chickensducks&agoose :
The Greeks tried to suppress the Jews, and wrecked their temples, and burned their houses and killed bunches of people. They erected statues of their many Gods in the place of the Jewish temples to just one God, and generally both sides totally disagreed, but the Greeks were the rulers of the land of Judea (israel). Then, an old man stood up to the greek army, and said "No, we will not forsake our God"... because the Greeks said that the Jews had to worship the Greek gods, and wear the greek clothes etc. That old man was too old and sick to fight, but his son, Judah, also called Macabee (hammer), raised an army of Macabees, to fight the Greeks. They went to their Capitol city of Jerusalem, which the Greek had overthrown years before, and fixed it up, removed the Greek statues, and made a menorah for the alter. Sadly, they only had enough oil for one day, but Miraculously, it lasted 8 days and nights. So when we light the candles in our Menorah, we're not to do any work while the candles burn down, in honor of the Macabees, who worked so hard to fight for our rights to worship.
our latkes turned out awesome, but for some reason my kids hate them... so I got to eat most of them. We also played the Dreidel game, and I will say, I did quite well!
Actually that is not entirely accurate. The religious Jews were mainly killing the non-religious Jews that had assimilated until they were not distinguishable from the idolater neighbors.
Also I think that it is important to add the the 'Greeks' that are being spoken of are not the current day Greeks, they were a people called Assyrians they are not related to current day Syrians or Greeks, and this is not a holiday celebrating the deaths of our neighbors it is celebrating the fighting (and winning) the right to worship as we please.
Robin'sBrood: I think that it is great that you are teaching your children all about other religions! If you have any trouble finding a good learning source I can help.
