It's Hanukkah in a few days, which means.. it's time to talk about Hanukkah lore.
first, I want you to erase everything you know about hanukah.
Hanukkah is known to be the celebration of light, happiness and victory.
But in reality, the story of hanukkah is much darker.
Human name: Daniel Ben Yosef
religion: Cohenity Judaism (early Judaism)
National languages: Hebrew, Aramic, Greek
Independent: 104 BC - 63 AC (but actually 77 years)*
When Ancient Greece took over the area, they brought with them Hellenism, which already influenced Daniel. Daniel’s opinion about Hellenism was neutral. Most Jews didn’t mind Hellenism, as long as it peacefully coexisted with Judaism, and it did.
The Greek empire owed a lot of money to Rome, and the great Cohen’s brother back then, he knew. He offered the king of the areal Hellenic kingdom a lot of money in exchange for making him the Cohen.
Judaism is highly against such a thing. Since then people noticed that they could buy the great Cohen’s seat and started paying more and more, which led to inside-wars between Cohens, Levians and activists.
The Cohens who kept taking over the seats happened to be pro-Hellenism, which made Hellenism look bad in the eyes of the radical activists. It didn’t change Daniel’s opinion, though. But he did lose his trust towards his Cohens.
The internal wars inside Judea made them not pay taxes to Greece, which made the king very mad. He came to Judea and demanded the Jews to do very sinful things such as eat pig or work on Shabbat, as well as change their names and such things.
Daniel was mad, and started a revolution. The revolution started from inside, against the current Cohen who brought that on him.
Maccabee is a Jewish movement that started at those days, their goal was to liberate the Jews from Hellenic oppression. Hashmonai Family, a well known family of activists, started it. They led the revolution, but it mostly failed.
When the Hashmonai family realized that the revolution failed, one of the members of this family physically went to the king and begged for liberation. The king got convinced and let the Jews have their own country.
The Maccabees came back to Jerusalem and cleaned the holy temple from all the dirt and sins that the hellenics did. It made them and Daniel so happy they celebrated for 8 days, which is also the same 8 days of Hanukkah.
Daniel felt like things are getting back to order, he's independent again. but the little he knew about what’s going to happen.
Hashmonai is now an independent kingdom, but the Hashmonai family decided to make Cohenity one with the royal family, the citizens of Hashmonai hate this decision, and revolt once again.
Daniel started to rethink his own religion, and new groups of new religions started to pop, as an alternative to the current Cohenity Judaism. Christianity is one of them. Groups are starting to rewrite some books and write new books, the Talmud and the Mishna.
Daniel thought this situation is just temporary, and Levi soon will get his power in the temple again. But as soon as he thought so, Hashmonai massacred everyone who attempted to stop the royal family, including levians. Levi, the last tribe to exist as a tribe of Israel was killed, and it officially ended Daniel’s hope for the temple, his nation and his religion.
When Levi Died, Daniel realized he won’t be able to continue in the same path anymore. A group of all groups, called haPrushim, were the leading group of the new Judaism. They believed that all Jews should be able to read, write and own their own Bible copy. Since then only a Levian could, but Levi is now dead. This is temporary, until a new alternative to Levi or if there are still Levians alive somewhere, they could take back their place once they can.
Daniel preferred this alternative over the others, which helped this one become the main Judaism branch today.
Now Rome is in charge, Rome doesn’t mind most of the wars inside Hashmonai, but when it becomes too brutal they step in. Rome wants quiet in their territory, that’s their strategy. They cross most leaders (Jesus is one of them), and it escalates as the Jews fight back more.
Daniel wants this to end, so he goes to Rome and asks him to Assassinate the Hashmonai family. Rome is happy to do so, and he does. Hashmonai loses independence as it happens.
Rome was mad with Daniel for being such a pain in the ass, so he started forcing him to do such things as eat pig and work on Shabbat, again. But this time Daniel was tired. He didn’t revolt.
Bar Kochva is a radical guy that Daniel, as well as most of the nation, didn't agree with. He worked alone. He required a small army and tried to fight the Romans. Daniel joined him; he thought he had nothing to lose anyways. But his mistake escalated everything really fast.
As a punishment Rome cut Daniel’s hair. He knew how much Daniel cares about it. He destroyed the temple, and then kicked Daniel away from Judea to Europe, he changed Judea’s name after a nation in the Bible which is Hebrew means “Invaders”. The name that Daniel used to call other ancient nations as a mockery is now against him. Also, Rome stole a lot of things from the temple, including the great menorah.
The days of Daniel as ancient Israel (before the kingdom of Israel to the after kingdom of Hashmonai) is now officially over. Daniel now started his Exile era, and after the exile era, the Modern era.
