Hanukkah begins at sundown tonight. The Washington Post reports on a city in Israel that has re-created the story.
Dressed in a tunic and brandishing a sword, Zohar Baram leaps around the makeshift stage in the re-created Israeli village of Kfar Hashmonaim as dozens of children follow the action.
“I am the old Mattathias, and I have seen a lot in my life,” he says in a booming voice. “The Greeks have forbidden us from reading the Torah and observing the Sabbath. . . . We are Jews, and we will always be Jews. Whoever is for God, follow me!”
What follows is a tale of military triumph and a miraculous supply of oil, a story told the world over that gains magic when recounted in the land where it took place. The reenactment of the Hanukkah story, which commemorates the time when a small band of Jews, the Hasmoneans, fought the Greeks for the right to worship in the Temple in Jerusalem, is only part of a visit to Baram’s Hasmonean village, which tries to re-create life during that period, more than 2,000 years ago.
At the village, about halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, children can participate in several activities appropriate to Hanukkah. In one area they harvest olives from a tree and crush them into oil using an ancient olive press. In another they make mosaics, and in a third they make copies of ancient coins.
You can read the rest here.
HT: Paleojudaica
