Judas Maccabeus and the Torah

The Book of Maccabees I turns to Judas Maccabeus and the Torah.

It wasn't just soldiers Judas and his men had to worry about. Word of this massive army spread fast.

They're loaded with silver and gold, ready to buy captured Israelites as slaves. Can you imagine the horror? The Zohar, that foundational text of Jewish mysticism, often speaks of the sitra achra, the "other side," the forces of evil that seek to exploit and destroy. This feels like a very real manifestation of that.

A "power also of Syria and of the land of the Philistines joined themselves unto them." So this wasn't just a Seleucid problem anymore. Neighboring groups, seeing an opportunity, were piling on.

Judas and his brothers, they weren't naive. They saw the writing on the wall. As the Book of Maccabees I puts it, they "saw that miseries were multiplied, and that the forces did encamp themselves in their borders." They understood the king’s ultimate goal: "to destroy the people, and utterly abolish them." This wasn't just about religious differences; it was about survival. The very existence of their people was at stake. What would you do? How do you fight an enemy that wants to erase you from history?

It's easy to read this and think of it as just an old story. But the themes resonate through history, don’t they? Oppression, resistance, the struggle for identity..These are timeless battles, fought in different ways, in different places, across generations. And the story of Judas Maccabeus reminds us that even when the odds seem impossible, hope and resistance are always possible. We'll see next time how they manage to fight back.

So they went forth with all their power, and came and pitched by Emmaus in the plain country.

And the merchants of the country, hearing the fame of them, took silver and gold very much, with servants, and came into the camp to buy the children of Israel for slaves: a power also of Syria and of the land of the Philistines joined themselves unto them.

Now when Judas and his brethren saw that miseries were multiplied, and that the forces did encamp themselves in their borders: for they knew how the king had given commandment to destroy the people, and utterly abolish them;