“What’s Hanuka?” the Talmud inquires. It’s a good question because many of Jews are usually wrong about the Hanuka story. How incorrect is the simplistic popular understanding of the holiday storyline and how is it significant?
‘Hanuka’ means something akin to inauguration, induction, and edification as it applies to rededicating the Second Jewish Temple, though in modern Hebrew, it simply means “house warming” in daily usage. This rededication oft he temple happened after its capture and vile mistreatment by unfaithful and disloyal Hellenist Jews who usurped control of Judea with the sinister support of the Seleucid Emperor, Antiochus Epiphanes.
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