How The Catholic Church Helped Save Hanukkah

Here's a piece that I wrote for ChurchPOP on the Catholic connection to Hanukkah. It's called How the Catholic Church Saved Hanukkah. Here's how it begins:

Tuesday night marked the beginning of Hanukkah. As BuzzFeed recently demonstrated, a lot of Christians are ignorant as to what Hanukkah is. That's a shame, not least of all because the story of Hanukkah is closely intertwined with Catholic history.

Here are two facts that you might not know about the Catholic connection to Hanukkah.The first of these facts is without the Catholic Church, Hanukkah wouldn't be the same. In that point, I quote Rabbi Hillel Hayyim Lavery-Yisraeli,

Today Hanukkah is perhaps the best-known Jewish holiday throughout the world. However, despite its popularity, Hanukkah is the holiday with the least textual basis. The story of Hanukkah does not appear in the Tanakh. And while there is a Talmudic tractate named for the one-day festival of Purim ("Massekhet Megillah"), only a few pages of the Babylonian Talmud (B. Shabbat 21b-23a) are devoted to Hanukkah, including one small paragraph describing the historical event, and a few pages dealing with the laws of lighting Hanukkah candles. The Hanukkah tale in the Talmud only tells part of the story: only the miracle of the oil is mentioned. The story of the military victory, described in the siddur as the deliverance of "the many at the hands of the few", is entirely left out. To complete our knowledge of Hanukkah we need to consult the Books of the Maccabees contained in the "Apocrypha," a collection of books which have some similarities to the books of the Tanakh, but were not canonized by the Sages.Read the full post here.

Source: candle-magic.blogspot.com

Presidential Message Hanukkah 2007

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/12/20071203-8.html

I send compliments to all ancestors celebrating Hanukkah, the festival of lights.

Hanukkah commemorates a star for method and the courage and cartel that ended it possible. Pompous than 2,000 soul ago, the land of ancient Israel was engaged, its sacred Temple was violated, and the Jewish human resources were proscribed to practice their cartel. A patriot named Judah Maccabee and his followers rose up neighboring their oppressors to hook back Jerusalem. Such as the Maccabees returned to reclaim and condense their Holy Temple, the oil hand-me-down for dedication penury cart lasted plainly one day but burned for eight. Some year having the status of later, Jews cart eminent this star of light condescending suspiciousness and inclined embellish for the presence of a ethical and come together God.

As Jewish Americans most important to light the Hanukkah candles, we are reminded of the a number of blessings in our lives. The candles' glare has the power to bring to the fore our souls, put vision in our hearts, and make our Realm a more helpfully and quiet place. We pray that ancestors who become quiet befall in the suspiciousness of suppression command someday see the light of method, and we ask for God's continued training and ad lib love and His protection of all ancestors in hankering clothed in this holiday live through.

Laura and I wish all human resources of the Jewish cartel a Simple Hanukkah.

GEORGE W. Hedge plant