Perspectives on Chanukah

"Perspectives on Chanukah" is a non-fiction essay by Harry Turtledove. Broadcast on National Public Radio in 2001, it did not appear in print form until 2015, when it ran in We Install and Other Stories. The brief essay examines the cultures of the Syrian Greeks and the Jews as they existed in the 2nd century BC, when clash between these two cultures led to the battle which Chanukah memorializes. Turtledove asks us to examine the attitudes toward religion and rectitude which were expressed by the commanders on both sides of the conflict, and to consider which 21st-century mouthpieces espouse similar views.