This year for Chanukah I explained to friends on Discord about Ptolemy IV Soter trying to kill the Jews with drunk war elephants, an attempt he had to make multiple times because he kept getting so drunk he forgot about the order, and absolutely no one responded. This saddened me. So even though the most-well-known-but-theologically-minor holiday is over, please take a moment to remember my man Hermon, keeper of the elephants, who obeyed his king’s command to get his beloved war elephants hammered multiple times for an elaborate, Bond-villain style death trap. He wasn’t Jewish, and was, technically, trying to kill the Jews, but he was also a guy trying to keep his job while being given insane instructions by an idiot with the power of life and death over him, and given the nature of late-stage capitalism I consider hi, to be one of the most relatable people in all of religious literature. Chag Chanukah sameach, Hermon. We’ve all been there, my dude.
