When I was a boy, one of the only Jewish holidays my family celebrated was Chanukah (the other was Passover), but if you had told me that one day I would write an entire book about the Festival of Lights, I would have said you were a couple of candles short of a menorah! Now all these years later, I’m delighted about the newly released “Real Story of Chanukah,” because it truly puts the modern holiday in perspective by placing it against the backdrop of its factual history.
But what really excites me about the new book is that its message is so Messianic… not because it shows you Yeshua in the chanukiyyah, but because the real story of Chanukah is about being completely sold-out, zealous, crazy-on-fire—dedicated—to Adonai. I love this kind of message!
In The Real Story of Chanukah (which quotes at length from the apocryphal, yet historically reliable books of 1&2 Maccabees), we get to witness the struggles of a handful of average, everyday Jewish people during the intertestamental period. Against the overwhelming anti-Semitic and assimilating forces of their day, we see these valiant, devout few as they fight for the God and the Torah they love, in order to restore Israel to faithful fellowship with God. The story is just incredible—it’s vivid, moving, and, at times, almost beyond belief. And it’s within this context that I was able to unpack the Messianic message, illustrating how, according to the Scriptures, we too can and must be completely dedicated to the cause of Yeshua.
