When I was 19 years old, I traveled to Israel to find long-lost relatives who had survived the Holocaust. While I was there, I was “picked up” on the street by an ultra-orthodox woman who offered me free lodging in a hostel exclusively for Jewish travelers in the Old City of Jerusalem. I was a broke teenager at the time, so I said yes. It was Hanukkah, and all across the Jewish Quarter, picturesque oil menorahs twinkled in the windows and doorways of ancient-looking buildings built from a pearly-pink marble called “Jerusalem stone.”

I didn’t grow up celebrating Hanukkah, so my hosts explained to me that in 167 BCE, the ancient Jewish Temple, which once stood just around the corner from where I was staying, had been occupied by the mighty Hellenistic Seleucid Empire. Luckily, a small group

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