Jeremy Rosen
Hasmoneans and Greeks

Jeremy Rosen - Hasmoneans and Greeks

- Welcome back everybody, to this discussion about the Maccabees and the Greeks. But really, to be honest, it’s not an accurate title, because this is part of a series that is going on at the moment about the nature of leadership and the nature of authority. And so, I’m going to look at Greece and the Maccabean Period as a comparison between different forms and types of governance, both within the Jewish tradition, and of course, beyond. There is a lot in common actually, between Greece and Judea, or the Jews of that period, in the sense that both of them had achieved a degree of supremacy in their particular world, which was made up of different communities coexisting. And although both of them, in a sense, had a fundamental important message to the world as a whole, that message somehow, seems to have passed on to other hands. You might say that the Greek message was passed on to the Romans and to Western civilization. You might say that in a way, the Jewish was adopted by both Christianity and Islam, and they took it further. But just as the wisdom of Greece remains, so does the wisdom of Judaism. But both of them went through different phases of, and different styles of leadership. We all know that Greece was the father of democracy, but it wasn’t democracy as we understand democracy nowadays. Women didn’t have a vote, not every citizen had a vote, and certainly those people who are not citizens didn’t have a vote. But nevertheless, it was the beginnings of what we call meritocracy, which is also something that was adopted in its way by Judaism. But if we look back at how, let’s talk about the Jewish way of looking at things, and we start of course, with the Bible, which gives us initially, the idea of a theocracy, of Moses appointed by God, under God’s control, doing whatever God seems to think he should do.

But almost as soon as he, and certainly when Joshua have disappeared, the nature of government transitioned from that, into a government of tribes. There was tribal authority, each tribe seemed to have run its own affairs, you might say in a way, it was a kind of a federal system, except there was no central federal authority. That didn’t work, the rivalry between the different subsections, the different minorities, the different tribes, led to a desire for some sort of centrality. And the first example of centrality was Samuel, and Samuel was a combination. He was both a judge, who had the role of governance, and at the same time, he was a prophet, who was the inspiration. But that didn’t work either. And so, as you know, the people turned to him and said, “We want a monarch.” And so we were introduced to the idea of monarchy in Judaism. This was a monarchy that was qualified. The monarch was not absolute. Initially, he had to follow the constitution. The constitution was there all the time. So governance is balanced by the rule of law. And at the same time, the institutions of the king, and the priest, and the legal system seemed to have been united in a form of overall governance. And yet that wasn’t enough, because parallel with that, came the idea of the prophet. And the prophet had the right to castigate the king, even though the kings often chased their prophets, they didn’t like what their messages were. And so you had this period of monarchy, which although in our tradition, we tend to look back on it with a degree of nostalgia.

And David as an ideal king, and the monarchy as an ideal system, the House of David at any rate, it certainly was not. And that’s probably why initially, it failed to the point where the Judeans or all tribes lost their land and were then exiled. And so for the first time, they had a dual system, a Jewish system, Judean, but coexisting either with the Persian or with the Greek. And in both cases, those two overall cultures were the dominant ones, and the Jewish one was the subservient or the minority one. However, after the return from Babylon, we have the establishment of the Judean community as an autonomous community under the Persians. There was no king, not initially, you had the priesthood. The priesthood who had survived in the diaspora, who had come to live now in Judea, but were on paper, subscribed to the Jewish constitution of Torah. In this situation, the priesthood, the high priest was regarded by the Persian authorities and then in due course, by the Greek authorities, as the man to go to, the man in charge. And this combination of the political and the religious created a situation of corruption, because after Alexander the Great disappears, his estate was divided up between his generals, and the Middle East was carved up between the Seleucids, the Syrian Greeks, and the Ptolemies, the Egyptian Greeks. And they rivalled for control over Judea. As very much it happened previously between the Egyptians and between the Assyrians and the Babylonians, and the East versus the West.

And in some ways, you might say this was a curse that Judea was always sandwiched between them, and the kings had always made the wrong alliances, one minute thinking Egypt would help them, next minute thinking Babylonia would help them, each time getting their political decisions absolutely wrong with disastrous consequences. So regardless of prophets, regardless of Torah, the monarchs got it wrong, and so did the high priests. Because once they found themselves in charge and sandwiched between Egypt and Syria, they divided into camps. The high priests who were pro-Syria, and the high priests who were pro-Egyptian. But altogether, they were living under this post-Alexandrian Greek world. And in this Greek world, these, the aristocrats, the Judean aristocrats, began to adopt the culture as well as the values of Greek society. And so their names changed, and they all adopted Greek names, Menelaus, Ornias, just to give an example of two of them, Alcimus, they had Jewish names, but they were known, both by the historians and by themselves, by the Greek names they used to interact with Greek society. In this situation, there was bound to be a problem, as there is today, between the secular and the religious. It’s ironic for me to talk about the high priest as being secular because in fact, they were very religious, and they were in charge of the Temple, and they took it very seriously. But they objected to this new option of a meritocracy that was introduced by Ezra coming back from Babylon, and initially was a council of elders, turned then into a Sanhedrin, and basically the council of elders were meritocrats.

They achieved their position solely on the basis of their intellectual and religious, but intellectual achievements. And they were also, you might call them an oligarchy, in the sense that they were a self-perpetuating council of elders. And they clashed all the time with the priests. And hence we have the famous division between the Sadducees, who are the priests, named after Zadok, the House of Zadok, and the Pharisees, the P'rushim, the opposition. And they were an opposition, both because they were not, in themselves, some of them were priests initially, but they were not an aristocratic institution as they saw it. And also they were a popular, wrong word to use, nationalist, but they were more concerned with preserving Jewish identity, than they were with preserving Greek identity. But in a similar way to what has happened in the ultra-orthodox world today, although they claim on the face of it to reject Western values in society, they have adopted the technological ones and those that help propagate their position, despite their objection to the internet, they are now heavily invested both commercially and religiously in the internet. And the same thing happened to the Judeans. The Judeans liked the idea of the academy. They’d already developed the idea of studying Torah and keeping it alive in Babylon. But now the academy, study, was where they put the emphasis.

And they were also much more concerned with the totality of the community, not just the aristocracy. And so the rabbis started interpreting Jewish law to meet the needs of the masses. And the moment they did that, the priests objected. ‘Cause at the moment, the rabbis start interfering as they saw it with the text of the Bible. They might want to take away all their money, and they adored money, which they got from the tithes. The Temple had been rebuilt, people were contributing tithes that went primarily to the high priests, but it ought to go also to the poor and to others. But nevertheless, they liked money and they controlled the purse strings. And they were terrified that the Pharisees, or a more popular party, would take that away from them. And that’s the rivalry between these two camps. So in one way, they were both taking from Greek society, but whereas the rabbis were taking for Greek society in terms of its system, its political system, the aristocrats were also interested in adopting Greek ways, the circus, the theatre, and that way of life. And that of course led to the famous Maccabean Revolt, and the celebration of Hanukkah, which we are going to meet in a week’s time, just over a week’s time. So, this is a study, in how the Judeans try to deal with a situation that emerged, that was not just one of rivalry over ideology. Primarily, it became rival over commerce. And if you are familiar with the great Khans who invaded Asia, and then even Europe, you know Genghis Khan, of course, actually the Khans were not interested in converting anybody to their religion.

Their preoccupation was trained, and their brutality was only directed to those cities that refused to let them in and trade. And so they massacred everybody to act as a kind of deterrent, but primarily they were always, certainly during the first 500 years of their success, they were not concerned with religious identity, but with trade. And it was trade rivalry, rivalry over trade, as is a situation with our political world today, that became the dominant feature rather than religion. And so around the Middle East, and the Middle East now is beginning to include Egypt, Greece, and Rome, as well as on the other hand, there is Persia. You have this competition, competition between Jewish merchants, Persian merchants, Greek merchants. And within the cities, which were the centres of trade, there was always competition. And this competition always led to bloodshed, to rivalry between the two different or competing, or three competing trades. This has been common ever since. And sometimes it’s been worse, sometimes better, but this commercial rivalry has always been there, and still unfortunately, often leads to bloodshed. When Judah Maccabee, when Judah Maccabee rebelled against the Syrians of the North, Antiochus, and he rebelled because until 166, Before the Common Era, Antiochus had been on the throne for a while. Antiochus was a common name.

There were six of them all together, just as Ptolemy was a common name in Egypt. Antiochus had no problem with Judea, or with the Temple, or anything like that. It was only when he went down to Egypt to invade Egypt and got a severe beating, and he came back, and he felt that the Judeans had not supported him, that he sent his general in to beat up Jerusalem. And this attack was just a military attack. He didn’t initially bother about religion at all, but for some reason, a year or so afterwards, he decided that he wanted to Hellenize the Judean community. And that was a big mistake, because when you leave things up to the Jews themselves, they’re happy to assimilate, most of them. But when you try to force them, there’s nothing that gets their backs up more than that. And so that’s what led to Matityahu, Mattathias killing one of the messengers sent to force Jews to abandon their religion, and it led to the Judean Revolt. So as soon as you have a Judean revolt against Antiochus and his authority, this becomes a serious matter. But initially, he didn’t take it very seriously. The Jews had no arms, they had no military training, whereas we are talking about the generations after Alexander the Great, which were certainly very militaristic. And so he didn’t send serious armies, and initially, Judah Maccabee managed to get rid of one after the other, by a process of ambush, night attack, and that’s why he managed to find weapons from removing them from the Greek Syrian armies that failed to succeed. And as a result, he was able to get back the Temple.

And getting back the Temple was what Hanukkah celebrates. The eight days of Hanukkah are actually parallel to the eight days of Solomon’s dedication of the Temple, and relighting the perpetual light in the temple. The trouble was, that he still hadn’t got rid of the citadel, the fortress, which was still in the hands of the Syrians, but he was regarded as a threat and across the area that is Israel today, that is to say from Gaza up through Jaffa, up through Acre, up through Lebanon, the Greeks of the trading companies saw this as an excuse to go to war. And in the city of Jaffa, for example, a couple of hundred Jews, according to Josephus, were put on a boat, taken out to sea, and sunk. And in all these cities, there were attacks and Jews were killed. The result was that Judah, while the Assyrians were busy, the Syrians, rather, were busy, went and attacked those cities, and reaped revenge, and reaped revenge on anybody, even those to the east, the Nabateans, the Idumeans, the Ammonites, anybody who threatened the Jews, he went and smashed them. So this was the beginning of what we might call, “Maccabean Aggression.” And the whole question is, does aggression work? Was he right? But the fact of the matter is, that is precisely what he did, and how he carried out his campaigns aided by his brothers. There was Eleazar, he’s the one who was killed when he tried to get underneath an elephant and then stab him. When more Syrian armies were sent to conquer Judea. Then there was Jonathan, who was his primary partner, then there was Simon, who was a younger partner, Johanan, these were the Maccabee brothers, the first generation. And each one of them, when they had power, made use of it to get rid of their enemies.

When Judah was killed at the first absolute major victory that the Syrians managed to achieve, this victory that happened was cataclysm in one way. And the two son, two brothers, that’s to say, Jonathan and Simon, They had to flee. They had no power, the Syrians had conquered everything, they fled. But the Syrians had problems. The dynasty of Antiochus was challenged from within by a group of pretenders. Alexander Balas was one of them, Tryphon was another. And whenever there was trouble in the north in Syria, the armies had to come back and the main generals had to come back because whichever general was stronger, as happened later on in the Roman Empire, they were the ones who were in charge, and the Antiochus Dynasty was replaced, and Alexander Balas was replaced by Tryphon, Tryphon was assassinated and replaced, and each time, there was a problem. And so the Syrians decided to make peace with the Maccabeans, and to allow Jonathan to come back and to be, if you like, the high priest. Didn’t give him any greater power, didn’t give him political authority, but allowed him to come back, become the high priest. Unfortunately, within the Maccabean community, this getting used to violence and political ambition led to an assassination, and assassination of another brother by his son-in-law. And although the brothers were priests and survived for a while, and although Simon, the last of the brothers, in a sense, was given some degree of authority so that he arrogated the position to him of King, none of these were independent.

They were under the thumb, whether it was of Syria in the north, or whether it was Ptolemy in the south. And if Antiochus desecrated the Temple at one stage, Ptolemy, Ptolemy II did it in the second stage. They were neither of them, in a sense, officially concerned with religion, but they were concerned with power. And one of the big problems here, is that Judah Maccabee, just before he died in the famous battle in which he lost his life, had sent messengers to Rome, asking Rome to be his allies, and ceding dominance to them in the hope that they would rescue him. And that’s one of the reasons why later on, Judah was looked at a little scance, because it’s thanks to him, the Romans felt they had a right to invade, and a right to control, and a right to dominate. So you see how the political element, this need for alliances is deeply embedded in this political culture. The high priest kept on changing, as I’ve mentioned earlier, between those who supported one, and those who supported the other, those who supported Antiochus, and those who supported Ptolemy. And very often, they bribed, and bribed for position and authority. And this went on through the Maccabees that followed the initial brothers. So you know, we have after Simon, who was the last of the brothers, and he was followed John Hyrcanus, he was followed by Aristobulus, the king who ruled for one year, not very much. And then he was succeeded by Alexander Jannaeus, Alexander Yannaʾy. He lasted longer, when he died, his wife, Salome Alexandra took over. Salome Alexandra was the only one of the Maccabee Dynasty who did not wage war. She did not attack anybody else.

Other things that the Maccabees did, which was horrifying to the rabbis, is they forcibly converted many of the tribes they conquered. So this is the first example you have of coercion in Judaism. There’s no such thing before, and certainly not afterwards, but that’s what they did. So between killing and between forced conversion, the Maccabee kings were not a nice collection, certainly those that came after the initial brothers. And Salome Alexandra, the only woman of the Maccabee Dynasty who ruled, she was the only one who brought peace. And she also reconciled the warring factions between the priests, or the Sadducees on the hand, and the Pharisees on the other, because the kings had tended to side with the aristocracy instead of with a popular party. Unfortunately, Salome Alexandra was a Jewish mother, and she handed over rule to her two sons, Aristobulus II, and John Hyrcanus II, who fought between each other, attacked each other, and they ended up allowing the Romans to take control, appointing Antipater, a converted Jew Idumean to be the manager. And he had a son called Herod, known as Herod the Great, who was a brilliant political manipulator. He lived through the tension between Ptolemy the Great, and Caesar, Anthony, and Cleopatra. And each time somebody came in charge, he went with his coffers, with his money and bribed, and got them to side with him. So even if he did support Ptolemy, he ended up supporting Caesar, even if he did support Anthony, he ended up supporting Augustus. And so Herod was in charge until he died, 4 Before the Common Era. He wanted to prove his bonafides by claiming Maccabee descent, by marrying the last of the Maccabee sisters, Mariamne. And no sooner had he killed Mariamne’s brother, the last remaining Maccabee male, he then killed her too.

And so he was left comfortably in charge. And of course, he was repressive and oppressive. And the result of that is, that when he died, there was no strong leader anymore. And that’s when the Romans stepped in for direct home rule under the procurators. And that in due course, led to the destruction of the Temple. So the lesson of leadership of the Maccabees is that certain things just do not work. Some things do, but some things don’t. If you think you can compel by using force, it has rarely ever worked. You have to find a way of either accommodation, or if you don’t find accommodation, in the end, if you have to resort to war, you resort to war. And to use a phrase from the Talmud, “Whoever is stronger, wins.” But frankly, if negotiation doesn’t work, what other option do you have? Which becomes a very interesting issue in our day as to how we function politically. But the other important lesson that we learn from this is that religion alone cannot be the ideal form of governance. It can act in an advisory capacity. And so the ideal, in fact that the Sanhedrin had, was that you have advisors, you have experts, you have people you can consult and they will give you the best advice. The role of the religious side is not to make political policy, but to decide if there is anything offensive to Jewish law in this approach. So it is once again, a dual system. You have, whether we call them kings, whether you call them emperors, whether you call them governors, whatever you call them, the running of a country has to be in the hands of people who are best suited to running it. But as they have to be loyal to a constitution, and as they have to be loyal to a spiritual tradition, they have to make sure that what they’re doing is not offending it.

Now the question is, if that is the best system, why do we not advocate a system like that today? Because today, if you would look at the Jewish world, you would see that the Jewish world is divided between those on the very Orthodox side, who want to see Torah completely in control. And so they go into government, which they shouldn’t do, they shouldn’t interfere in this, but they go into government, and then they try to persuade the government to impose its views, their views on the whole of the community. A system like this, as we’ve seen, rarely works, it hasn’t throughout history. Western world, we got rid of, if you like, the control of the Pope. And although there were concordats and agreements, by and large, states were left to run. And in the United States of America, we have the division between state and religion. And in England, although the king is officially the head of the Church of England, and once was, in like, if you like the religious authority, by the last century, or the time of Victoria, they had ceded all interest officially in trying to block the political process even though they could express their opinions. So we have reached a situation where either you have, in the world in which we exist, autocrats like Putin and like Xi, who do whatever they like, and don’t give a damn about anybody else. And if you don’t like it, you’ve got to put up with it because you have no option. And on the other hand, we have messy democracies where no system is perfect, every system is slightly different. They all have their strengths and they all have their weaknesses.

But in general, the people living in democracies like the idea of having a say, even if this say is often abused. And you know, I have to say, Brexit in England is a wonderful example, and I’m sure I will offend people with this, but when you hand out governance to a referendum, they are very often likely to make the wrong mistakes. And we can see how Britain is suffering economically tremendously as a result of a mistake taken in that area. But of course, you can turn to the United States of America and see that the problems that having two extreme positions, either the Left or the Right has produced an almost dysfunctional society. America in a sense, has the saving grace, I would say, of being a federal system, so that if you don’t like one state, you always have a chance of moving to another one, and back again, and so forth. So what is the lesson that we learn about leadership? Well, there is military leadership, and there is moral leadership. Two very different kinds of leadership. Both of them require strength of character, but this strength of character is of a very different kind. The idea of a popular leader, of course, in a democracy, is very necessary. In a non-political setup of oligarchy, it might help to some extent, but not really, because essentially, as we see in Iran and in Russia, whoever controls the army, and the press, and the secret service, Venezuela, can do whatever they like. And it works. And no system lasts forever. And you could say, you know, Marxism didn’t last forever. Maoism in its early form didn’t last forever.

But nevertheless, they continue, and there’s a continuum that we will always have. And therefore it seems to me, that the Maccabees show two very important principles of governance. One of them is that making treaties is absolutely essential. And if you have the wrong treaty with the wrong power, that’s going to land you in trouble. So making treaties is important, terribly important. Secondly, you can’t impose your will, and therefore, accommodation is necessary. So you have to be prepared to compromise and make accommodations. And finally, you need to have an ethical system. If you allow your system of ethics simply to be decided by popular vote, then remember, it was popular vote that brought Hitler to power. And then as we know, Hitler did with it as he wished. And therefore, ideally, it is a combination of all these things together, that are the ingredients that make up the good leadership. I honestly do not know where to look today for good leadership, or where I look today to see a moral, or model that I would like to follow. Neither in Israel, nor in England, nor in the United States of America. And therefore, in a sense, in a sense, we have to make leadership less important, and we have to focus on ourselves and being good, caring human beings, whoever we are and wherever we are. And so with that, I would like to end my session today, and turn to the questions and answers.

Q&A and Comments:

Alfred and Leona Seyfore. Yes, that was, that was just, you know, I have these blocks nowadays, when I just can’t remember exactly who I know, and who I spoke to just a little bit before. So I forgot for a moment that it was Barbra Streisand. Thank God for computers, we can always make up for it.

Jennifer says, “Thank you, happy family, to everybody.”

Q: “The Maccabees weren’t eligible to be high priests, weren’t they?”

A: John, that’s a very good point. It’s a point that I neglected to mention and I should have done. In fact, we say, in the Al Hanisim prayer on Hanukkah that we say Matityahu was, was the high priest. The problem with that is, we know the genealogy pretty accurately going back to Ezra, and those priests that came from Babylon to Judea, and Matityahu’s family were not amongst them. He might have been a priest in some form or another, but there is no record of anybody called Matityahu or Mattathias, anything like that being the high priest. The first high priest that was appointed as such, who was from the Maccabees, was Jonathan. And there was, as you say, tremendous opposition to combining the Maccabee dynasty with the high priesthood, which is one of the reasons why the rabbis did not look favourably upon the priesthood and certainly not amongst the Maccabean version of it, although they approved of the priesthood of course. So you’re quite right. The fact that the Maccabees arrogated to themselves the role of high priest was only because the high priest was seen as the top man, and where all the money went to. So if you wanted the money, you had to be in charge of the priesthood, and if you were in charge of the priesthood, you had to be the high priest. And that’s one of the reasons why, as you say, they were unpopular with rabbinic authority.

Issa, “Insight, or your comments about religion exercise, political control, when you suggest that retaining the Jewish nature of Israel without allowing a religious party to participate in politics.” Look, I’m a great believer in the separation of religion from politics. What is the argument in favour of combining them? Well, the argument in favour of combining them is, it is religion of Judaism that defines this state as opposed to religion of Catholicism, or the religion of Marxism, or the religion of secularism, or the religion of Islam. There are more Islamic states than there are now Christian states that are in a sense, committed to the religion. So religion establishes the character of a country, and therefore, it is perfectly right for a country, as does the United States of America to recognise religious features that might be applicable to whether you are celebrating Islam, or Diwali, or sorry, I should have given an Islamic name for the festival. But you can do so without imposing religious practise on everybody.

So you can say the state recognises kosher food, but it’s not fair, and of course, Israel doesn’t, for example, prevent non-Jews from eating non-kosher food. And there are plenty of kibbutzim, or at least they used to be in my youth, that reared pigs for consumption. So where do you draw the line between maintaining the religious character of a state and imposing religious rules and laws on them? For a long time, England was a good example. The Queen represented the character, and Sunday was the official day off and still is, but it didn’t interfere with religious practise. On the other hand, you could argue, “But hold on, there were bishops and still are in the House of Lords, that’s not true separation.” No, it’s a compromise, and very often, there are compromises. So of course, I believe in maintaining the religious nature and character of Israel as a Jewish state, but a state of course, that has others and should welcome others and protect others. The problem is when religion enters politics. Because once you enter politics, you have entered a world of corruption. All politics is corrupt. It’s negotiation, it’s compromise, it’s not doing what you want, it’s getting as much as you can for your party, and sometimes, as we’ve seen, leaders of religious parties have been financially corrupt. They’ve stolen, and some have sat in jail, of course, some are secular ones, but it’s a particular offence if a religious person does. And so once religion enters politics as such, you’ve got a problem. I always give the example, both of America, and to some extent, England, where there isn’t a religious party, and yet parties are careful where possible to accommodate the needs of religion.

So in England, religious schools are supported for Muslims, for Christians, and for Jews. In America, they’re not supported in the same way, but they get tax concessions. And so when you go into politics and because your votes are needed for a coalition, you can demand irrational and illogical things. So for example, you can say, we will not bring into the army, any able-bodied man who claims he’s Orthodox and needs to study Torah. That’s ridiculous. I mean, there is, you can offer deferment, you can offer special allowance for people who make a career out of being rabbis, and Dianim, and judges. You can make concessions and contribute to schools, but you can’t be held to ransom, and therefore have a situation where hundreds of thousands are not serving in the army. So these sort of things that religious parties impose, I’m very strongly opposed to, but people argue in favour and saying, “If you take these things, if you don’t, if you take these things away, you’re undoing the Jewish character of the state.” I’m saying don’t take them away, keep them there. Keep government kashrut, and keep the right to allow certain people out of army service, but don’t make it dependent on the votes of a political party, which is why I would like to see religious parties completely disbanded, but in a way, and with a precaution that the religious state of the country as well, obviously, as the state of the religious communities is preserved. So I hope that explains my heterodoxical attitude on this issue.

Q: What about Angela Merkel as an example of good leadership?

A: Yes, I think Angela Merkel was a good example, and we can find examples of some leaders are better than others, but they still, and far from perfect, and they still have made categorical mistakes. I think Merkel made a huge mistake in allowing herself and her government to be so dependent on Russian gas, not knowing, and she knew what Putin was like. If you remember the famous incident where, when she went to see Putin, Putin knew in advance she was allergic to dogs and he got one of his huge big dogs to walk past her and hang around her while the negotiations were going on. So these people capitulated in the same way that very often they have capitulated on matters to do with Israel, and matters to do also, with both immigration, and with the extent to which they have allowed antisemitism to grow and to fester within their countries in Europe particularly, and not deal with it because they didn’t want to offend a minority, in that case, the Islamic minority. So good, yes, yes. I like Merkel. I actually also like Tony Blair, but a lot of people now hate him for telling lies about the Iraqi War and other things. But yes, there have been good, Churchill, I love Churchill. He, probably a lousy prime minister, but he was a good guy.

Vivian, thank you. And thank you Rita.

Q: Barry, “Would you say that Maccabees were more religiously aligned with the Pharisees or were religious issues not relevant to the Maccabees in power?”

A: Well, that’s a good thing. Remember, there were Pharisees, like John Hyrcanus, sorry, there were Maccabees like John Hyrcanus and by Alexander Yanna'y, who massacred the Pharisees, who hated them, who either killed them, or sent them into exile. So the Maccabees aligned more with the Sadducees than they did with the Pharisees. It was only Salome Alexandra who brought the Pharisees back, and then the Pharisees managed to control affairs when the Temple’s destroyed, and when the Maccabees were off the scene. And they became the dominant element within Judaism that we know today. So the Maccabees changed alliance whenever it suited them, but most of the time, they were identified with the Sadducees.

“I wish more rabbis all the heads of religions were like you.” Oh, thank you, Nanette. That’s so sweet of you.

Q: “Have you considered the leadership in Canada?”

A: Well, yes. I mean that’s another example. You know, I can see where the conservatives did well and where did badly, and I can see where the current leadership and his father did well and did badly. I do think Canada has a better system than most others. But even Canada is capitulating in many ways to, what can I say? Pressures that I wish they didn’t capitulate towards. But Canada’s pretty good.

Q: “Why was the name 'Hasmonean’ interchangeable with ‘Maccabee’?”

A: That’s a very good, very good answer, question. They are interchangeable. They were used that way by different texts we rely on. So we rely both on the Books of Maccabees, which were written both in Hebrew, well, one in Hebrew and then translated into Greek, and then one in Greek and translate into Hebrew. And they chose a Greek base name, and the Jewish tradition, which tried the both “Hasmona'im,” but also had the idea of Judah Maccabee, which was directly referring to Judah because they liked the idea of Judah, and weren’t so happy with the Hasmonean Dynasty. So it was a matter of convenience, as no doubt in due course, it will be a matter of convenience as to whether the United Kingdom will be called the United Kingdom anymore.

Q: “Do you think Sanhedrin was involved in the death of Jesus?”

A: Well, first of all, it can’t have been, because nothing that the New Testament said about Jesus’ saying was offensive to Judaism, and therefore was not a capital death, capital punishment. Anybody can say, “I’m the son of God,” ‘cause we’re all the children of God. Anybody can say, “I’m Messiah.” That’s not a capital offence. If you are, you are. And if you’re not, you’re not. If you succeed, you are, and if you don’t, you don’t. So there’s nothing in the story of the New Testament that could possibly offend the Sanhedrin. And if you say, “Ah, but he said, 'I’m the king,’” again, that’s not, first of all, it’s not a punishable offence to say, “I’m the king.” Anybody can say, “I’m the king.” Anybody can say, “I’m Napoleon.” It was offensive to the Romans, if you like, because the Romans didn’t want a political rival. And if anybody would’ve killed him, it would’ve been the Romans. I can’t see any way, the Jews or the Sanhedrin could have been in any way involved, apart from the fact that the whole idea of, who actually was Jesus, and what the story of Jesus is, is it factual or mythical, is still open to debate.

Q: David, “Can you comment on the view that Judaism is dominated by the right-hand side of the brain, whereas Hellenism was dominated by the left-hand side of the brain?”

A: I totally disagree with that. I think both sides of the brain ought to be heavily involved. So you know, everybody’s entitled to their own opinion, but I think that’s codswallop.

Q: Mike, “When was the Hanukkah candle first instituted before and Hillel and Shammai, can we burn one in each night and thus reduce the pollution?”

A: Oh, well, there’s hardly pollution from candles, I would say, Mike, but the Hanukkah candle lit by everybody as opposed to the candle lit or the olive oil lit in the Temple is a rabbinic innovation. And as you say, Hillel and Shammai disagree as to whether you start with eight and go down to one, or start with one and go up to eight. Either way, you’re burning the same number of candles or the same amount of oil, but it is hardly, compared to a diesel engine or a jet plane flight, going to have any impact on pollution.

“A in Brooklyn was found guilty of fraud.” Yes, unfortunately, it’s one of the things, that disturbs me most about the ultra-orthodox world, that all worlds, all communities, Christian, non-Christian, Muslim, civil, after all, you know, this latest Coinbase disaster might have a Jewish name, but certainly didn’t live in any way Jewish, you couldn’t call it a Jewish crime. But when people who identify as Jew commit crimes, this is a terrible, a terrible desecration. And I have only two not justifications, definitely not a justification, I wouldn’t say so in a million years, but I have two explanations. One is that, the ultra-Haredi world is still a world made up of people who lived and experienced living under communism, or living under oppressive regimes. And when you live under a regime that treats some of its members unfairly, and you don’t trust, then you develop with a system of, you can’t trust the government, you’ve got to survive, fiddle to survive, that’s the only thing that counts. And that mentality has become and was part of the Haredi world, and was made worse by the Holocaust because the mindset of the Holocaust is, “They all tried to screw us. They all tried to kill us. They all stood by while we died and didn’t let us in. So to hell with them, we’ll do whatever we can to get as far ahead as we can.”

But also the United States of America has bred what is known as pork belly politics. You pay and you get, whether it is in the courts, whether it is in government, there is corruption everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. And almost everybody fiddles the system. I’ll give you one interesting figure. During the last two years, according to America’s own figures, $54 billion was fiddled through the generous money that was thrown at the United States in order to combat COVID and prevent a rebellion. At this moment, less than 50 million, not 54 billion, 50 million is under examination, and of those, they expect to catch and fine about 10%, because the fiddlers know their business, they fiddle, they then park that money somewhere else, so that when they are found guilty, they’ve got nothing to lose. They might have a little penalty in jail for a few years, then they’ll come out, and they’ll enjoy their ill-gotten gains. That’s the culture we live in. So I hate it, it’s, but unfortunately, everybody’s doing it and I wish we weren’t.

Q: Ralph, “How important are the people chosen to surround a leader? Even if the leader lacks experience, results a successful 10-year outcome of the nation, I was thinking particularly of Harry Truman, who in many respects, was a better leader than FDR.”

A: Well, I don’t know if he was a better leader than FDR, but Harry Truman had around him, two lots of wonderful leaders, on the one hand, you had Marshall, who was against recognising Israel, who was against supporting Israel. And on the other, you had some other people advising him, mainly electorally, people like to say it was his business partner and that certainly helped. But it was also electoral pressure was pushing. So I don’t know who I’d say was the better one of the two, but I would say that the, having good people around is terribly important in many respects. Actually, you’re right. More important than the actual leader himself.

Q: Romaine says, “Why was Churchill lousy member of, a prime minister?”

A: Because when he came back after the war, and he was brilliant during the war, but after the war when he returned, he was past it, he didn’t do anything, he left it to others. He was more interested in going painting on Onassis’ yacht. And so at that stage, he was not a good prime minister. As a war leader, definitely he was. And a great man, without any doubt, he was a great man, won Nobel Prize for Literature, as well as saving the world, and I believe he did. Because people say “No, America saved the world.” Yes, but in fact, had Churchill not stood up to Hitler, Europe would’ve gone to Hitler and America wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it. And then with Hitler combined with Japan, it would’ve been a very different story. So yes, I do think Churchill saved us.

Thank you, Susan.

Marian, “I understand Hasmonean, I have members of the family called ‘Hashmon,’ and it is thought it’s based on a village, on a, they really lived near Modi'in.” Yes. That is another theory, which is absolutely correct. Absolutely correct.

Thank you, Roz, Wow, Roz, so nice to hear from you. I wish I’d have known where you were before, ‘cause I’d been meaning for years and years and years to contact you to find out how you are. So please email me, and let me know where you are, and so forth.

So let’s end that, and thank you for listening.