Kelsey+Inch,+Hayden+Freedman

media type="custom" key="7790791" ﻿ HOLIDAY EDITION Whose story gets told? HOLIDAY EDITION Christmas: media type="youtube" key="CvBaTlSceq0?fs=1" height="385" width="480" Hannukah: The legend of Hanukkah is a true underdog story, and it tells the tale from a point of view that would typically have been lost. The Hellenistic ruler Antiochus IV began a mass oppression of the Jewish religion – he banned practice, destroyed the local temple and sacrificed pigs (non-Kosher animals) on the holy altars. Two Jewish armies, one led by Judah Maccabee, were able to overthrow those exacting rule over the temple. In the rededication ceremony, the menorah needed to keep burning and provide holy //ohr//, but there was only enough oil for one night, yet the oil lasted a miraculous eight days – enough time for a new source of oil to be secured (Talmud*: Mo’ed). Unfortunately, the oppression continued after the Great Miracle. The remarkable thing about the story of Hanukkah is that it is told from the story of the subjugated instead of the subjugators. Even post-Maccabee history, the Talmud continues to tell the story of a people who faced oppression over and over again, and were rarely successful in defeating it with permanency. In __Things Fall Apart//,//__ we see a similar, unusual narrative that goes against the conclusion //history is written by the winners//. Chinua Achebe has done for the Umuofian people what Talmud did for the Jews – his people with a voice that would have otherwise been silent. In fact, it even shows the flipside: the disregard that the Umuofians had for stories about the white colonists before they were faced with their presence. To them, the ideas of Christianity seemed ludicrous at first, “’You told us with your own mouth that there was only one god. Now you talk about his son!’” (Achebe 89), scoffs Okonkwo when upon hearing stories about Jesus. This perspective is rarely shown – Christian writers who documented the colonization of these people reveled in the strangeness of African traditions, never acknowledging the way that their ideas looked to the natives. .
 * The Talmud is a collection of important Jewish histories and Torah interpretations that accompanies the Torah. The Torah is also known as the Books of Moses or the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Torah was presented to Moses in scroll form with oral commentary, which served as the foundation for Talmud. Talmud is important because it has grown to contain the stories that happened after the time of the Torah, such as Hanukkah, Purim and other commentary on Mishnah