Circumcision In Judaism

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Jerusalem, the spiritual center of Judaism, with its Holy Temple, great Torah academies and large Jewish population, was the natural target for the fiercest enforcement of his anti-Jewish decrees. To drive their point home, the Greek and Hellenistic supporters of Seleucid power built a gymnasium, one of the central symbols of Greek culture, right next to the Temple. This was particularly offensive to pious Jews, because their youth were drawn into the facility and then ridiculed for being "ruined with the flaw of circumcision" on the perfection of the body, which was a completed divine creation. This distortion led some youth to abandon the biblically mandated rite, even though it is essential to the Abraham Covenant. Antiochus had secret deals…show more content…
The Hasmonaean and the Hasidim - the pious - resisted the pagan infiltration and application of force to make them abandon their religion. Every Jew who would not worship Greek idols, and live their relatively morally lax life-style, was murdered on the spot. Many circumcised children and their mothers were slaughtered. Every available copy of the Holy Scriptures was destroyed by fire. Perhaps some of the Old Testament Scriptures were actually hidden by the Maccabees in the nearby caves. Businesses that dared to close for the Sabbath were…show more content…
Before each battle they prayed for hours and fasted to purify themselves. When the Seleucids realized these righteous Jews would not fight on the Sabbath, they attacked Maccabee strongholds on those days. The Maccabees elected to fight defensively on the Sabbath to preserve the existence and the holy state of God's armies. Upon the death of their father, Judah Maccabee became their leader. He was a man whose bravery and cunning would prove to be formidable. The Hebrew word "maccabee' means, "hammer". Under his leadership the Jews "hammered" away at the Greco-Syrian forces. He built a full scale Jewish army to oppose the Seleucids. His guerrilla units still attacked sites that were populated with Jews who were lapsing in the faith. They also circumcised males who avoided the rite. They freed enslaved pious Jews and revenged the wrong done to them by the Seleucid
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