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Now, read the English translation and write it in short, in your own
words in Hebrew.

The Historical Story of Hanukah

So why do we celebrate Hanukah?
It all started during the Greek conquest.
Greek culture spread as well: Architecture, sports, comedy, tragedy, philosophy.
In the Land of Israel this didn’t go quite as smoothly.
A strong core of Jews, led by the Hasmoneans, refused to abandon their tradition.
At some point King Antiochus got very angry at them and started using force. It
didn’t advance him very much.
At the end of a series of battles, which took place in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish
minority beat the Greek majority.
When they went to purify the Temple, which had been desecrated by the Greeks,
they found only one small jug of pure oil which by miracle was enough to light the
Menorah for eight days.

What bothered the Greeks so much about the Jewish tradition?
There was a powerful struggle between two world views who claimed that their
wisdom was the superior one: The Wisdom of Israel versus Greek philosophy.
The Greek philosophers saw the world as a completely material place, detached
from God.
The human mind was placed on a pedestal, as it allowed man to control nature and
on rare occasions to connect to wider intellectual understandings.
The human mind was also the one that defined morality.
So it happened that a philosophical genius such as Aristotle arrived at the rational
conclusion that babies with defects ought to be killed.

The Jewish claim, which the Greeks could not accept, was that
above the human mind there is also a spiritual dimension, the
sacred inner power meant to amend and illuminate the world.
In desecrating the oils in the Temple, the Greeks’ goal was to
prove that the human mind was superior to the sacred.
The significance of the small jug that we celebrate on
Hanukah is that even in a darkest and most materialistic
reality, one can always find holiness that can overcome and
illuminate the whole world.
Happy Hanukah!

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