Mighty Maccabees?

Were they powerful warriors or weakling yeshivah students?

What’s Chanukah all about? A few years ago I heard someone give a dvar Torah and claim that the Greek army was defeated entirely by way of supernatural miracles, and about how the ultimate message of Chanukah is that Torah and mitzvos is all that counts, and hishtadlus is entirely irrelevant, and basically pointless and unnecessary.

A similar message is given in a shiur on Torah Anytime from a Rabbi Yisroel Brog, grandson of R. Avigdor Miller and Rosh Yeshiva of Tiferes Avigdor in Wickliffe, Ohio, titled “Chanukah - Not About a Victory with Strength.” He argues that we see from Chazal that the military aspect of Chanukah is insignificant, and the main concept is the miracle of the oil.

Now, it’s indeed true that Chazal very much downplayed the military victory, and there are various different suggestions as to why they did this. Chasam Sofer reportedly stated that R. Yehuda HaNasi did not approve of the Hasmonean dynasty, which was not from his own Davidic lineage, and therefore did not make a tractate for it. Others point out that Chazal were living many centuries later, when the Roman takeover had finally succeeded, and they may well have been wary of arousing rebellious tendencies.

Still, there is no getting around the fact that Al HaNisim, which was composed much earlier, does not mention the miracle of the oil at all, and focuses on the military victory. But Rabbi Brog manages to interpret even Al HaNisim as supporting his message. Because he explains “gibborim b’yad chalashim” as referring not to the mighty Seleucid army being routed by the small Maccabee guerilla force, but rather to each individual person. That is to say, whereas the Seleucid Greek soldiers were physically powerful like all soldiers, the Maccabees were, Rabbi Brog claims, “physically weak yeshiva students”!

Rabbi Brog proceeds to decry the “wicked evil resha’im” who innovated Israel’s Maccabee games and named them after the Maccabees. He adds that sports are a churban for Israelis, and are only reluctantly permissible for American yeshiva students as a concession.

It’s easy to see why people consider it an ironic tragedy that Israel’s version of the Olympic Games were named after the very Jewish group who were staunchly opposed to such athletic competitions. But the history is a little more complicated.

Nowadays, many yeshiva rebbes will describe professional sports, with its lionization of major players, as avodah zarah. (As a science geek who absolutely hates sports, I can sympathize!) But the original sports were literally (and I mean that literally) avodah zarah, as well as a tool for Hellenization.

The ancient Olympic games were religious events just as much as they were athletic events, held in honor of the Greek god Zeus. Athletic training was also part of idolizing the human physical form, which was at odds with Judaism’s emphasis on spiritual pursuits. Furthermore athletes trained and competed naked. Aside from this being immodest, there was an additional issue – Greek men were not circumcised. In order to participate in gymnastic life, some Jews had their circumcisions surgically reversed.

But by the 19th century, most of the anti-Jewish aspects of the Olympic Games were ancient history. Jewish sports clubs in the late 19th and early 20th century were named after Bar Kochba or Hebrew names such as “HaKoach” or “HaGibor” that symbolized strength. The interest in the Maccabees was insofar as them being physically active Jewish heroes whose example Zionism sought to emulate. This was referred to as “Muscular Judaism” and was in line with early Zionist ideas of creating a “new Jew.”

It’s true that this ran contrary to the medieval Jewish tradition. But it did not go against ancient Jewish tradition. Tanach is full of examples of Jewish physical heroes, whose example the Maccabees emulated. The fact is that the “new Jew” created by Zionism was in significant ways more similar to the Biblical Jew than was the shtetl Jew. And today in Israel, when we have sovereignty, there’s obviously a need to return to the type of Judaism that was practiced when we previously had sovereignty.

This is not to mention that physical fitness is important, and sports are beneficial. None other than the Chafetz Chaim once publicly stated that he regretted not spending more time in his youth on physical fitness. And Rav Kook was explicit about the religious importance of physical fitness. Many American yeshivos, including those who declared that they would be uncompromising in their Orthodoxy, incorporated sports early on. It’s a pity that exercise and sports are absent from Israeli charedi yeshivos; maybe if students had such an outlet, they wouldn’t feel a need to get involved in violent riots and demonstrations. (For an extensive discussion of the history of athleticism and sports in Judaism, from antiquity through to American yeshivos, see Judaism's Encounter with American Sports, by Jeffrey Gurock, Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University.)

(Rabbi Brog finishes his shiur with some utterly vile motzi shem ra about how the people massacred in the Kibbutzim on October 7th were the “worst Jews, who hated Hashem and Torah and charedim.” He further issues the slander that “it’s only frum people running around and helping the country… I don’t see one secular Jew helping. And it’s not because they’re fighting in the war, you only see frum people in tanks. The only thing secular Jews do is protest the government... they should all go live in Gaza.” And he concludes by falsely claiming that Magen David Adom didn’t send a single ambulance to the South and that nobody should respect or support them.)

Amazingly, even Rabbi Brog’s presentation of the Maccabees as being physically weak yeshiva students who won with open supernatural miracles is still not the extreme of the anti-rationalist position. (However frum you are, there’s always someone frummer than you!) After all, even if the Maccabees were physically weak, at least they took up arms. But according to a poster circulating in Israel at the moment, quoting the Chazon Ish, it’s better not to take up arms at all, and rely entirely on supernatural protection!

It’s going to be seriously challenging to get such people to accept reality and to follow in the ways of our ancestors.