Efrat, Israel – Chanukah is taught, in the Mother Goose version of Judaism, as the vic¬tory of the Judeans over the Greek-Syrians, the Jews over the Gentiles. We know from the Books of the Maccabees and the great Second Commonwealth historian Josephus, however, that the struggle began as a civil war, as a battle between brothers, waged in order to determine the future direction, the very soul, of the Jewish people. Hellenistic Jew fought Torah based Jew, assimilationist Jew fought traditionalist Jew, would-be Greek Jew fought old fashioned committed Jew.

But after the traditionalists won their bat¬tle, they did not banish Greek culture completely, never to allow it a foot-hold in the sacred portals of Judea. Not only have thousands of Greek words (and via those words, Greek concepts) entered the Talmud and the Midrash, but Greek philosophy, science and aesthetics have found a respectable place within the corpus of Jewish literature, especially through the pen of great commentaries and codifiers such as Maim¬onides. And even a brief comment in the Midrash Shahar should completely mute the idea that Judea rejected Hellas:

Analyzing the word “Zion (Israel),” the Midrash breaks it into its two components. The first letter, the ...t...z...a...d...d...i...k, represents the holy righteous Jew, while the last three letters, ...y...u...d, ...v...a...v, ...n...u...n, spell out ‘Yavan,’ the Hebrew word for Greece. We’re being told that at the very heart of everything revered in Judaism - Zion - there must additionally be the beauty of Greece. The question is to what extent, and in which manner it can properly be integrated into Jewish consciousness.

The Talmud --the encyclopedia, the orchard and the safe-deposit vault of Jewish consciousness-- cites the verse, “May God expand Yefet and may he (Yefet) dwell in the tents Shem” (Gen. 9:27) as proof that the Torah was not permitted to be translated into any language except Greek (Babylonian Talmud Megillah 9b). The verse is Noah’s blessing of Yefet and Shem for their modest behavior after he was sexually shamed by their brother Ham, and the Talmud’s reading of the verse turns Yefet and Shem into symbolic con¬cepts. Yefet is the forerunner of Greece, and Shem the progenitor of Israel. The expansion of Yefet are its words, the beautiful Greek language, which shall find shelter ‘in the tents of Shem’ when the Torah is translated into Yefet’s language. The Midrash adds: “Let the beauty of Yefet be incorporated into the tents of Shem,” which has come to mean the ability to extract the positive aspects of Greek culture and properly synthesize them with our eternal Torah.

Fascinatingly enough, the Festival of Chanukah always coincides with the Torah portions of the week recording the struggle between Joseph and his brothers. A funda¬mental parallel can be drawn between Joseph’s struggle with his brothers and traditional Judea’s struggle with Hellenism.

Joseph’s roots were nomadic, his ances¬tors, shepherds. Pastoral life, as we know, allows the shepherd’s soul to soar; he has the leisure to compose music and poetry, as well as to meditate on the Torah and communicate with the Divine.

But even in the pastures Joseph was already dreaming of a new world, a break with the past. His dreams are occupied with agriculture, the occupation which came after shepherding, the more sophisticated development of Egyptian civilization.  What upsets the brothers is not just an event in a dream, (their sheaves bowing to his sheaves) but the very fact that sheaves are in his dream to begin with. Sheaves represent not only agriculture, but also modernism, a break with the previous pastoral tradition.

Joseph’s second dream is about the sun, moon and stars. Again it isn’t so much the event of the dream that disturbs, but its universalistic elements. The brothers could even have understood a dream of the cosmos with G-d as the center, like Jacob’s early dream of the ladder.  But here Joseph himself is at the center, like the Greek message: “Man is the measure of all things”, man and not G-d.  Moreover, the Bible glories in Joseph’s physical appearance,  his being of “beautiful form and fair visage”, “yaffeh” (beautiful) like “Yafet”, Greece!, (Gen 39:6).  And as Heinrich Heine said, “for the Greeks, beauty is truth, for the Hebrews, truth is beauty”.  Everyone loves Joseph—handsome, clever, urbane, the perfect guest dazzling you with his knowl¬edge of languages, including the language of dreams. Joseph is the cosmopolitan grand vizier of Egypt, the universalist, the linguist.  Joseph is more Yavanlike than Shemlike, more similar to Greek Hellanism than to Abrahamic Hebraism. 

Hence, the tensions between Joseph and his brothers are not unlike the tensions between Hellenism and Hebraism during the period of Hanukkah.  But Joseph develops, and by the time he stands before Pharoah he does see G-d as the center “Not I, but rather  G-d will interpret the dreams to the satisfaction of Pharoah” (Gen. 41:15).   And Judah will remind Joseph of the centrality of his family and ancestral home, and will establish the first house of study (yeshivah) in Goshen, Egypt (Gen. 49:22, and Rashi ad. loc.). Joseph and Judah will join together, with Judah – symbolizing Torah and repentance – receiving  the spiritual birthright (Gen. 49:10), and Joseph receiving  the blessings of material prosperity (Gen. 49:22).  The two will join together, tzaddik and Yavan for the glory of Zion and Israel.