The place in Jewish history of the Maccabees—a nickname for the first members of the Hasmonean dynasty that ruled an autonomous Jewish kingdom—is much more complex than their popular image might suggest.
“Historically it was much more complicated, as there were Jews on both sides,” Jeffrey Rubenstein, professor of Talmud and rabbinics at New York University, said of the Maccabee uprising. “Nowadays, historians look at the conflict more in terms of a civil war than a revolt.”
The holiday’s tradition obscures some of the history of the conflict....