Lets Go Deeper

H anukkah is known by a few different names. Sometimes it's called the festival of lights or the feast of dedication , and it is often spelled with a 'ch' which reads Chanukkah and makes the phlegmy sound. The origins of this Jewish holiday are found in the '400 years of silence' between the old and new testament. The account can be located in a historical Jewish text called The Book of Maccabees. A short synopsis of the story contains that around 165 A.D. the Jews were under Syrian oppression by an evil ruler named Antiochus Epiphanes IV. Antiochus  ordered that the Jewish community give up their religious practices and learning of Torah or face death. Not only were they forbidden to worship God but their temple was taken over, the sacred possessions were pulled down and replaced with an enormous statue of Zeus the Greek god along with the sacrificing of pigs on the altar, causing it to be defiled. There was a man named Matthias Maccabee who had 5 sons...