The Hanukkah story, chapter 2

In the last post, I recounted the official story of how Hanukkah came to be: a rebel family called the Maccabees fought off the Greco-Syrians to defend Judea, and in a divinely inspired miracle, enough oil to keep the menorah of the Holy Temple lit for one day lasted for eight. That’s the story, and to that I say hogwash. Or, pastramiwash.

Let’s start with a fact of the times. Most, if not all stories we now know from antiquity weren’t recorded contemporaneously. They were passed down for generations (or in many cases, centuries) as oral history. Grandparents to children to grandchildren and so on. And in so doing, they can become an elaborate example of the game Telephone. Details change, get twisted, and disappear. And the story is always skewed in favor of the person telling it, or friends of theirs.

So back to the Maccabees. They weren't just a family. They were more than just the guys doing the fighting, even though those are the only ones we hear about through the millennia. It was a big, extended crowd (or as we’d call it in Yiddish, a “gantse mishpuche” – a huge family, meaning it included inlaws, outlaws, close friends, wannabes and hangers on, too). They weren’t all brave, noble fighters. There were the nerds, like Harold The Bookworm Would It Hurt You To Go Outside Once In A While You're So Pasty Maccabee, the wimpy, downright cowardly relatives like Merton Afraid Of His Own Shadow It’s So Mortifying If Only Your Grandfather Were Alive To See This Maccabee , and completely apathetic relatives like Sid the Shiftless No Goodnik Who Didn’t Even Finish Law School, Can You Believe Maccabee. There were also the usual assortment of Bruce The Goodlooking Tall Dark And Handsome Oh My This Is A Boy That My Daughter Could Marry We Should Be So Lucky Maccabee and Aaron Ok He's Not the Sharpest Knife In the Drawer But He's a Good Man And You Can't Have Everything So You Should Be Happy And You Can't Always Get What You Want What A Catchy Phrase Maccabee. These guys all had wives, sisters, brothers, daughters, parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, dogs, cats, birds, gerbils, lizards, guinea pigs, you get the idea. It wasn’t just a few guys in a VW microbus.

The important thing to remember here is that Jewish families are just like all other families. As I often say, every family is (screwed) up in their own particular way. There’s no such thing as normal. Never has been. The Maccabees had the distinct disadvantage of being well-known and highly visible. That inevitably means the more embarrassing members of the clan had to be kept quieter than the regular rabble. After all, you don’t want to the big star soldier up on stage while the old biddies in the back of the hall are whispering to each other “oh sure, look at that hotshot getting the Maccabee Memorial Prize for Exceptionally Impressive Valor In The Face Of Enemies Who Want to Turn Us Into Chopped Liver, And Not the Good Stuff, Either, No, The Dietetic Crap You Have To Feed Your Grandmother Who Can’t Digest Anything Anymore. Did you hear about his cousin Shana The Miskeit? Such a shame about her, drunk as a skunk off the temple wine last Passover. She decided the Four Questions weren’t enough. Such a bigmouth. She must have asked thirty. Maybe forty. I lost count. The girl was yelling all kinds of things about goats and vegetables and what she had done with the Rabbi’s son last Simcha Torah. Oy, such a shunda (embarrassment). And those are our valiant role models? Feh.”

Don’t discount those biddies. They’re the ones who tell the stories. They’re the ones who, more often than not, are the root of the oral histories. You know it’s true, too. Your grandmother’s stories are told every year, over and over, until you’ve memorized them. She’s not just telling *you* the stories. She’s telling all her friends, too. She has her not inconsiderable circle of influence, and the more she talks, the wider the circle inevitably becomes, year after year, decade after decade, wider and wider, told over and over and over. And that’s how it starts.

There’s always an historian, but that doesn’t mean they necessarily wear bow ties and faded tweed jackets or they spend their time scolding kids with the eternal “Shhhhh”. The historians are the ones who tell the stories. Invariably, they do it from their own point of view. As the movie Rashomon taught us, there’s always the effect of the subjectivity of perception on recollections passed on to others. In other words, how you feel about what you saw will color what you say about it later.

That said, I know who the Maccabee historian was. It wasn’t one of the big, impressive male warriors. Guys who do the fighting don’t do the talking. They’d rather be left alone to take a shower, then have a beer with their buddies, replete with fist bumps, satisfied smiles and nods of “that’s right, we’ve got it goin’ on. You mess with the bull, you get the horns”.

And it wasn’t their wives or girlfriends. They were too busy basking in the reflected light of their heroes, and telling their friends “I know, right? Can you believe MY boyfriend just saved the whole country? How cool is that? You bet your ass I’m getting a big rock now to flaunt in the face of all those beeyotches who thought they deserved him over me”.

It also wasn’t their parents. They were too busy kvelling (bursting with pride), talking to their friends “I know, right? Can you believe MY son just saved the whole country? How cool is that? You bet your ass I’m getting a big portrait of My Son The Hero now to flaunt in the face of all those beeyotches who thought I was a lousy parent”.

It was one of The People Who Talk. Fortunately for you, I know who it was. In the next post, I’ll reveal her name, and tell you the rest of the story (Paul Harvey can’t sue me for writing that. He’s dead).

Come back Thursday.