Has anyone heard of this?

חשמנאי = ח' שמן

A friend of mine who is a recent Baal Teshuva and is just starting to learn Hebrew noticed that the word Chashmonai implies Chet Shemen, that is to say, the people of the 8 days of oil.

Seems like a pretty obvious Remez but I have never seen it or heard it before.  Have any of you seen this somewhere before or is it his Chiddush?

Re: The Origins of Hanukkah

Over at DovBear there seems to be a new team member named Lurker. Now, I always knew that DovBear is a heretic, but his logic is generally sound so I enjoy reading him. This Lurker guy on the other hand...

In his recent post, The origins of Hanukkah, he tries to argue that Hanukkah originates in the Roman holiday Saturnalia. His proof is from the Talmud in Avodah Zara that tells us that Adam mourned when he saw the days getting shorter and then celebrated after he realized that they were growing longer again.

Read his post here

This is very faulty logic. Your argument goes something like this:

The Rabbi's in the Talmud were fools/liars/ideologues with their head buried in the sand. They thought that Hanukkah was established to celebrate the war of the Maccabees (an event that happened a few generations before their time) when it was really established to celebrate Saturnalia (something that was still going on during their time).

How do we know that this is false? Because the brilliant/holy/enlightened Rabbis had an infallible tradition going all the way back to the creation of the Earth. Their tradition is that God created this man and named him Adam. He is the one who really established the roots from which all pagan holidays stem.  

Now hold on. If you trust the Rabbis of the Talmud to tell us what Adam did, or even that there was an Adam at all, why on earth would you not trust them to tell you the origin of a holiday that is well collaborated by other historical sources?

This is a perfect example of how smart Jewish minds, that are able to split an atom, are able to come up with the most twisted and distorted logic to justify what their Yetzer Hara wants justified.

Similar twisted thinking brings our government here in Israel to racially cleanse Jews from Gaza while sending food, money, fuel etc to terrorist in the same Gaza.

Here is something to lighten up the mood now that I am done placing blame for all of world Jewery's problems.

Modern Maccabees

I was thinking about Hanukkah and the Maccabees.  The Maccabees were a small group of faithful Jews who weren't concerned about public opinion.  Not of the Hellenist Jewish majority and certainly not of the world at large.  They were only concerned about God, His Torah and His Land. The fought for their beliefs even though they were very few, and they had to fight their own brothers.

Hellenism is long forgotten and Hanukkah is still being celebrated all over the world.  The president of the United States makes a Kosher Hanukkah party every year in the White House.

The Jewish holidays are supposed to make us stop and think and learn something about how we should be and what we should hold dear.  Who are the Maccabees of today?  Here is one suggestion...