The Maccabees and Joseph – Two Sides of the Same Coin
Every year we begin reading the Torah at the start of Genesis on Simchat Torah – hearing the creation story. This means that by the time we get to Chanukah we are nearing the end of the first book of the Torah. We have heard the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Esau. Thus, whenever Chanukah comes around, we are always hearing the Joseph narrative on Shabbat in the Torah portions Vayeshev, Mikketz and, in some years, Vayiggash.
The Joseph story is an immensely strong narrative in the Torah, full of twists and turns, strong emotion and passion, skulduggery and cases of mistaken identity. Small wonder that it was the Joseph story that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice adapted into their originally 15 minute long musical for Colet Court School in Barnes in 1968. The story holds up so strongly that this musical has recorded at least 20,000 performances since then at schools, drama groups and in theatres around the world.
Chanukah is also based on a strong story. The story of the Maccabees, the family from Modi’in, halfway between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean who held out against the tyranny of Antiochus Epiphanes. This made for a dramatic book 2100 years ago published separately from the Jewish Bible. The Maccabee story has been retold every year since their victory for the Jewish people in the year 164BCE. Even though the story of the oil that lasted out the eight days in the Temple was not part of the original story, its addition to the Maccabee narrative at least 1500 years ago made it even more of a gripping tale of courage and resilience in the face of apparently greater forces.
Chanukkah begins on the 25th day of this month of Kislev every year because that was the day of the re-dedication of the Temple according to the Book of Maccabees. The coincidence of the Maccabee victory being recorded as having taken place on one of the Shabbatot on which we hear about Joseph is just that, a coincidence. Apart from both of the stories being big sweeping narratives which have so stood the test of time that they are known to this day by pretty much every Jew, there would appear to be nothing much in common between them.
Yet in our time it is quite possible to link the stories of the Maccabees and Joseph together. This is not because they are the same story but because they are the opposite sides of a coin of great value. The Maccabees struggled in the Land of Israel against forced assimilation into Greek culture and religion. The success of their struggle ensured that Israel would once again become the land for Judaism and the Jewish people. The Maccabees also ensured from their base in Modi’in that Jews could worship in their own authentic way, just as the thriving, Progressive Synagogue in the town, Kehillat Yozma, does today.
Joseph did not grow up in Israel but reached full adulthood in Egypt, as the very first Diaspora Jew. To a great extent Joseph did assimilate into Egyptian culture. In next week’s Torah portion, when the Pharoah promotes him from prisoner to second only to the King, he takes the Egyptian name Zaphnat Paaneach – no longer is he Yosef Ben Yaacov.
As viceroy of Egypt he looked so different from the seventeen-year-old whom his brothers had sold into slavery that they did not recognise him when they came to him in Egypt to buy food. He now spoke Egyptian. He now behaved and dressed as an Egyptian potentate, hence his brothers’ great shock when he throws off his Egyptian costume and reveals who he really is to his brothers. He was exactly the kind of Jew whom the Maccabees would presumably have despised, when they opposed Jews taking on Hellenistic ways, dressing as Greek intellectuals and sportsmen, studying Greek wisdom, absorbing Greek culture. Joseph, it seemed had become more Egyptian than the Egyptians.
But yet Joseph is also a great Jewish model for our time and for every time since the beginning of Jewish emancipation. He is a model for everywhere in the world where Jews can choose whether or not to be Jewish, like frankly we can here in England, and have been able to do so ever since we left the ghettos. There Joseph was able to live as an Egyptian ruler, married to Asenat, daughter of an Egyptian priest and yet Joseph never loses his Jewish identity. Just as the Maccabees fought against the violence which refused them the right to be Jews in their own land so Joseph would not let the temptation to leave off his Judaism and join the Egyptian aristocracy for ever snuff out his Judaism and that of his own descendants.
Joseph, son of Jacob, took his rightful place among the tribes of Israel when his and Asenat’s sons Ephraim and Manasseh were acknowledged by their grandfather Jacob as equally entitled to take the Jewish heritage forwards. Ephraim and Manasseh took their place as Jewish equals among Jacob’s other sons who had never become Egyptian.
Every Shabbat Jews reflect Joseph and Asenat’s success in bringing up Jewish children in the traditional blessing for boys on Shabbat Evening – “May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh”. With this blessing we celebrate the children of a mixed faith family who became the progenitors of a large proportion of the Jewish people through their parent’s choice to bring them up in the tradition of Abraham and Sarah. The traditional blessing for girls is the more obvious “May God make you like Sarah, Rebekkah, Rachel and Leah”, women who built the first Jewish families.
The Maccabees succeeded in ensuring Jewish continuity in the Land of Israel. Had they not fought against forced Hellenisation, the Jewish religion and culture would have died out two thousand or so years ago and we would not be here today. In our day the Maccabee heritage is represented by those who defend the State of Israel and defend Jews around the world.
Joseph succeeded in ensuring Jewish continuity in the first ever Diaspora. Had he not taken care of his brothers and brought up his own children as the Children of Israel there would have been no Jews to march out of Egypt. The way the story goes we would have just been another slave people dying out in Egypt. In our day Joseph is represented by the Jews who choose to be and to remain Jews when every option in the world is available to them and especially by parents whose children are born with a non-Jewish parent and choose to bring their children up as Jews together with their partner.
The achievement of both the Maccabees and Joseph is worthy of celebration this and next Shabbat and in Chanukah which begins with the first candle next Sunday night.
Rabbi Mark Goldsmith, Rabbi at Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue
The views expressed in this D’var Torah do not necessarily reflect the position of Leo Baeck College.