One of the interesting things about Chanukah is that the significance of the event we are celebrating is really about what the Jewish people were able to achieve with the help of God and not about what God did for them as they waited for their deliverance. There is no book of the bible dedicated to this holiday, there is no overt miracle of God splitting a sea or destroying their foes by miraculous means. Even if there were no miracle of the oil, the holiday would still be worth celebrating.
Many secular Jews over history have adopted Chanukah for this very reason, from one perspective this holiday can be seen as a holiday celebrating Jewish strength. But in reality the holiday is about much more than that.
It’s not simply a secular holiday celebrating the liberation of the Jewish people from a political foe. As I mentioned a few days ago it’s also about Jewish culture not being assimilated by the dominant Greek culture, but it’s also not limited to this cultural perspective either. The Talmud in Tractate Yoma says, “He who wishes to purify himself is assisted by heaven to do so.” I think this is relevant to this holiday because after winning the war against the Greeks, the Jewish people then went to purify the Temple and themselves. They could have just celebrated their political freedom, they could have merely celebrated their cultural freedom, but they CHOSE to see the war as religious victory as well.
It would have been easy to ignore the hand of God if they wanted to, but they did not want to. The people chose to believe that since they wanted not just to win the war and to have cultural freedom, but to purify themselves, that God had helped them do so.
This is a very relevant lesson from Chanukah for the modern Jew. The fact of the matter is we have a choice of what to believe, no one is forcing us to live a certain way. On Chanukah we celebrate our ability to make a choice to see the hand of God even when I might not think it necessary.
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