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By J. David Goodman http://TheLede.blogs.NYTimes.com

To celebrate last week’s 33rd anniversary of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s triumphant return from exile, Iran re-enacted his arrival at a Tehran airport, using a cardboard cutout to stand in for the late Iranian leader.

Photographs of the ceremony published on Tuesday by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency seemed to lend themselves to parody, with Farsi and English Internet satirists treating them as bizarre authoritarian kitsch.

The photos showed a band playing welcome music as dozens of men in dress uniforms clutched roses and lined up on a tarmac for the staged arrival of the cardboard Ayatollah Khomeini.

Also on the tarmac, propped up behind the lines of stone-faced celebrants was another cardboard cutout of the former leader, the father of the modern Iranian state who is revered as divine. This one was a black-and-white image from his Feb. 1, 1979, arrival back in Iran.

The anonymous creator of Cardboard Khomeini has taken part of one of the photographs, the ayatollah’s oversize likeness being carried by two security officers in sunglasses, and pasted it into a variety of iconic images like the Beatles “Abbey Road” album cover, the moon landing and Ronald Reagan’s 1980 inauguration. (see selected images below)

Shortly after the airport arrival, another cardboard cutout made an appearance in southern Tehran at Refah School, which served as Ayatollah Khomeini’s base of operations. There, it was joined by officials, including the education minister, who sat in a large circle with the silent version of the revered leader and awkwardly drank tea.

Other satirists online posted the photos with cartoon bubbles of imagined conversations between the nearest official and the inanimate ayatollah.

As translated by The Times, the caption above reads:

Ayatollah Khomeini:
I’m gonna punch this government in the mouth!
I’m gonna create a new government!
My government will provide free water and electricity!
I am going to accomplish many things!

Official:
Go to sleep, piece of cardboard!

In another, the cardboard Khomeini complains that he was not served a glass of tea. “I’m the Supreme Leader! Where is my tea???”

But in a comment on PBS’s Tehran Bureau blog, the writer Jasmin Ramsey worried that her mocking reaction to the images obscured the historical events they symbolized and discredited the sacrifices of other Iranians during the 1979 revolution.

“By laughing at these photos, am I disrespecting the sacrifices of people like my parents who risked everything for their dream of self-determination and sovereignty? By asking that question, am I ignoring the suffering of Iranians who are forced to live with a government they don’t want?

“I have made no sacrifices for Iran. I am not one of the thousands of innocent people who were tortured by the Shah’s forces. Unlike hundreds of thousands of Iranians, I have been spared injury and death from the cruel and bloody Iran-Iraq War.

“By that same token, I was not raised in Iran as a middle-class woman, educated and full of potential, but constrained by the Islamic Republic’s heavy hand. I have only passing experience of how suffocating daily life in Iran can be for young adults with dreams. Perhaps I don’t have the right to laugh at revolutionary ceremonies or question the meaning of laughing at them.

“But I do.”

selected images from CardboardKhomeini.blogspot.com

www.cbn.com

A group of lawmakers are fighting the U.S. Air Force’s decision to remove a reference to God from one of their logos.

The logo of the Rapid Capabilities Office contained a Latin quote that translates, “Doing God’s work with other people’s money.”

After The Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers complained, the phrase was rewritten to read, “Doing miracles with other people’s money.”

Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., is leading a group of 35 bipartisan lawmakers in asking the Air Force to reverse its decision.

Forbes wrote a letter to to Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz. It was also signed by all of the lawmakers.

“I am concerned that the RCO capitulated to pressure from an outside group that consistently seeks to remove references to God and faith in our military,” Forbes wrote.

“The RCO’s action to modify the logo sets a dangerous precedent that all references to God, regardless of context, must be removed from the military,” he said.

“In reality, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit the mention of ‘God,’” he added. “Moreover, courts have consistently upheld the constitutionality of the national motto ‘In God We Trust.’”

By Judy Siegel-Itzokvich, www.JPost.com

Film shows cooperation between Jewish and Palestinian volunteer paramedics in United Hatzalah.

No one believed it could happen, but it has: An Israeli living in England has made a politics-free film about cooperation between Jewish and Palestinian volunteer paramedics for the Orthodox Jerusalem organization United Hatzalah, who save lives together in the capital’s western and eastern neighborhoods.

The 25-minute program, Jerusalem SOS, was broadcast four times last month by the global Arab TV network Al Jazeera in English, which has also put it online for all to see

It is an unusual sight: Arabs wearing orange vests printed with the red Star of David team up with haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews wearing black kippot, their sidecurls and tzitzit (ritual fringes) blowing in the wind. And the partners have only praise for each other.

“I don’t care which person I’m saving. I even go to [the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of] Mea Shearim on Shabbat,” says Fadi, one of 100 Arabs currently volunteering for UH.

“Saving lives is a religious act for me. Forget all the politics and the mess. People need to live.”

“The Arabs are so devoted,” says a haredi paramedic.

“Their chest compressions are incredible. They respect Jewish sensitivities, especially on Shabbat.”

Eli Beer, the haredi founder and head of the lifesaving rescue organization, commented, “It’s amazing to see how well we all get along together, without conflict. Everybody knows and respects each other.”

In a phone interview from London, the filmmaker, Keren Ghitis, told The Jerusalem Post how the piece came together.

“I started teaching people how to make videos in Latin America and Africa so they could tell their own stories. I made this video as part of the Ir Amim Initiative, which solicited ideas for films from Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers.

We were asked to tell things that usually do not get attention,” she said.

She submitted it to Al Jazeera, which, she said, was very interested in broadcasting it. Nothing was censored or dictated to toe any line. The first showing was on January 16 in prime time.

“The comments from around the world, including the Arab world, have been very positive. There has also been a lot of mention of it on Facebook. A Palestinian community in the U.S. even asked us for permission to use it for educational purposes,” she said, adding, “It broke a lot of stereotypes.”

The Al Jazeera Network has more than 65 bureaus around the world, with a staff of 3,000 – including more than 400 journalists from more than 60 countries. There is a bureau that hires Israeli Jews and Arabs. The English station has more than 1,000 experienced staffers of more than 50 nationalities and broadcasts to some 220 million households in more than 100 countries.

“I wanted to reach people and see more collaboration between Arabs and Jews,” Ghitis explained when asked why she chose the subject. “More support is needed for medical services in east Jerusalem.”

The UH-trained Palestinian paramedics note in the film that there are often delays in Magen David Adom reaching the sick and wounded in east Jerusalem because no ambulance can get there without being accompanied by a police or military escort. UH Arabs and Jews often get there first on their ambucycles. In addition, many streets are unnamed, and houses have no identifying numbers.

Beer said Al Jazeera had set no conditions for the broadcast.

Speaking to the Post from Davos, he said he had just met Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, who received the Nobel Prize.

“He was amazed,” he said.

“He and lots of people from all over the world tell me that the fact that I am a proud Jew and Israeli makes Israel look very good.”

Beer wants to have Arabs all over the country working hand-in-hand with haredi, religious, and secular Jews for his rescue organization. “I want about 3,000 volunteers, about 15 percent of of them Christian and Muslims.”

Jews and Muslims do not oppose working together, he says, despite the invisible boundaries and suspicions that separate their communities.

“In the beginning, I met a few who were surprised about working together, but after they saw that they are great people and really professional, they all like it,” said Beer.

The Jews also work on Shabbat and festivals in an emergency, and the Muslims on Fridays and Ramadan.

The film follows volunteers like Hezi, a former yeshiva student who works in a fishmonger’s shop and has volunteered with UH for 15 years, and Fadi, a security guard at Al-Aksa Mosque.

Fadi, presented as a loving father hugging his young children at home, has been an assistant to the Jewish owner of a Mea Shearim hardware store since the age of 14. His family encourages him to go any time he gets an emergency call, as does Shlomo, the shop owner. “He is like a son to me,” says the Mea Shearim retailer.

Hezi is not worried when dispatched to the Damascus Gate in east Jerusalem, and works with Red Crescent medics.

“Since they started working together in 2010, hundreds of lives have been saved,” Ghitis concluded.

See the film made by Keren Ghitis with English, Hebrew, and Arabic spoken:

Between 1948 and 1967, a border separated Arabs living in east Jerusalem from Jews living in the rest of the city.

Today, much of the city’s Arab population remains in the east, while the majority of its Jewish population lives in the west.

Although they are free to do so, few residents move between the city’s Arab and Jewish areas. In the minds of most, the border that separated Jews and Arabs 40 years ago still exists today.

“Witness” follows Jewish and Arab volunteer paramedics who choose to cross these boundaries.

Hezi, a Hassidic Jew, has been working for United Hatzalah, an emergency service run by orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, for more than 15 years. In 2010, the organization started employing Arab paramedics, and Fadi joined to improve first aid services in Jerusalem’s Arab neighbourhoods.

In Jerusalem SOS, we follow Fadi and Hezi as they traverse Jerusalem, providing first aid at all hours to the city’s residents.

By Mark H. Plumpton www.SeacoastOnline.com (Maine)

See also his original article The True Message of Christmas that was posted on this website on Christmas Day, 2009.

Today is Christmas, for most, a joyous event of family and friends, decorated trees, lights, presents, Santa Claus, and lots of wonderful food!
Oh yes, also something about a baby named Jesus lying in a manger in Bethlehem.

What is a manger? It is a feeding trough for barnyard animals; it was filled with hay and used as baby Jesus’ first cradle.

Where is Bethlehem? It is a small town about four miles south of Jerusalem.

Why is it significant that Jesus was born there? About 700 years before Jesus’ birth, the Jewish prophet Micah foretold that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2).

What is a Messiah? It means the Anointed One. He would come “to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel,” but also to be “a light for the nations … to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6). His arrival that day was both for Jews and for all the peoples of the world.

Was his coming important? Yes, vitally important, even for people living today.

Why did he come? There is a great and awesome God who brought this world into existence and who rules over it. This God is utterly holy, set apart from sin. At the same time, it is a fact that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Most people believe that God “grades us on the curve” and so will admit anyone to Heaven who has led a fairly respectable life. This idea is the biggest and saddest fallacy of all, for those who stake their eternal lives on the belief that God will overlook all their sins will be eternally disappointed. God cannot do that, for then He would cease to be just. All who die in their sins will be permanently separated from the merciful presence of God and will be subject to His wrath. It is not popular to speak of the wrath of God, but He hates sin because it is cosmic treason against His rule and will, and because it produces horrible results, which are sadly evident in our world.

However, as Jesus stated, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16). Jesus, of God’s very nature but at the same time a human like us, came to live a perfect life (the life we must but cannot live) and to die to pay the penalty for the sins of all who believe in Him. Jesus demonstrated that He was and is who He claimed to be by rising from death and showing Himself, alive and well, to hundreds of witnesses. Now, we are all faced with a decision. As He explained, “Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” (John 3:18).

The message of Christmas, the celebration of Jesus’ birth, is that all who receive Him by faith and rest on Him alone, not on their own so-called “good life,” will be saved and given—as a free gift—a blessed eternal life. As the hymn says, “O holy Child of Bethlehem! Descend to us, we pray; cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.”

Mark H. Plumpton is a resident of Exeter, Maine, and a member of the Exeter Presbyterian Church.

by David Brickner www.JewsForJesus.org

That’s right, without Hanukkah there would be no Christmas. Yet Hanukkah, also known as the “Feast of Dedication” or the “Festival of Lights,” is not among the holidays God commanded Israel to celebrate in the Old Testament. In fact, you will only find one mention of the holiday in the Bible: “Now it was the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the Temple, in Solomon’s porch.” (John 10:22-23)

Jesus chose to be in the Temple during this festival. The startling statement He made there is best understood against the background of this feast.

Hanukkah commemorates events that took place during the inter-testamental period, that gap between the Old and New Testaments. The Jewish people were under foreign domination, ruled by the Syrian king Antiochus, who forced them to abandon their culture and religion. He made sure the Jewish people could not use the Temple to worship our God. He erected idols in the holy place—and worst of all, he sacrificed a pig on the altar.

The Jewish people were utterly defeated and demoralized—until a small band of guerrilla soldiers known as the Maccabees rekindled their hope. Within three years, these warriors miraculously recaptured Jerusalem and the Temple.

Note that Hanukkah—which means dedication—was not named for the brave warriors. The real victory was being able to worship the God of Israel once again. The Temple was rededicated on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev, in the year 165 BC.

A common Hebrew phrase connected with Hanukkah is “nes gadol haya sham,” which means, “A great miracle happened there.” Two miracles plus a common theme link Hanukkah and Christmas in a way that I hope will heighten your appreciation of both.

The first miracle is the preservation of the Jewish people. Had Antiochus been successful, Israel would have lost her unique identity and God’s precious promises would be unkept. If Antiochus had gotten his way, there would have been no recognizable Jewish culture for Messiah to be born into. Without Hanukkah, there would have been no Christmas.

Whenever you are tempted to doubt God’s saving power in your life, remember the miracle of His saving power as seen through Hanukkah, and how the small band of soldiers prevailed despite all odds. The way God preserved His people Israel reflects the way He continues keeping all of us, Jews and gentiles (non-Jews), who trust in Him today.

The second miracle associated with Hanukkah is the miracle of light, a tradition first mentioned in the Talmud—written hundreds of years after the events. According to this tradition, the menorah—the seven-branched candelabra that was to burn continually in the Temple—had been extinguished by Antiochus’ henchmen. When the Maccabees recaptured the Temple they cleansed it and searched for fresh oil to rekindle the sacred flame. But they discovered only enough oil to last one day—and it would take eight full days to prepare fresh oil. According to tradition, in their zeal to rededicate the Temple, they used what oil they had to rekindle the flame—and miraculously, it lasted for eight whole days.

According to this tradition, that is why we celebrate Hanukkah for eight nights, and why we use a special Hanukkah menorah, the Hanukkiah or nine-branched candelabra. The shamash or “servant” candle is lit first, and in turn, it lights all the other candles, beginning with one candle on the first night. Each night, another candle is lit, until the eighth night, when the entire Hanukkiah is aglow.

The book of Maccabees gives another explanation for why Hanukkah lasts eight days. The people rededicated the Temple during the Feast of Tabernacles (an eight-day holiday that would have been observed the previous month had the Syrians not occupied the Temple). King Solomon had chosen to dedicate the Temple during the Feast of Tabernacles (2 Chronicles 6 and 7), so it makes sense that the people would wish to do the same.

The Jewish historian Josephus referred to Hanukkah as the Festival of Lights, but light was also a big part of the Feast of Tabernacles celebration. Four giant candelabra—each holding four huge bowls of oil—were lit in the Court of the Women. The blaze from these 16 flames could be seen all around Jerusalem. How appropriate it was that Jesus chose this area of the Temple to declare, “I am the light of the world. He that follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life” (John 8:12).

Jesus, like the servant candle on the Hannukiah, lights our way, and sends His Spirit to ignite us as well, so that we can shine His light in a dark world. We do not have enough “oil” to live a life dedicated to God, but Jesus has miraculously provided for us.

So, the miracle of preservation made Christmas possible, and the miracle of the light reminds us of Jesus, whose advent the prophets predicted would be “a light to the gentiles” whose salvation would reach “to the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).

Finally, the common theme that links Hanukkah and Christmas is that of God with us—Immanuel. A traditional Hanukkah hymn declares to God: “Rock of Ages, let our song praise thy saving power; thou admidst the raging foes wast our sheltering tower; furious they assailed us but thine arm availed us; and thy word broke their sword when our own strength failed us.”

God was present with His people in a way that pulled the rug right out from under the evil Syrian king. When Antiochus entered into the Temple to defile it, he declared himself Antiochus “Epiphanes” meaning “God manifest.” The Jewish nation rejected his outrageous, counterfeit claim to deity.

Counterfeit because God had promised to be present with His people, not only in a miraculous military victory, but in flesh. He promised to actually be what Antiochus, in his insanity, had claimed—the incarnate God. This promise was wrapped up in the special name by which the prophet Isaiah predicted the Messiah would be known: “Behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14).

How poignant it is that Jesus chose the Festival of Dedication to stand in the Temple, in the portico of Solomon, and declare, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). Is it coincidence that Jesus chose this time and place to reveal His deity?

John tells us that in response to His claims the Jewish leaders “took up stones again to stone Him” (John 10:31). They accused Him of blasphemy, “because You, being a Man make Yourself God” (v.33).

Here’s an interesting aside going back to the original Hanukkah celebration. Before the Temple could be rededicated, a new altar needed to be built with clean stones. But what about the stones from the old altar? They had been washed of course, but they could never be considered clean, being porous as they were. According to tradition, these stones were stored in the portico of Solomon, until the Messiah would come and explain what to do with them.

Could it be that when those Jewish leaders looked around the portico of Solomon for stones to throw at Messiah Jesus, they reached for those very pieces of that old altar? What divine irony—to hurl a symbol of the sacrificial system at the One who was about to sacrifice Himself for us all.

It is only because Jesus is Immanuel–God with us–that He could sacrifice Himself as an atonement for our sin. He was born to die and rise victorious, born to light our way and make us to be lights, born to be adored by Jews and gentiles who will bow and worship the One who is the hope of Hanukkah and the Christ of Christmas. These two holidays share their ultimate significance in the person of Yeshua (Jesus) the Messiah. He truly is our Rock of Ages.

Believers still fearful one year after Baghdad church siege that killed 52

By Luiza Oleszczuk ChristianPost.com

The life of Iraqi Christians has not been easy. Since a siege directed against Christians in Baghdad in October 2010 killed 52 people, the situation of the followers of Christ in the overwhelmingly Muslim nation has grown worse.

About 500,000 Christians remain in Iraq, down from an estimated 800,000 to 1.4 million in 2003, according to a report by Minority Rights Group International, a research body. Persecution makes the Christian community smaller each year, with churches as well as households being targeted and causing worshippers to flee.

The Christmas holiday season has rarely been a happy one for Christians in the Middle East, where they are often not allowed to raise church buildings and house churches often experience raids and harassment. Experts on the region say the Christmas season is a particularly dangerous period for the Christian minority, when numerous acts of violence and vandalism take place.

The most recent of such attacks in Iraq occured on Dec. 2, when at least 25 people, many of them Christian, were wounded in an attack carried out by a group of Kurds in the Dohuk Governate in the north of the country.

Dozens of young Kurds – men who reportedly had been “instigated” by Muslim clerics – attacked several small businesses in Zakho, a city that at various times served as a checkpoint on the border with Turkey, according to a CNN report. The news network claims the attackers were targeting “a number of tourist facilities, especially facilities owned by … Christians and Yazidis.” (Yazidis are one of Iraq’s smallest religious minorities, their beliefs draw from Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism.)

A local Kurdish leader reportedly said that authorities made “a major effort” to prevent the “acts of sabotage, but they could not.” Several police officers were among those wounded.

“I denounce these inhumane and illegal acts, and I call on the people of Kurdistan to respect the national, religious and sectarian coexistence and take it as a basic goal for them to live together peacefully,” Massoud Barzani, the president of the Iraq’s Kurdistan autonomous region, told CNN at the time.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the situation of Christians from Iraq in a Monday feature, calling the public’s attention to another factor that is stirring the situation in the region – the democratic uprisings spreading across the Middle East.

“With the Arab Spring now bringing political turbulence to many other countries in the region, Christians throughout the Middle East are worried that what happened in Iraq may be a harbinger of misfortune to come in their own communities. While many remain supporters of the uprisings, others fear that the toppling of their autocratic rulers could uncork sectarian violence against Christians and other minority groups in their own nations,” the WSJ’s Sam Dagher wrote.

Such violence already took place in Egypt. Tensions between Coptic Christians and Muslims have escalated since the ousting of former president Hosni Mubarak after the Arab Spring uprisings. Mubarak was an open protector of Christians, and after the Jan. 25 revolution, several radical Islamic groups gained political power.

On Oct. 26, Coptic Christians were killed in Cairo, after Egypt’s military and police sought to quell peaceful protests by members of the country’s largest Christian denomination, the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. Currently, the Egyptian diaspora await fearfully what future the newly-minted government will bring.

In Iraq, the U.S. invasion and fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 brought sectarian violence that shook all Iraqis, including Muslim Shiites and Sunnis, according to the WSJ. But it has been catastrophic for the “nation’s fragile Christian communities.”

Iraqi Christians are caught amidst political brawls between the majority Shiite Muslims, the Sunni Muslims and the Kurds (in the north) who are predominantly Muslim, experts say.

At least 54 Iraqi churches have been bombed and at least 905 Christians killed in various acts of violence since the U.S. invasion toppled Hussein in 2003, WSJ reported.

Since 2003, attacks against these minorities by insurgents and religious extremists have driven more than half of them out of the country, according to U.N. statistics.

The persecution has been causing Christians not only to flee, but to conceal their identity. According to Minority Rights Group International, Christian and other religious minority women in Iraq have been forced to wear a head-scarf to protect themselves from attacks.

“Christian women in Kirkuk and Mosul report feeling extremely insecure outside their homes,” the organization says in a report.

Archbishop Louis Sako of the Chaldean Catholic Church in the northern provinces of Kirkuk and Sulimaniya told the WSJ recently that “Iraq could be emptied of Christians” completely, if the persecution continues with such intensity.

Religious minorities, such as Christians and Yazidis, make up less than 5 percent of Iraq’s population, according to the U.N.’s data division, as reported by WSJ.

As Christmas approaches, Iraqi Christians, while marking the birth of Jesus, will likely also recall the grim holiday season many of them experienced last year.

By JON D. LEVENSON http://online.wsj.com

The eight-day festival of Hanukkah, which Jews worldwide will begin celebrating tonight, is one of the better known of the Jewish holidays but also one of the less important.

The emphasis placed on it now is mostly due to timing: Hanukkah offers Jews an opportunity for celebration and commercialization comparable to what their Christian neighbors’ experience at Christmas, and it gives Christians the opportunity to include Jews in their holiday greetings and parties. What’s more, the observances associated with Hanukkah are few, relatively undemanding, and even appealing to children.

The story of Hanukkah also fits the political culture of the United States. Its underlying narrative recalls that of the Pilgrims: A persecuted religious minority, at great cost, breaks free of their oppressors. It wasn’t separatist Protestants seeking freedom from the Church of England in 1620, but Jews in the land of Israel triumphing over their Hellenistic overlord in 167–164 B.C., reclaiming and purifying their holiest site, the Jerusalem Temple.

Examined too casually, the stories of Plymouth Colony and Hanukkah seem to show heroes fighting for universal religious freedom. But the heroes of the Jewish story fought not only against a foreign persecutor. They also fought against fellow Jews who—perhaps more attracted to the cosmopolitan and sophisticated Greek culture than to the ways of their ancestors—cooperated with their rulers.

The revolt begins, in fact, when the patriarch of the Maccabees (as the family that led the campaign came to be known) kills a fellow Jew who was in the act of obeying the king’s decree to perform a sacrifice forbidden in the Torah. The Maccabean hero also kills the king’s officer and tears down the illicit altar. These were blows struck for Jewish traditionalism, and arguably for Jewish survival and authenticity, but not for religious freedom.

Over time, the stories of the persecutions that led to this war came to serve as models of Jewish faithfulness under excruciating persecution. In the most memorable instance, seven brothers and their mother all choose, successively, to die at the hands of their torturers rather than to yield to the demand to eat pork as a public disavowal of the God of Israel and his commandments.

To the martyrs, breaking faith with God is worse than death. In one version, their deaths are interpreted as “an atoning sacrifice” through which God sustained the Jewish people in their travail.

The tone here isn’t the lightheartedness of the Christmas season. The Christian parallels lie, instead, with Good Friday and the story of Jesus’s acceptance of his suffering and sacrificial death. In both the Jewish and the Christian stories, the death of the heroes, grievous though it is, is not the end: It is the prelude to a miraculous vindication and a glorious restoration.

The Roman Catholic tradition honors these Jewish martyrs as saints, and the Eastern Orthodox Church still celebrates Aug. 1 as the Feast of the Holy Maccabees. By contrast, in the literature of the Rabbis of the first several centuries of the common era, the story lost its connection to the Maccabean uprising, instead becoming associated with later persecutions by the Romans, which the Rabbis experienced. If the change seems odd, recall that the compositions that first told of these events (the books of Maccabees) were not part of the scriptural canon of rabbinic Judaism. But they were canonical in the Church (and remain so in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communions).

And so we encounter another oddity of Hanukkah: Jews know the fuller history of the holiday because Christians preserved the books that the Jews themselves lost. In a further twist, Jews in the Middle Ages encountered the story of the martyred mother and her seven sons anew in Christian literature and once again placed it in the time of the Maccabees.

“Hanukkah” means “dedication.” Originally, the term referred to the rededication of the purified Temple after the Maccabees’ stunning military victory. But as the story of the martyrs shows, the victory was also associated with the heroic dedication of the Jewish traditionalists of the time to their God and his Torah. If Hanukkah celebrates freedom, it is a freedom to be bound to something higher than freedom itself.

Mr. Levenson, a professor of Jewish studies at Harvard Divinity School, is co-author with Kevin J. Madigan of “Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews” (Yale University Press, 2008).

Israel’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon explains the historical facts relating to the issue of refugees in the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The video explains that the reason there are still refugees after more than six decades is because of Arab leaders’ reluctance to accept their brethren and the United Nations, which created a separate agency with unique principles and criteria. The video also highlights the issue of the Jewish refugees who were forced out of their homes in the Arab world, and were subsequently absorbed by the State of Israel.

This video was originally posted on YouTube by Danny Ayalon on Dec 4, 2011
Previous videos in this series are:
The Truth About The West Bank (July 12, 2011)
The Truth About The Peace Process (Sept 12, 2011)

Israel’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon explains the historical facts relating to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The video explains that the reason there is no successful peace process is because of decades of Palestinian and Arab recalcitrance and the main reason for the conflict is not Israel’s presence in the West Bank, but successive Palestinian leaders resistance to Jewish sovereignty.
Also follow on Twitter: http://twitter.com/DannyAyalon and http://facebook.com/DannyAyalon

Sources for the video can be found here: http://www.dannyayalon.com/Ask%20Danny/

This is part of the series Israel Palestinian Conflict.
Other videos in this series are:
The Truth About The West Bank (July 12, 2011)
The Truth About The Refugees (Dec 4, 2011)