Welcome to Judaism Demystified, a podcast for the perplexed.
Join us as we explore some of the most fascinating Jewish and
Torah related topics with our esteemed guests.
By tackling some of the biggest questions you likely won't find
addressed elsewhere, we aim to shed light on important issues
and inspire a return to the fundamentals.
Enjoy the show. Thank you, Hannah for joining
the Judaism Demystified podcast. We are so excited for this.
First of all, before we begin, I want to give a special thank you
and shout out to Johnny Rea Boy. A mutual friend of ours who gave
me a quick text message a few days ago says we got to get this
podcast going. And I, I once I read about your
book, I was sold and I'm very excited to get into discussion.
But before we do, can you just tell our audience a little bit
about yourself and your background?
Sure. Yeah, I'm Hannah Cohen.
I'm from Chicago. The great, the great old
Midwest. I've been working for the OU for
a bunch of years. And again, a lot of that kind of
influenced the writing of this book, which maybe we'll get into
a little bit, maybe we won't. We'll see.
I worked for JLIC on on campus at Queen's College when I lived
in Jersey for a few years. Then I worked for their research
department and did like a massive large scale study on the
shuttle crisis, which is always a great conversation starter for
any Shabbos meal. You could pretend you worked for
the Center for Communal Research if you're low on Shabbos table
topics for the shuttle crisis. It's it's great.
And now I actually work for JLIC again.
I work for their young professional leadership division
called Yavna Young Professionals.
So that's kind of like my, my work experience.
And this is my first experience really writing, researching and
writing. Recently I've gotten a lot into
history and just the moral, the moral lessons that are embedded
in the history of the Jewish people.
I've I've become very interested in that and that's how I got to
writing this book in one way or another.
OK, so just to get right into it, we want to know what
inspired you to write a historical fiction novel set
during the time of The Maccabees and how does it connect to the
idea of reviving heroes in Jewish culture?
Yeah, OK, so thanks for for the perfect question set up.
So again, a a piece of what inspired me.
I feel like I've, I've, I've said this in a lot of kind of
different ways, but really what inspired me was I have my, my
oldest is an 11 year old boy and as he grows older, I have a 7
year old girl and a four year old boy and a baby now also.
And just seeing kind of the, the media that's available for them
in Jewish culture, especially Jewish media started like
grating on me more and more as time went on.
And just feeling like, again, especially with the study of
history that I was doing on the side that there are so many
great stories available about Jews for Jews, about Jewish
history that are literally epic. They're epic stories of Jewish
heroes. And in a certain way, we don't
have access to that. Our children don't have access
to that where they do have access to things like Batman and
Superman. Like, OK, I remember one time I
was at a friend's house on shop this afternoon, sitting outside
and I saw her, her five year old son was playing with a bunch of
five year old boys outside, whatever, and a few girls
outside. And he was at the top of the
slide. And he said to the friends at
the bottom, he's like, guys, I'm going to be Batman.
And you guys, you're all the bad guys.
And like quickly all the little kids like fell in line with
this. And I was sitting there like
literally horrified where I was like, again, I like Batman.
I think Batman's actually really good.
I think the stories of heroes and superheroes are really
important for developing minds, developing young minds in any
capacity. My mind too, right?
Like, they're just, they're good for the soul.
And I was just like, the kid's name was Yehuda.
And I was like, in why didn't he say to them, guys, I'm Yehuda
Hamakabi, you're the Greeks, right?
Like that's what I want. Like I want us to have an
understanding of our own heroes in a way that like, again,
Batman and Superman are great and I'm not anti them in any
capacity, but like, we should have access to our own heroes
too. And in a certain way we don't.
And I think it's because in a certain way, sometimes we feel
like we have sort of this moral, like morally we can't touch
them. Morally, they're beyond our Ken.
Like there's right, Like there's all this like hush scuffic.
Am I allowed to say that kind of thing?
I'm over here, right? I can, I could be honest, like,
right. There's like a hush scuffic.
Right for honesty in this podcast we struck for.
Honesty, I thought so I just like felt like I should check
before I continue this rant a little bit right?
But like there's a certain Hushkuffic like philosophy that
we shouldn't speak about heroes. And I think it's a little weird
because I think that there's no parallel of like a Hushkuffic
feeling like we should talk about heroes and that any
developing human needs heroes. So that's like kind of how I got
started here where I'm like, I want my kids growing up to stay
to each other. Guys, I'm Yehuda Homakovi,
you're the Greeks. Let's let's play this game,
right? Like there's always going to be
good and evil. Let's give our own kids, our own
heroes that exist that we are scared of and let's stop being
scared of them and let's know their stories.
Should I keep going or or like? I wanted, I wanted to just
clarify something. So when you say that we don't
have access to our heroes, So what you I want to clarify as to
what you mean by this. So you don't mean in terms
meaning we do have almost what? Role models.
Role models, but in in the form of almost like we do have
superhero status. OK.
And then what you're trying to say is, is that because they
have this superhero status, we can't really talk about it and
talk about them in any real meaningful way that's relatable
to us simple people in a way. Is that what you mean?
Yeah, Bensi, I actually love that you just clarify that,
right, Because I think in a lot of ways we do have these larger
than life figures in Judaism and the Jewish culture.
Every Bible hero, so to speak, is like that, right?
Like we don't touch them with a 10 foot pole.
I'm not saying we should. If you notice, I didn't write
about the first temple period. I wrote about the second temple
period, right. Like, I'm also scared of like
going there because they were real and like, far be it for me
to to put some some narrative of their life, you know, down on
paper. But on the other hand, like,
there's something a hero isn't someone who is larger than life.
Like, I actually don't like the term superhero.
I think in a certain way, exactly like you said, we have
superheroes. We have like, you know,
biographies and graphic novels and some podcasts like stories
for kids in which the elder rabbinic figure is beyond
question, beyond fallibility. Never makes a mistake, doesn't
have Sahara, right? And if they make a mistake or
they have a Sahara, it's blacklisted.
And like, now we're in CRM and we have like a massive communal
controversy around it. And that's not heroes.
It doesn't, it doesn't compel, it doesn't compel the developing
soul of every human that like there's some reflection that you
see in yourself and in the story in front of you.
And in the same way that you feel like the character in the
story is struggling with their own Dragons, is struggling with
their own demons, is falling, is coming out with something new
inside of them. And then they could offer the
world that struggle and that fall and that coming out with
something new. That's the process that really
is reflected and should be reflected in the soul of every
person reading or hearing or listening to A to a great story.
But to do that, the characters in the story have to not be
perfect. And they have to do things that
are mistakes and they have to struggle and they have to have a
hard time and they have to do something that makes you
frustrated with them every once in a while.
And we don't have those stories. We don't.
We don't tell them. I would cautiously argue that
the Bible, that the Torah itself actually really follows this
line. Have you by any chance ever read
Svigrumit's book on Genesis from Magi Publishing?
His the entire book is really trying to show that Avram
Yitzhak Yaakov and the Imahot and and and and the Shwatim and
Yosef. They were there's a constant
struggle to achieve that covenant with with with God.
And it's, it's, he goes through all the ups and downs and very
close reading to the text as I'm reading it, as I, as I have been
reading it, I've never felt the Torah impact me more than when
I've read his book. And I think that we, we almost
create a barrier, you know what I mean, in that everything.
And like you said, when it comes to the Torah, it gets a little
bit more complicated, of course, right?
It's harder to touch that, of course, right.
But it's not only just that it's like you said, it's, it's, it's
a, it's our, it's our, you know, Rabbis Dolan.
And we have, you know, figures of the, the medieval times that
we're, we're not allowed to kind of peek into their actual human
struggles in life because we have to put him on a certain
pedestal and it becomes distance instead of, instead of actually
getting something from their lives.
So I I I really I actually. Think just just to build on
that, I think that there it's very explicit in in Tanakh with
DaVita Melek that he says himself Khatati, right?
He says I sinned. But we obviously have a
reverence and Tamil tries to make us see things in a
different point of from a different point of view.
And that's all very, you know, fine and dandy, but the, the
truth is the approach we have this reverence that we have
sometimes creates a distance to the point of like not being able
to relate similar to Lahavdeal, but similar to like, like
Christian Saints where, you know, they're, they're almost
like angels. You can't really, you can't
relate to someone who never sinned, who never really sinned.
Yeah. And it.
Doesn't have to be that way though.
The reverence doesn't go away from from acknowledging her
version of what she's saying as a hero.
It's not. It doesn't.
It shouldn't lead to any type of lack of reverence.
If anything, it gives a more meaningful reference.
We just had a similar discussion 2 episodes ago, I believe, with
Rabbi Gill's students on this exact topic.
It's about reverence, so if anybody wants to go back and
listen to that. But just to continue about the
point you were making, was there anything else you wanted to say
on this topic? Yeah, just I, I totally, I
totally hear what both of you are saying.
And again, I definitely have inside of me this like push,
pull with like how far back it could go, right.
Like I am I, I am scared to touch, so to speak, the Bible
heroes, even though I think exactly what you're saying, this
isn't a modern approach. You see that the Torah is
written in a way that assumes that everybody who's there,
who's a model of Judaism for the ages is also fallible fights,
makes mistakes. We have long arguments for
thousands of years about exactly the kinds of mistakes that they
make. But the fact that they made
mistakes is really on the table for everybody.
Like that's for sure. That being said, again, like to
answer your original first question, like that's why I went
into the second Temple period. I think that the story of the
Hanukkah story is the really the first proliferated story that is
a like a super clear story of good versus evil, right?
The Greeks were not allowing us to serve God and to, you know,
to show up in the land of Israel with the people of Israel in the
way that the people of Israel should show up.
And we fought back with the tiniest resistance against a
large. We're like, it's a classic
versus evil story. And even that we light the
Hanukkah candles and we're like, thank you, God for the miracles
of the wars. And we're like, what wars did
they fight? What miracles?
Who were they like? Nobody even knows, right.
So again, like, that's why I took that second temple period.
And again, especially on a Jewish holiday that comes up
every year saying like here at least is a place where we we
have to touch it delicately. And I was like, I tried to be
very delicate and especially you go to homocrity's character.
But here's something that we should know more about.
We should be able to relate to it as a classic hero story
that's meant to speak to humans, just like every hero story is
meant to speak to humans. And like, let's learn something
from it. Like, let's, let's really get to
the bottom of what this story is trying to tell us about
ourselves. Yeah.
And I think because we don't have a safer, we don't have a
book or Megillah on, on Hanukkah, this is a great
opportunity for, you know, you're, I think most people
don't know the history surrounding Hanukkah, what was
happening at the time. So like, I think your book is
really just coming out of such a great time.
It's a great opportunity. I think you you touched on
something that was very much needed.
So we're very excited to get more into this.
One other point before we move on, I am actually borrowing this
from something you said in a different podcast, but I wanted
to just bring it up here because I think it was so important.
Is that a lot of times when, when we read these narratives in
Torah and, and, and you know, the book of Maccabees, the book
of the McGill anything, we come from a after the fact standpoint
where we don't, we don't seem to realize that the, that the that
the people that were involved in the story, right, They don't
know how it's going to end. And you can argue this also by
the way, for the, for the tour as well.
Like, you know, Yaakov was scared of ace of and he says
Katante Mikola Hassadi Mcbini. We, we tend to think like in, in
this, like a after the fact and like, you know, that and that
they kind of, we, we shaped them as if they've, they've also
already always known, like we know thousands of years later.
And I think that you mentioned in, in a different podcast how
you wanted to make sure that you captured the feelings and the
worries and the, and the, and the, and the concerns that that
your, your, your, your characters in your book are
feeling as the Hanukkah story is moving along.
I I thought that was amazing. Yeah, I actually love that
point, which is as soon as you write a book about the Hashmana,
even about the Hanukkah time period, the number one sort of
like Ground Zero question where it's going to start.
Is that like, did Matisyahu and the Makabeim or the Hashmanai
brothers start fighting thinking they were going to win, or did
they start fighting thinking they were going to lose?
Right. And your whole philosophy of
what it would have felt like to show up and actually fight
alongside them at the time is going to come down to one of
those questions. And again, before I started
writing, I spent a long time, like reading kind of different
sources that went in One Direction or another.
And I feel like it's a question we all have to ask ourselves.
But I love what you're saying. Ben C Like very, very little
time do we ever spend lighting the candles and being like, did
Matisyu really think he was gonna win?
Like it's almost impossible to think that he thought he was
gonna win. On the other hand, like he had a
muna that was like, you know, head and shoulders above me.
So like maybe he started knowing that it was the right thing.
And but like, I didn't really think so again, like I debated
back and forth and I came out on the side of like, I'm, I'm
pretty sure they did this thinking that it was like
communal suicide, but had to be done because again, like that's
the Jewish tradition. You stand up for what's right
and you don't really worry about what's going to happen to you on
the other side of it. But it's really hard to read the
story thinking that they thought that they were going to have a
successful revolt. And also like, was the revolt
successful? Did it end?
Like, did it ever end? Was there ever?
Like, you know, it gets really dicey when you look at the
history beyond the actual lighting of the menorah in the
rededication of the Temple, which is why the book ends
there. Fantastic.
And then it's it's that's incredible.
OK, so you've spoken about the shit of Crisis and the absence
of compelling male heroes in Jewish literature.
How does your protagonist Gilad, fill this gap?
What What impact do you hope his character will have on young
male readers? OK, I love that question.
Thank you so much. I really feel like you did your
research. You know, I feel like you like
you understand what I was trying to do here again.
So what you just did is like, is, is Mary not to to use like
a, you know, a too apropos of a term, But the shut off crisis
study with this right, which is that part of what we found in
the shut off crisis study. I'm like on one foot is that it
seems to be that men are much more likely to veer left and off
of the beaten path path of Judaism than are women.
And what what's happening and why it's happening is a larger
scale question that really nobody could answer.
But in terms of having done the research, I was the qualitative
researcher. So I was the one who listened to
the stories and again and again and again and again and sort of
really had to hold all of that, the tension around the shut up
crisis, both for the single people and the people who are
trying to help the single people in one way or another.
And really this was like part of the answer that I came up with
is like, we have to do a better job speaking to the soul of
developing, especially males in Judaism, right?
Something social, like some socialization, culturalization,
pieces off that like more men are born than women, you know,
whatever demographically, statistically, but then men seem
to like disappear somewhere. Where are they going, right?
So again, for for me feeling like I had something that I
could do about that was very important, that I wasn't just
helpless and going to watch the train wreck happen and hope that
it wasn't my kids who suffered, but someone else's kids who
suffered. Like that wasn't really going to
be good enough for me. And this was the place where I
felt like I could do something about that by again, introducing
these characters that allowed Jewish, again, especially
developing Jewish male minds and souls and characters with models
that spoke to them. So I'm going to talk about that
in a second. But really like for me, thinking
back about the men who again, it's funny, like the men in my
life who I call when I have a question about like a question
about morality, they're all there.
There are like two of them that are like my go to.
If I'm like, I'm not really sure what to do about this, Obviously
I ask my husband. And then I have like these two
people who I worked with and both of them are big comic book
people. They're both people who are
heavily impacted by reading comic books when they were a
kid. Like they just have this moral
piece of them that has spent a lot of time and imagining good
and evil and feeling like they're on the side of the good
and it really makes them moral people.
I really do feel like that. So I really, again, wanted to
do, that's where I felt like I could just do something about
that by introducing these heroes.
But that being said, again, the main character of the book is
not Yehuda Homokibee. It's not even any of the five
Hashimanayi brothers, Ormatisyahu, even though they
are the heroes of the Hanukkah story, But the hero of the story
I knew had to be much more fallible then I was OK, like
making you Huda Homocoby and had to in some way resonate with
these like deep soulful question that every developing human kind
of goes through in their minds. A big influence for me here,
which I'll have to like kind of give deference to is Joseph
Campbell, who was a mythologist who studied the the myths of all
cultures and which myths survived in the different
cultures. He basically mapped what he
called the hero's journey, right?
That every good story and this was a really a shift that I got
from Campbell. Every good story is not about
something that happens. Sometimes we think that, right?
Like I say that this is a historical fiction about the
Hanukkah time period. It's not really a historical
fiction about the Hanukkah time period.
It's really a story about a specific person and the story is
about that person's shift because that's the part that
resonates with the human who's reading it.
That's the part that feels like it's speaking to our soul and
teaching us a little bit about how we could show up in our own
struggles and in our own lives. And the backdrop of that was the
Hanukkah story, right again, which is I'm sort of being
tongue in cheek are like just extremist in general because
like that's a little bit my personality.
Like obviously it is a historical fiction about the
about the Hanukkah time period. And I was obsessed with making
every single detail of the Hanukkah like a time period.
True, right. Every single thing I said to my
publisher at some point, I was like, there's not a shred of
known history that shows that any part of the book couldn't
have happened exactly. Like I said it happened.
And he was like, OK, but that doesn't mean that like, it did
happen that way. And I was like, OK, fair.
Right. Like, obviously it doesn't mean
that like it, it did happen this way.
But like, it could have. It could have.
There is not a shred of known history that directly
contradicts anything that I said about any of the characters or
anything that happened in this in this book.
And I was like, again, in a certain way, obsessed with for
that because I wanted the backdrop to be something that
the reader could trust. Because if you could fall into a
story and trust that the background is real and just sort
of like relax into therefore just the perspective of the main
character, you get to try on this experience of what would it
have felt like if I was a Jew not born into the 21st century?
But what would it have felt like if I was a young Jew born into
165 BCE where like there was all of this?
Constraint against my religious life.
The stakes of standing up to it were astronomical.
There was a tiny little fraction of people who think they're
going to fight back. Do I want to fight back?
Am I willing to do that? Am I willing to stake my own
life? Am I willing to stake the lives
of my loved ones and everything that I care about?
Because the stakes are really high.
If you're part of a rebellion and and you lose an ancient
world, it didn't get more gruesome than that.
And I'll spare you the actual stories about like the way that
they used to kill rebels was worse than the way they used to
kill anybody else, right? Like this stakes were very high.
What would it have felt like to have to make that choice to
fight alongside the Huda Hamakabi, to fight for the
Jewish people, to fight for the God of the Jews?
Like what would it have felt like?
And again, that's what I wanted the reader to sort of be able to
experience, which is why it wasn't any of the Hashemani
brothers or Matisyo who's the hero.
It's this much more fallible, uncertain character who sort of
represents than anybody who might have had to fight
alongside Yehuda Hamakabi, of which there were many people.
My son this morning in carpool, my 11 year old was asking me all
sorts of questions about about the main characters and who was
real and who was like historically accurate and who
wasn't. And I said to him, I was like,
yeah, you know, you're right, Gilad is not historically
accurate. You as I was like, we only
actually interestingly of the of the entire backdrop backdrop of
the hash of the hash Mani and Hanukkah time story.
We actually only know the names of two other people who fought
alongside Ehudah Makabe, right? There were several hundreds of
several thousands of them. We only know the names of two
because they disobeyed Ehudah Makabe's orders later on and
like basically LED their guys into a slaughter beyond again,
beyond the closing of this book and after the Hanukkah like
menorah miracle time period. But I said to I said to my son,
I was like, but listen, there were people right like it's not
like there was nobody. It wasn't just the five of them.
There were a lot of people who fought and this is the the story
exactly as it played out between the five Kashimanayi brothers
and the Greeks who they fought, they fought them where, when and
how they fought. And all the story does all like
my book does is sort of paint how all that could have happened
in a real way. So again, like I'm very
compelled by these characters because they're not real, but
there were real people there were.
And I wanted to be that as you were a reader reading the book,
you feel what you what the choices you would have had to
make if you were going to show up in the way that the main
character keeps debating showing up in this war against the
Greeks. Fascinating.
Very, very interesting. So, as a self-proclaimed purist,
how did you she? Kind of described a little bit
of it, but OK, we'll, we'll. Yeah, just the historical
accuracy aspect of it, because obviously you have to glean from
Josephus and the Book of the Maccabees.
So can you just share the the challenges of detailing, you
know, the the whole historical picture?
And how did your historical research reshape your
understanding of Hanukkah? That's a great, that's a great
question. OK, so exactly like you said
earlier, right, every other Jewish holiday that we encounter
or Jewish time period, even fast days, right, that we encounter,
for the most part, they have a specific written event that they
commemorate that we can go right back to the source, right?
Let's say pays off. You can go back to schmos, you
know, dozens of Prakam about it. You could also have the
Haggadah. You have like multiple places
that you can hit. You have right?
You're like, right, there's tons of places that you can re look
up the history history in Hanukkah.
We don't have that anywhere. We have like little paltry
pieces of Hazal who are not always exactly the way like they
don't seem to want to or care about telling the historical
story, which is like Hazal in most places.
The same thing with the Corbin Baez story and there's a ton and
save for Hamakabeim and Josephus.
So again, like historically what I did is that I read all the
primary texts, the two the two books of the Sabermakabeim 1,
Sabermakabeim 2 and Josephus on it.
I can go a little bit more into detail.
I'm not sure like how nerdy you want this conversation to get.
So like making. This nerdy?
Give it a little nerdy to know, yeah?
A little nerdy. OK, great.
So there's there's Maccabees 1 and Maccabees 2.
Maccabees 1 is a claim to basically be historically
accurate. Any secondary texts that you
find talking about this historic historic historicity of the time
period are going to be quoting primarily from the first book of
the Maccabees. It's actually purportedly
written probably by a young person who fought alongside the
Huda Maccabee. So that was also part of the
inspiration for the character of Gilad is like, this is cool.
Like all we know about this time period is from like a young guy
who because again, he survives way beyond all the all the I
think all five of the Hashemi brothers.
So again, he must have been young at the at the onset of it.
The second book of the Maccabees is where we have all like the
gruesome, gory stories of what was happening, but we also have
a lot more like, you know, kind of apocryphal miraculous
happenings. So the second book of the
Maccabees is like a little bit more colorful and a little a lot
less historically accurate. So no one really, it quotes that
unless you're just trying to add like a little bit of color
because it's like, interesting. And Josephus, again, who's
writing around 100 and 5200 years after the Hosmani time
period. Josephus, like any historian,
had all the texts available to him, many of which we don't have
right now, right? The assumption is that Josephus
was not only working off the first second book of the Mcabees
and the lore that had developed since then, but potentially that
he had the manuscripts or that he had the text of the Diaries
of other people who had fought alongside the Hosmani, maybe
some of like the the royal texts of the time.
So again, Josephus like he gives names to things.
He gives details to things that not that are do not show up in
the 1st and 2nd book of the Maccabees, but again, like
mostly historically accurate there.
So those are the three primarily the three primary like for like
first primary sources that I used.
And then again, I did a ton of secondary secondary source
research and also like saying who they quote and how they
quote. There's a map in the beginning
like any good fantasy or like or really good story needs to have
that in which the characters move around needs to have a good
map. So like I had to cross
reference. There is no available.
It's like Rick bonkers to me. Like there's no available map of
Judea at the time of the Hashmi. Very often you find maps that
have like just the places where Houda Maki fought battles and
like little arrows like where he went when right.
So like I had to cross reference six different maps and make sure
that every time the characters were going in like Google Maps,
like how long it would take to walk from one place to another.
And again, just like make sure that everyone who was doing
stuff like it would have made sense at the at the time.
So again, like I was, you know, whatever, like snakes that are
mentioned, I had to like look up different ancient snakes and
texts that had record of what snakes were like in the Middle
East at the time. So like, again, I really tried
to make it you even, you know what'd you say?
You. Even researched guerrilla
tactics? No.
I did exactly. Yeah.
That was actually, that was the hardest piece for me to figure
out because it's not, it's not clear.
Right. Like how on earth Yahuda
Hamakabee with really no military experience, I don't
know. I said really Yahuda Hamakabee
with no military experience would have kept alive a few 100
to a few 1000 people in the middle of the woods.
Like, how do you do that? Right?
What is the way in which the Makabeam actually could have
passed messages to each other and fought back against the
Greeks? Like again, we think it's like
kind of magical, but I like I spent a long time trying to
research like how would something like this happen?
For that, I really took from two places I took from the Vikings.
Like, I actually researched a lot about the Vikings and how
they, again, because they would kind of like, come in and do
like hit and kills and then like, take over villages, right?
So like, how did the Vikings keep alive like a few 1000
troops in different terrain that was not their own?
And I researched like, resistance movements during
World War 2 where you had like, large groups of people living
off in the forest having to forage and keep and like,
survive and stay alive. So like between the two of
those, I had to come up with like some plausible way in which
Hidal Maccabee would have been able to keep alive several 100
people who fought with him and again, pass messages throughout
Judea and keep the Jewish villages alive.
So thank you for mentioning that.
Cause like, I think, I think it's kind of cool, right?
Like, again, this wasn't what I said to my publisher.
Like, is this the way that it happened?
Like, I don't know. But is this the way it had to
happen some way? Like they had to do it, It
really happened. So like, how did he keep alive
and how did he actually fight back?
And how did they pass messages? Like it's got to happen somehow.
So like, here's a plausible way it could happen.
So how did you find like the, how did you strike a balance
between the older sources, let's say like those primary sources,
which didn't highlight the, you know, the, the, the type, the,
the story that we have today, which is like the festival of
lights and the miracle of lights and, and all that with the
rabbinic kind of the Talmudic version of it.
How did you strike a balance between those two?
Yeah, I didn't. I, I'll be honest with you
again, 'cause like you told me, I'm allowed to like I did not
really strike a balance right? Where I what I did was primarily
talk about the wars and the history and the miracle of the
lights happens like in the epilogue.
It's not even like a chapter. It's like an epilogue, but
again, like it knowing and researching the time period and
again, trying to imagine what it really would have felt like to
be there. It's got to be how it actually
happened, right? They fought the wars for like 2
1/2 to three years before they came in and rededicated the,
the, the temple. And again, exactly like you're
saying what you were referring to is the fact that the miracle
of the lights does not feature neither in the first nor second
book of the Maccabees, nor in Josephus.
Josephus has this very weird line where he's like, and we
call the festival lights. I'm not really sure why.
I guess it's because it was like light in the darkness and you're
like, you're not really sure why.
Is it because they found him in Nora and lit it and it stayed
lit for eight days. Like I can tell you why, right?
So again, it's like this very disorienting thing that you read
of your where you're like, what, Like what?
Where did like, what am I supposed to do with that?
So again, I I actually and again, I'm being honest, I don't
really care. I happen to not really care.
Like I think that the I think that I love the fact that there
was no menorah actually in the Temple because it had been sold
by a Cohen gudal who was not even a cohane like ages ago to
Antiochus. So like the makka beam had to
come back and like rebuild with their own hands all the Calum of
the base. I make dush like I love the
image of the menorah at the time being this like wooden thing
with like a bunch of metal things that they like lit.
Like did they find the oil? Did it stay lit?
Again, my inclination is like, yeah, I love it.
Why does Josephus not know? I don't know, but like it
doesn't to me, it doesn't super matter.
It's part of our culture. But even at the time, like let's
say, let's assume that it had happened, I assume it happened,
right? I like, I like it that it
happened. It doesn't destroy Hanukkah to
me if it didn't happen, right. So like let's assume that it
happened like if you were one of the Hashmunayim and you had just
or you or whatever, you were one of the maca beams that fought
alongside the Hashmunayim. You finally made your way to
Jerusalem. You expected a ton of
resistance, didn't really get it.
You spent eight days, like, cleaning everything up.
The the maca beam themselves rebuilt.
They rebuilt the menorah. They light it and it stays lit.
Like, you're not surprised. I don't think you're surprised.
You're like, yeah, I knew that was going to happen.
Like the people in Jerusalem might be surprised, but you
literally had just experienced two major scale battles in which
Yahudah Maccabee had lost not one man.
And you've been able to actually stand up against the Greek
behemoth who had come against you with their top generals and
Yahudah Maccabee. Yahudah Maccabee, like Yahudah
Maccabee's general war tactic, was a direct target and kill of
the general of the Greeks. That was his war tactic across
the board. He didn't like putts around, you
know, Maccabee went straight for the general, the opposing
general, and with his own bare hands, with no military
experience, took down the top generals of the Greek army
again, like three times in a row.
Like, it's awesome. You fight alongside, you know,
Maccabee, and then you go and you see the candles lit and
you're like, yeah, God's here. Like, I get it.
So to me, the only like really open question that bothers me
that I don't know the answer to is like why if it didn't happen?
If it didn't happen, like why weren't the wars enough for
Khazzal? Like why, why didn't they just
rest on their laurels and we're like, God fought the wars.
Like let's light the candles for that reason.
Like why does it have to be the miracle of the oil that Khazzal
is looking at? Like why weren't the wars
enough? Like that?
That question bothers me. I actually love the fact that
you focused on that part, although I do if if I were to,
you know, speak for the tradition, it's obviously that
they want the the story. Sometimes when things get too,
too much about the military might, we forget that it's
really God running the show. So the highlighting,
highlighting of the miracle, it is a miracle.
Kind of what she said. Yeah, yeah, Rekindling the.
Yeah, exactly. Rekindling the menorah.
It's all part of one big theme. But I actually am curious about
one thing. I didn't even, you know, think
about this before, but I'm curious to know cuz writing a
story like this, you mentioned that you had a map and it just
like I started thinking of like Game of Thrones and.
All yeah, I promise me too. And I'm thinking to myself, and
I was thinking to myself, I'm like, I wonder who, who you know
influenced your writing of dialogue?
Like, like what's your inspiration?
Because, right, it's kind of like you're, you're, you're
obviously, you know, you grew up in America and, and you've
watched a bunch of shows, I'm sure.
So like, is there a particular kind of theme that or or style
that that influenced how you approached writing the dialogue?
That's a great question. I I don't know, like I don't
really think so. I could say that the most
influential books to me growing up were Harry Potter and Lord of
the Rings, right. Again, just in this developed
when I was a teenager. I really needed, I needed to
develop validation and I needed the understanding like the
empathy and the resonance, I think is a word we haven't quite
used yet, right? I needed the resonance with
someone who was going through something that was a very hard
time. I was going through a very hard
time at the time. I'm sure all teenagers think
that, but just having the heroes who spoke to an element of the
human experience that my world was not speaking to the adults
in the, in my world. And the, and the, the, my peers
in my world were really not, they weren't acknowledging the
struggles of like of the, the inner struggles of every human
at the time. And the fact that Harry Potter
especially did really gave me strength to kind of like
continue on my own path as a, as a human.
So I would say like Harry Potter was, was the biggest influencer
for me. Lord of the rings.
Again, just like the epic good versus evil battles.
I like loved to. I'm not 100% sure where exactly
the voice came from, where exactly the style came from.
I'm actually again, I'll be, I'll be honest again, I'm like
hoping this book sells well enough that I could write
another one about the Corbin bias time period because I love
the Corbin bias time period. But also it's weirder.
Like you're going to write a hero narrative.
It makes sense to do that about the Kashmir Naiya Konica story
and not so much about Corbin bias.
But I'm having a hard time getting out like not having my
main character sound like Gilad in his head, you know what I
mean? Like in a certain way, maybe
it's just like the inner, my inner voice.
Like I don't know, I'm not really sure.
Like definitely one of my friends texted me that she's
like, who's the narrator? And I'm like, are you asking if
he's historically accurate or are you asking what part of my
psyche he is? I'm like, I'm not sure what your
question is, right. So in the same way I'm like, I
don't really know how to answer that.
Like I don't think I have like one specific influence.
I think in a certain way, like, I don't know, all of us, like
you sit down and you try to write a story that is in a
certain way the story of it's the story that I wish I'd had as
a teenager. It's the story that I wish I
knew about Hanukkah for, for, you know, all 30 plus years of
my life. Like there's a certain, there's
a certain, like, yeah, bleeding of my soul onto those pages.
And I have absolutely actually no idea where it came from.
But what's the reaction you're getting?
Yeah. What's the reaction you're
getting from, like your kids and people around you who've read
it? Do you feel like it's resonating
and it's something that you can build off of?
Yeah, I, I really hope so. I do feel like that I was very
nervous to give it to my 11 year old for a while.
He didn't read it 'cause he knew that it was like, it's like a
little scary for 11 year olds, I think.
Like it's not, it's not really like that's the lowest bracket
that I'd be comfortable sharing it with.
So for a while he was kind of like scared to, to read it.
And then finally we read it together and I was nervous out
of my mind because I'm like, if he doesn't like it, like my ego
is crushed, right? And it was, it was it was kind
of like funny. This year also like around
Yamaha and where I'm like, I am heading into the one of the
biggest, like meaningful accomplishments of my life or
the biggest failure of my entire life.
Like if I put this out and everyone's like that was weird.
What is going on? I really felt that.
That's scary. What'd you say?
No, I'm saying that's, that's a really scary thing.
I I felt that. Yeah, yeah.
So again, like, but for the most part, I think for the most part,
I'm getting very positive feedback, thank the good Lord.
And some people, some people get it.
It's interesting. Some people like the the hero
narrative of it that really speaks to this kind of like
deeper development. I could tell.
Like, I could tell when they talk to me, when they text me
after they've read it. Like, for some people, it hits
really deep. And those are the people that
are like me, you know, those are the people who like, just
something about the hero narrative really gives us
courage to be able to like, show up in the face of the outrageous
slings of grief and gratitude and love and like pain that the
world tends to fling in our direction.
And it really helps, it really helps to have to have, again, I
learned a lot of about this from Joseph Campbell.
It really helps to have heroes who in a certain way are showing
the way. And again, I just want to just
claim that, like, a lot of that voice is not mine, right?
A lot of that voice is history. It's what happened in history.
And again, I know, I know we'd like, we know we'd like
schmoozed about this before we came on.
But Hirsch was a huge influence there for me in terms of being
able to give some hush Gothic direction to the text, right?
Like I can't tell you what Hanukkah was about.
I can't tell you the moral of the story.
Like that is again, far be it for me.
I have like ego issues, but not that big ego issues, right?
Like I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't go there.
I'm scared of that. So I really took a lot of my
direction from rehearsh as I do in general, but a lot of the
themes of like, you know, really the moral that I wanted people
to walk out with that was rehearses writing on Hanukkah.
We just did a podcast with Rabbi Semi Lerner on rehearsh.
You told me that you listen to that and we're kind of going
starting to go down the rehearsed rabbit hole.
But just for audience who didn't hear that and don't know about
rehearsh, can you kind of explain how that you know how
you worked him into the narrative?
Yeah, so a few ways. Again, the 1st is just the
direction of of just really the moral, The moral point that I
wanted the whole story to be like kind of circling around,
which again, that moral point has to show up.
Not in the history, right. The moral point can't be like
God fights for the Jewish people.
That's an incredible point to sort of like relive during the
Hanukkah time period. But the moral has to be
something that the main character is dealing with in his
own experience. And again, this is rehearsed,
rehearsed says like when you light the Hanukkah candles,
you're not thinking like the light in the dark isn't the fact
that God fought the wars for the sake of the Jewish people or on
behalf of the Jewish people, and then God won and that we
rededicated the temple. He's like, that's not what the
light symbolizes, according to rehearse.
The light symbolizes that, that there is a light alive in the
soul of every Jew. That alone, if needed, could
save the entire Jewish world. According to rehearse.
Fascinatingly, like Yehuda Homocabe is not the hero of the
Hanukkah story, and neither is Gila or your other, right.
Like according to Yehuda to rehearse, the hero of the
Hanukkah story is Monteziyahu, who was the only person at the
time who was willing to stand up for what he felt was right and
should be done. And according to rehearse that
alone, the the light in his own chest sparked alive back alive.
The light in the chest of every single other Jew at the time and
all the five Kashimani brothers, everybody who ended up fighting
alongside Yehuda Hamakabi again, Matisio dies like one year into
the war, having no idea where the revolt would go.
Right? Like he actually is almost like
a peripheral, a peripheral character to the actual wars
that were fought. But he's a hero because he's the
one who stood up and started it. And of her, according to
rehearse, like that is the symbolism of the menorah.
It's the Jewish spirit that cannot die, not only that does
not die, that cannot die, that is alive in every single person.
And again, rehearses like all sorts of that's rehearses style.
Like he then he then parallels it to the different halakhals at
the time and shows that like his Ashkafa of what he's saying it
means is reflected in all the halakhals that you have to
follow. So I won't get into like the
details of it, but it's very compelling.
And that's really that's really like the moral.
The moral of the story is just like the Jewish spirit and what
that means and what that looks like when it's alive.
In the hearts of all of us, as it always has the potential to
be and that we're responsible towards.
And that's what Hanukkah is really teaching us.
So it's so it's not about God fighting our wars, but God's
voice within us inspiring us to fight the war.
Yeah, exactly. And us like us acknowledging
that, us showing that, us letting that take light, us
letting that flame grow a little bit brighter.
And again, that's what he says. Like it, you know, the the I
should have had a reproach out here and just been able to like
read you the one quote. But he's like the flame in the
heart of one Jewish breast is enough to save the entire Jewish
world. Like that's the moral of
Hanukkah. And also, like when you're
letting the Hanukkah menorah, that means like, it could be
you. And you should feel like that.
You should feel like if it had to be you, it would be you.
You have something. That alone is enough to save the
Jews, just in your own heart. Maybe benci, not me.
I don't know. I'm kidding.
That's what you think? Really beautiful.
It's a great message, it's a fantastic message and it's very
exciting. You want to just.
Yeah, what do you hope readers take away from your book?
And also tell us maybe a little bit about your ideas for the
sequel that would be? Oh, that?
Yeah. Fun, fun, fun.
OK, So what do I hope they take away from the book again?
There's like there's a few things.
The first is is just quote UN quote this understanding.
Like I feel so grateful. I don't know.
I'm probably grateful as where it starts and ends just with the
thought that when people light the Hanukkah candles or when
they say Al Hanisim again and again, that they have a little
bit of an understanding of like what the wars were that were
fought and how hard it would have been to show up and fight
those wars and how the wars were won.
Which again, according to our first is by just like the sheer
blazing Jewish spirit that was enough to defeat the entire
Greek army with the help of God, right?
So again, like that, that just like that moral and that message
of understanding a little bit more about the Hanukkah time
period and what again, the the challenges that those people
faced and the vicarious living, right?
Like the vicarious living of like this is these are the
choices I would have had to make had I lived then that like that,
you knew that would have been enough.
But the truth is, again, there's like that other layer of just, I
really hope that the themes that the main character struggles
with, which are themes of belonging, they're themes of
family, they're themes of trust, right?
There's themes of, again, trusting his own self, trusting
the social situation that he's in, being able to trust God,
that God's gonna show up even in these situations where he's
really not sure what's gonna play out.
And either way, he has to be OK, which is, again, a lot of the
themes of what you Hamakabe talks about and save our
Makabeam, right? All of that just kind of like
the larger underlying picture of being inspired by the
potentially true story of the heroics of what someone else had
to go through. And again, heroics doesn't mean
like that he wins. It means that he struggles and
that he falls. And like again, the hero's
journey of just like the descent into hell is like a huge stage
of that, right? Like and then being able to come
out with something new and offer it back to the world.
All of that like that, the deeper level by which really
engrossing yourself in the the hero narrative of somebody else
and the potential that has to kind of inspire our own journeys
and our own ways. That's like, that's my dream,
right? Is that it it will come out as a
hero, you know, inspired by the hero and not just by the
history. Incredible.
Really.
And you, you put so much, you've put so much work into it.
One can tell from just from from listening to you how much
meticulous research, thought, reflection, care that you put
into it. So we really, really hope that
your book is a success. We hope that the podcast will
reach ears and people will buy it.
I bought the book. I'm waiting for it to arrive.
I'm excited to read it, and we hope that you'll be able to
venture off into many projects because we need writers like you
in the Jewish world today. Absolutely.
And and when I'm going to read Al Hani Seam this year and I'm
I'm going to focus on the Alamel Hamot, right, The aspect that
that you're trying to make us focus on, which I love.
So thank you again. This was amazing.
And could you just tell our audience briefly where they
could find you and where they can find your book?
Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna answer.
I'll guess, I'll answer the word that you asked.
I I actually live under a rock. I happen to, I happen to live
under a rock. I also happen to have a Jewish
name that makes me sound like I'm pretending to be somebody
else. Like my actual name is Hannah
Cohen. Which like, I can't wait till
I'm at. I actually can't wait for a long
time until I'm at the playground and someone's like, what's your
name? And I'm like Hannah Cohen and
she's like, me too. And I'm gonna be like, OK, but
that is my name. So you can't find me anywhere
because I live under a rock and I have a generic Jewish name,
which is great because, because then like it has to be about the
book and it's never gonna be about Hanukkah when he wrote the
book cuz no one's gonna ever remember that, which is good for
me. So you can't find me really
anywhere. It's not true.
I do have a podcast. I do have a history podcast,
which is fun where I talk. It's called moral leadership
boot camp. It goes to the second temple
period and the heroes of the second temple period and talks
about just like a, a, a lesson in moral leadership that you
could learn from those people in the second temple time period.
And I'm like, I'm going to take it either beyond or like shift
into another again, more more about the hero's journey I think
is where I'm going there. So we got to move you on again
then to to discuss maybe something from your podcast
that'll be very. What's the name of the podcast?
It's called moral leadership boot camp.
Moral leadership boot camp. Yeah.
And it's about like, again, just Jewish like the the experience
of the actual historic figures and their choices and what that
teaches you about moral leadership from a Jewish.
That's amazing. Amazing.
That's amazing. You should be shying this from
the a rooftop. This is a great top.
This is a amazing podcast. So we we would love to, first of
all, we're going to start listening.
And. And hopefully we can do this
again. That would be awesome.
And then where can we find the book?
So the book is in all Jewish bookstores.
It's also on Amazon, but it has like a super long time before it
actually ships out, which like I'm, I'm a little sad about and
feldhaim.com and like all Judaica place.
I mean, like any, any place that carries Jewish books will carry
this. So it's in real life and real
bookstores. That's the easiest way to find
it. And it's also again on Amazon
and on those other, those other platforms of the online sales,
general sales stuff, You just have to wait for it to come,
which is OK, It's OK, It's OK cuz again, it's about Hanukkah
and it's awesome. But it's also just a great hero
narrative for any day of the year.
So I hope that people do buy it and enjoy it.
And thank you so much for just like gracing me with your time
and attention and really just engaging with the larger meta
themes that we've discussed. It's like it's so resonant to
find like fellow humans who just care about this kind of thing.
And you also just like we're we're all on the same same team,
Like we're all compelled by the same kind of like cultural like
need to move us as the Jewish people, like one step, one step
forward. So I really appreciate your your
time. Any chance of pleasure?
And pleasure is ours. We hope to do this again.
Thank you so much. Thanks.