Hanukkah
With help from a porcupine.
The Maccabean revolt wasn’t just about independence. It was a culture war between those who embraced “Greek wisdom” and those who believed in transcendent, divine knowledge.
He marched into Jerusalem on the holiday.
A modest suggestion for a new way of thinking about the original meaning of the word “Maccabee.”
The brothers who wrote two of the best-known Jewish melodies early in the last century.
What are we to make of the fiery images, stories, and rituals that inform Jewish liturgy and Jewish self-understanding?
Ma’oz Tsur’s last verse was repressed for centuries.
Just in time for Hanukkah.
The book of Esther and the festival of Purim mark the beginnings of the exilic world, in which the battle to remain Jewish never really goes away.
Lighting the menorah in the Gulag.
Guess who left out God?
Yitzchok Hutner’s kabbalistic interpretation of the holiday.
Pride without meaning or responsibility is a hollow sort of cool.
Archaeologists are reviving a 145-year-old hypothesis.