Mrs. Cooperman wishes all readers of TRADITION a good Shabbos - Rosh Hodesh - Hannuka! Revisit her classic wisdom for this Shabbat in the timeless essay of our esteemed editor emeritus, Rabbi Emanuel Feldman, who taught us that old Mrs. C, unlearned as she may have been, “poured out before the Creator every Shabbat morning” a “torrent of words” which contained “a key ingredient of worship.”

The Maccabees won the battle, but did they lose the war? Modern scholarship demonstrates that Judaism was irrevocably transformed by its encounter with Hellenism, which ushered in a new way of thinking about existence and God’s place within it. Post-modern philosophers raised searing critiques of Hellenistic metaphysics and theology. In a remarkable passage, Rav Kook articulates the sharpest of these. He goes on to read the Hanukkah miracle as an allegory for the ultimate resolution to the crisis, one which anticipates key ideas of postmodern thinker Jacques Derrida. Aton Holzer explains....