Maccabee: An Epic in Free Verse

by Howard Rubenstein

*Maccabee* is an epic that in simple and powerful free verse tells the story of the first fight for religious liberty and the founding of the holiday of Hanukah that commemorates that event.

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Howard S. Rubenstein was an American physician, playwright and translator of classical Greek drama.

Reviews

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven't read the Books of Maccabee, so I can't say how these work as an adaptation. I will say that the story gets more tiresome the longer it goes on. I know that historically, the Temple was recaptured in the first few years of a decades-long conflict, but there's a reason that people usually stop with the Chanukah miracle: it's a good ending. After that, the story just becomes a repetitive case of "and then they defeated another interchangeable Greek king/general, and then a new interchangeable Greek king/general showed up, and they defeated him, and then another..." At times this becomes less a story of the Maccabees than internecine Greek politics, and it becomes difficult to remember which villain did what and who's currently at peace with the Jews before they inevitably betray them again.

Rubenstein also doesn't do enough to expand on the material, like by giving the Maccabees different personalities. There is a section about them tomcatting with the local women, which I doubt was in the source material. Pretty much every battle is just "and then the Maccabees instantly won," including when it was three guys alone against an army. Yet somehow they're always the underdogs, and they'll fail whenever the story requires it, because the Maccabees do something bafflingly stupid or some other contrived reason.

I'm not sure of Rubenstein's exact beliefs, but there are times when he takes some controversial religious positions: most notably, he doesn't actually include the Chanukah miracle, because it apparently isn't mentioned in the Books of Maccabee, even though it's in the Talmud. (He also doesn't call anyone but Judah "Maccabee," though I do in this review.) Meanwhile, a lot of the talk about freedom and religious liberty and such comes off feeling a bit too modern.

I don't want to sound completely negative; it was very easy to read, for the most part, and I'm glad to have gotten more historical context, even if it wasn't all that interesting. But maybe that's the problem: this book doesn't feel much like a narrative, just a bunch of information, along with some vague religious themes. I just feel like it could have been done a lot better.