From the “Preface”
The Hebrew language, through which the Jewish people express their understanding of the world and life, lacks a specific term for ‘history.’
Hebrew thought, though, has long acknowledged that the abstract idea we call “history” does not exist in a vacuum. History, defined as that part of the past significant enough for someone to remember it, is aptly referred to in Hebrew as ‘zakhor,’ meaning ‘remembrance.’
Memories are not just optional; they are fundamental to our identity.
As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said,
“History is what happened to others. Memory is what happened to us.
Scholars recognize multiple theories and often refuse to adhere to just one to explain the significance of past events. I am not a scholar. Instead, I am an observer of human actions and seek to identify commonalities in purposes and conduct, as well as their consequences. In doing so, I do not see an unavoidable repetition of the past; rather, I see human beings repeating themselves, unable or unwilling to learn, to break the cycle that made the sage who wrote Kohelet comment, “What has been done will be done again.”
One could say that this book is about the stuff of which Judaism is made. That “stuff” is not solely ritual or law, but it is the experiences Jews remember and form part of their identity.
From the “Introduction”
For hundreds of years, the Jews of antiquity lived under the rule of various empires, including the Babylonians, the Persians, the Hellenistic kingdoms of Egypt and Syria, the Romans, and their Christian successors. Throughout this long period, they seldom rebelled, even when provoked. In this context of Yehud’s subservience to great powers, the Maccabean revolt and the subsequent Hasmonean emerge as exceptional events.
The Maccabean period lasted a century, from the victory of 164 B.C.E. to the entrance of the Romans into Jerusalem in 63 B.C.E.
This new kingdom would remain the last independent Jewish political and religious state until the establishment of the third commonwealth, more than two thousand years later. The memories it left behind profoundly impacted later Jewish history, shaping aspects of the political ideology that underpinned the creation of the modern state of Israel.
The reestablishment of full sovereignty under the Hasmoneans—an event often compared to the success of Zionism—had unexpectedly negative consequences. Rather than uniting the nation, the Hasmoneans fostered sectarianism.
The historical record illustrates that the Maccabean revolt was not merely inspired by ideological resistance to Hellenism; it was primarily a civil war and a religious struggle between factions within the Jewish people.