raised the resounding cry to sweep away Jewish subjugation to foreign rule, and to inaugurate an era of Jewish rule and regime in Eretz-Israel. In the Hanukkah issue from 1944, B. Duvdevani explained that beyond the catalyzing force of anti-Zionist British edicts in mobilizing the Zionist movement, the struggle must be undertaken and pursued until the descendants of King David establish a Jewish kingdom in the land. It is the sword that will lead the way to Jewish victory, wrote another member of the movement, and it is totally unacceptable to come to terms with any foreign rule in 'our land.'

On the Hanukkah holiday, it is important for Jews to light the candles and recall the heroic exploits of the Maccabees. But that is just Judaic ritual if not followed by the adoption of the thoughts and actions of our glorious ancestors, as befits our contemporary circumstances. Israel must recognize that to be fashionable or modern, in a certain fashion, can inhibit Israel from being maccabeean.

NOTES

1. See the informative though subjectivistic book by Peter Schafer, The History of the Jews in Antiquity: The Jews of Palestine from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest, Luxembourg: Harwood Academic Pub., 1995.

2. Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics, Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press, 1969, p. 131.

3. On the principle of anava (humility) see Paul Eidelberg, Jerusalem vs. Athens: In Quest of a General Theory of Existence, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983, ch. 2.

4. Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993, pp. 22-49.

5. Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History?" The National Interest, Summer 1989, pp. 1-18.

6. V.S. Naipaul, "Our Universal Civilization," The New York Review, Jan. 31, 1991, pp. 22-25.

7. James Kurth, "The Post-Modern State," The National Interest, Summer 1992, pp. 26-35.