ABSTRACT
One of the accomplishments of Zionism was the creation of a nation where Jews could renew ancient arguments about Judaism. While we celebrate Chanukah as a joyous festival of national victory against Greek oppressors, the conflict that gave rise to it was also a civil war between zealous Jews and those Jews who adopted the culture of the ruling Greeks. According to I Maccabees, 2:24-25, the first person killed in the revolt by Mattathias about 167 BCE was a Jew who went to offer sacrifice at a Greek altar. Josephus describes the bloody next chapter in this tale. Then the antagonists were zealous Jews on the one hand, and those who would adopt the culture of the Romans on the other hand.1 Earlier hints of a similar conflict appear in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah. They rail against marriages between proper Jews and people of the land whose Jewish character is suspect.2 It was passages from those books that Rabbi Meir Kahane was likely to quote in his diatribes against the non-Jews of Israel.3
