Rabbi Jaech's Blog

On Hanukkah we tell the story of the Maccabees’ victory.  But ultimately, the victory was short-lived.   Just over two centuries after the Maccabees rededicated the Temple in Jerusalem, the Temple lay in ruins, destroyed by the Romans.  Jews never mounted a serious attempt to rebuild it.  What had been the center of Jewish religious life had become obsolete. 

Why did this happen?  Worship based on animal sacrifice had lost its resonance with most Jews.  Many lived in urban centers and did not have flocks from which to bring animals to sacrifice.  Instead, if they wished to bring an offering to the Temple, they had to pay inflated prices from merchants at its gates. This form of worship became an economic burden. 

And at the same time, Jews had been exposed to new cultural ideas, including Greek philosophy and literature.  Many of these new ideas were attractive. That’s why, in the Maccabees’ effort to retain their traditional religious practices, they fought against other Jews, and not only against the Syrian Greeks.     The changes of that time gave rise to a re-formed religion, a religion grounded in the study of sacred texts, not in the sacrifice of animals.   

We are also living in a time of great change, a time in which technological advances allow us to easily access information and multiple ways of understanding our world.  And while the human need for meaningful connection with others remains, technology enables us meet this need in ways our ancestors could not possibly have imagined.  

I don’t know what this time of change will mean for Temple Israel.  But I do know that we must change if we want to flourish.   And I am hopeful that we will flourish, if we confront these changes with deliberation and wisdom.  As one of my teachers, Rabbi Martin A. Cohen, taught: “Every Jewish generation has felt that their numbers were diminishing.  Maybe that’s why we are still here.  Such a feeling forces us to re-think the way we do business.” 

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts, and hope to have many opportunities to do so in the time ahead.