Everyone knows the story of Chanukah, but for some reason the years of the Chashmonean Empire that followed from 152 BCE to the Roman conquest of Eretz Yisrael in 63 BCE are barely understood. In this period, the Jewish people came into conflict for the second time with the occupants of what is now the Gaza Strip and the southern coastal plain of Israel. In antiquity, this area ran farther north than today’s Gaza, continuing northward up through Ashkelon and AshdodThe post links to a pdf reprint of the full article in Ami Magazine.[...]
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