(no subject)
Dec. 7th, 2004 11:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasAs I am many years, I'm struck by how little the Channukah story really has to do with the historical events on which it's ostensibly based.
And I taught my class, again this year, the story of Channukah. Which is a different thing than the story told in the Books of Maccabees I and II, which is why those books aren't in the Jewish scriptures, and is a very different thing that the historical events which actually happened.
And of those three things -- the historical truth, the Biblical record, and the folktale passed down from generation to generation -- I decided, and rightly so, that the important one to teach was the folktale.
Because that's the one with the lessons that I want them to learn. And I'm quite willing to tell them that this is the folktale, not the historical events. And that, in this case, the folktale is more important than the history, at least for them, at least right now.
And I taught my class, again this year, the story of Channukah. Which is a different thing than the story told in the Books of Maccabees I and II, which is why those books aren't in the Jewish scriptures, and is a very different thing that the historical events which actually happened.
And of those three things -- the historical truth, the Biblical record, and the folktale passed down from generation to generation -- I decided, and rightly so, that the important one to teach was the folktale.
Because that's the one with the lessons that I want them to learn. And I'm quite willing to tell them that this is the folktale, not the historical events. And that, in this case, the folktale is more important than the history, at least for them, at least right now.