Growing up as an semi-assimilated Jewish boy in suburban Washington, DC, I “read” the Hanukah story as YASOOAJ (Yet Another Saga Of Oppressors and Jews).

Not hard to understand why.  I was assimilated enough, but also different.  When I started in 1st Grade everyone else in my school was saying the Lord’s Prayer at Assembly. I didn’t even know what it was (although I learned to fake it).

I was called “Jew boy” more than once, although not often or routinely.

I gravitated towards the only other Jewish boy in 5th and 6th grade.

In short, it wasn’t harsh, but I was ghetto-ized, and I ghetto-ized myself.

Natural for me to believe that the Greeks — Antiochus and his Hellenist crew — had it in for the Jews.  Natural to believe that it was David vs. Goliath all over again.

Except a few years ago I read an account — in Tikkun, I think, but maybe not — of Hanukah from the Hellenistic point of view.

The Hellenists were a pretty tolerant bunch.  They had been all over the Mediterranean by the time of the Hanukah story, and seen all kinds of different peoples.  They were tolerant of all kinds of stuff, as long as you paid your taxes and cooperated.

But what they couldn’t stand about the Jews was infant circumcision, or, as we might call it today, male infant genital mutilation.

To the Greeks, the body was sacred, and you didn’t cut parts off, no matter what your tribal God said to you.

So they forbade the Jews under their dominion from doing it.

The Jews were a bit like a Taliban today, though.  They didn’t want foreigners imposing stuff on them.  So they entered into guerrilla warfare, led by a Duck-Dynasty type family from the sticks, the Maccabees.

Lurch.  From David and Goliath to Taliban vs. liberators of male infants.

Maybe the Hellenists had a point.