Tibor and Agnes Schatteles
are wishing you a happy Chanukah calling on you to remember:
Some of those who also remembered
YEHUDA MACCABEE
We know the story, but it is good to periodically call back its teachings, also when they reach us from rather unusual sources, i.e. others than within the Hebrew tradition. There are not many such sources, but they are always worth to be remembered. The story's lessons are not very comfortable to everyone, especially to those who, purportedly in the name of "peace", want to give us different instructions.
It is a great poet, yes, one of the greatest ever, Dante Alighieri, who found a few words which ought to be remembered and repeated by us. We know, of course, that he stuffed into the Inferno quite a few popes and priests of the religion the teachings of which have only too often been distorted to justify the burning alive of "unbelievers". Yet he, Dante, an honest follower of his religion, treated with respect those to whom many of the "burned ones" belonged. And though he kept out of his Paradiso many of those of the earlier Covenant, he also protected them from Hell's flames in a place where they were supposed to wait in safety for a "Second Coming". But there were exceptions. Thus, when guided by an ancestor of his, Cacciaguida by name, in the fifth circle of the Paradiso, a place where worthy warriors found their rest, they arrived to a point of which we read the following:
In questa quinta soglia
de l'albero che vive de la cima
e frutta sempre e mai non perde foglia
spirit sombeaty, che giú, prima
che venissero, el ciel, fuor di gran voce,
si que ogne musa ne sarebbe opima.
[Paradiso, XVIII, 28 ff.]
Or, in Longfellow's rendition:
In the fifth resting place
Upon the tree that liveth by its top,
And aye bears fruit, and never loseth leaf,
Are blessed spirits that below, ere yet
They came to Heaven, were of such great renown
That every Muse therewith would affluent be.
And the Muse could be enriched indeed at least by some of those names whose bearers, if called by Cacciaguida, appeared shortly in a flash of flame so that the wandering poet could see them. First it was Joshua, the one who led the Israelites in the conquest of the Land which God promised them. Then, when Cacciaguida called again, came the one whose fame comes from defending that very same Land against a vicious conqueror. And so:
E al nome de l'alto Macabeo
vidi moversi un altro roteando
e letizia era ferza del paleo
[Paradiso XXVIII, 400 ff.]
Or, once again as rendered by Longfellow:
And at the name of the great Maccabee
I saw another [flame column] move itself revolving,
And gladness was the whip unto the top.
In Dante's Paradise, in the fifth circle, those who defended the Land of their people led the procession. Hermeneutical "interpretations" could not talk away their role in history as rendered by the litera of the chronicler, and thus Dante celebrates, as we do now, the alto Macabeo.
And so does Dante's translator, Longfellow, in his drama Judas Maccabaeus, a play in which the beautiful lines of the great American poet convey valuable teachings also about the difference between Peace and "peace". So we read Antiochus bragging:
Have I not sacked thee Temple, and the altar
Set up the statue of Olympian Zeus?
[Act I, Sc.I]
These were the words addressed to a "peace loving" Hebrew priest, formerly called Joshua, then Jason by his Graecized name, who was supposed to offer also an example:
So shall the Hebrew nation be translated,
Their very nature and their names be changed. [ibid.]
When in his chambers, the king was quite open. But less so in politics. Thus, that very same Antiochus sent his general, Nicanor, on a "peace mission" to Judas Maccabaeus with the following message:
Nic. Thou hast the nobler virtues of thy race,
Without the failings that attend to those virtues.
Thou canst be strong, and yet not tyrannous,
Canst righteous be and not intolerant.
Let there be peace between us. [Act III, Sc. III]
Most flattering, considering that it comes from a general of his who has bragged about annihilating the Hebrew people.
Are there also in our days some who would yield to such deceiving adulation, especially in exchange for some ephemeral worldly advantages promised by the followers of those who already had a place in the Inferno [XXVIII, 30 ff.] because "seminator di scandalo e di scisma fuor vivi" or "sowers of scandal and schism have been while living"? So was in those days with the already mentioned Jason to whom, when captured, Judah Maccabee addressed the following words:
I will spare your life
To punish thee the longer. Thou shalt wander
Among strange nations. Thou, that hast cast out
So many from their native land, shalt perish
In a strange land. Thou, hast left so many
Unburied, shalt have none to morn for thee,
Nor any solemn funeral at all,
Nor sepulchre with thy fathers. [Act IV, Sc.II]
And the words he addressed to Nicanor reflect the determination of a man who is always ready to face truth:
What peace?
Is it to bow in silence to our victors?
Is it to see our cities sacked and pillaged,
Our people slain, or sold as slaves, or fleeing
At night-time by the blaze of burning towns;
Jerusalem laid waste; the Holy Temple
Polluted with strange gods? Are these things of peace?
And as we celebrate Chanukah, we may also remember and consider this rendition of the words of
IL ALTO MACCABEO
are wishing you a happy Chanukah calling on you to remember:
Some of those who also remembered
YEHUDA MACCABEE
We know the story, but it is good to periodically call back its teachings, also when they reach us from rather unusual sources, i.e. others than within the Hebrew tradition. There are not many such sources, but they are always worth to be remembered. The story's lessons are not very comfortable to everyone, especially to those who, purportedly in the name of "peace", want to give us different instructions.
It is a great poet, yes, one of the greatest ever, Dante Alighieri, who found a few words which ought to be remembered and repeated by us. We know, of course, that he stuffed into the Inferno quite a few popes and priests of the religion the teachings of which have only too often been distorted to justify the burning alive of "unbelievers". Yet he, Dante, an honest follower of his religion, treated with respect those to whom many of the "burned ones" belonged. And though he kept out of his Paradiso many of those of the earlier Covenant, he also protected them from Hell's flames in a place where they were supposed to wait in safety for a "Second Coming". But there were exceptions. Thus, when guided by an ancestor of his, Cacciaguida by name, in the fifth circle of the Paradiso, a place where worthy warriors found their rest, they arrived to a point of which we read the following:
In questa quinta soglia
de l'albero che vive de la cima
e frutta sempre e mai non perde foglia
spirit sombeaty, che giú, prima
che venissero, el ciel, fuor di gran voce,
si que ogne musa ne sarebbe opima.
[Paradiso, XVIII, 28 ff.]
Or, in Longfellow's rendition:
In the fifth resting place
Upon the tree that liveth by its top,
And aye bears fruit, and never loseth leaf,
Are blessed spirits that below, ere yet
They came to Heaven, were of such great renown
That every Muse therewith would affluent be.
And the Muse could be enriched indeed at least by some of those names whose bearers, if called by Cacciaguida, appeared shortly in a flash of flame so that the wandering poet could see them. First it was Joshua, the one who led the Israelites in the conquest of the Land which God promised them. Then, when Cacciaguida called again, came the one whose fame comes from defending that very same Land against a vicious conqueror. And so:
E al nome de l'alto Macabeo
vidi moversi un altro roteando
e letizia era ferza del paleo
[Paradiso XXVIII, 400 ff.]
Or, once again as rendered by Longfellow:
And at the name of the great Maccabee
I saw another [flame column] move itself revolving,
And gladness was the whip unto the top.
In Dante's Paradise, in the fifth circle, those who defended the Land of their people led the procession. Hermeneutical "interpretations" could not talk away their role in history as rendered by the litera of the chronicler, and thus Dante celebrates, as we do now, the alto Macabeo.
And so does Dante's translator, Longfellow, in his drama Judas Maccabaeus, a play in which the beautiful lines of the great American poet convey valuable teachings also about the difference between Peace and "peace". So we read Antiochus bragging:
Have I not sacked thee Temple, and the altar
Set up the statue of Olympian Zeus?
[Act I, Sc.I]
These were the words addressed to a "peace loving" Hebrew priest, formerly called Joshua, then Jason by his Graecized name, who was supposed to offer also an example:
So shall the Hebrew nation be translated,
Their very nature and their names be changed. [ibid.]
When in his chambers, the king was quite open. But less so in politics. Thus, that very same Antiochus sent his general, Nicanor, on a "peace mission" to Judas Maccabaeus with the following message:
Nic. Thou hast the nobler virtues of thy race,
Without the failings that attend to those virtues.
Thou canst be strong, and yet not tyrannous,
Canst righteous be and not intolerant.
Let there be peace between us. [Act III, Sc. III]
Most flattering, considering that it comes from a general of his who has bragged about annihilating the Hebrew people.
Are there also in our days some who would yield to such deceiving adulation, especially in exchange for some ephemeral worldly advantages promised by the followers of those who already had a place in the Inferno [XXVIII, 30 ff.] because "seminator di scandalo e di scisma fuor vivi" or "sowers of scandal and schism have been while living"? So was in those days with the already mentioned Jason to whom, when captured, Judah Maccabee addressed the following words:
I will spare your life
To punish thee the longer. Thou shalt wander
Among strange nations. Thou, that hast cast out
So many from their native land, shalt perish
In a strange land. Thou, hast left so many
Unburied, shalt have none to morn for thee,
Nor any solemn funeral at all,
Nor sepulchre with thy fathers. [Act IV, Sc.II]
And the words he addressed to Nicanor reflect the determination of a man who is always ready to face truth:
What peace?
Is it to bow in silence to our victors?
Is it to see our cities sacked and pillaged,
Our people slain, or sold as slaves, or fleeing
At night-time by the blaze of burning towns;
Jerusalem laid waste; the Holy Temple
Polluted with strange gods? Are these things of peace?
And as we celebrate Chanukah, we may also remember and consider this rendition of the words of
IL ALTO MACCABEO
