Besides the changes to the temple, the other significant change that Antiochus ordered was the abandonment of Jewish law. This broke with the precedent of Alexander (actually going back to Cyrus the Great) and his own father.
Shortly afterwards King Antiochus sent an elderly Athenian to force the Jews to abandon their ancestral customs and no longer regulate their lives according to the law of God. He was also commissioned to pollute the temple at Jerusalem and dedicate it to Olympian Zeus, and to dedicate the sanctuary on Mount Gerizim to Zeus God of Hospitality, following the practice of the local inhabitants. This evil hit them hard and was a severe trial. The Gentiles filled the temple with licentious revelry: they took pleasure with prostitutes and had intercourse with women in the sacred precincts. They also brought forbidden things inside and heaped the altar with impure offerings forbidden by the law. It was forbidden either to observe the Sabbath or to keep the traditional festivals. Or to admit to being a Jew at all. On the monthly celebration of the king’s birthday, the Jews were driven by brute force to eat the entrails of sacrificial victims; and on the Feast of Dionysus they were forced to wear ivy-leaves and join the procession in his honour. At the instigation of the inhabitants of Ptolemais an order was published in the neighbouring Greek cities to the effect that they should adopt the same policy of compelling the Jews to eat entrails and should kill those who refused to change over to Greek ways.
2 Macc. 6.1-9