The first war of national liberation

Diana Muir Appelbaum tells the story of Chanuka as the first war of national liberation - a Jewish struggle for self-determination. Matityahu, with his sons, fled Jerusalem for his ancestral village of Modi'in. There, a Seleucid officer ordered him to make a public sacrifice to Zeus. Matityahu refused. "I and my sons and our kinsmen," he said, "shall follow the covenant of our fathers."Other