The Hasmoneans, or Maccabees as they are more commonly known, defeated the Syrian Greeks and their assimilationist allies among the Jews. For the first few decades of their rule, they restored the Jewish religion, and nationalism. Then, the Hasmoneans became enamored of Greek ways and culture. That is why the talmudic sages ignored the military victory, and based Hanukkah on the miracle of the small quantity of olive oil for the Temple lamps lasting eight days. According to Bruce Feiler in Where God was Born (to be reviewed in a later Shema), the true miracle of faith was lighting the first lamp.

The real believers in miracles today are those who think that the world oil supply will flow forever. They assume that some new technology will save our affluent life style, which is dependent on abundant, cheap energy. But the world is pumping about twice as much oil as is being located by petroleum geologists. The last super-giant oil field was discovered about 35 years ago, and to keep up with demand, we need to find such fields every five or ten years.

Meanwhile, people in China and India are buying cars, and burning gasoline. The shortages and high prices of early this year are likely to look good by the end of the decade. Petroleum shortages will be followed by shortages of natural gas. Until recently, North America produced all the gas it consumed; now America is importing more and more, often from politically unstable nations. Back in the Temple period, it took eight days to prepare more oil. It will take many millions of years for Planet Earth to generate more petroleum and natural gas.

It is technically feasible to make gas and oil from coal; the Germans did it during the Second World War, and later it was done in South Africa. TV ads by General Electric tell us that we have 250 years of coal. That is about the same amount of time as occurred since the industrial revolution. Is our present affluence to be only a blip on the time line of history? When I first started looking into energy matters, the estimate was a thousand years of coal. And then what? Where is the modern day Jonah proclaiming, "In 60 years time, industrial civilization as we know it will be destroyed!"? Where are the leaders who will listen?

Hopefully, Americans will change our ways. We can give up our SUVs, and stop building McMansions on our best farm land. We can electrify the American rail system, and shift much passenger and freight traffic to the rails. And we can depend on fusion power again. For the past half century, the construction of fusion power plants has been predicted 30 years off in the future, and we have yet to build one on Earth. However, there is a giant fusion reactor, 92 million miles away, which provides energy for all life on Planet Earth. Thank God for the sun!