In Al HaNissim of Chanukah, we declare that “the salvation of Chanukah endures until this very day.” At first glance, this is difficult to understand. After all, the historical salvation of Chanukah included the rededication of the Beis Hamikdash and the restoration of Jewish sovereignty, both of which ultimately ended with the destruction of the Second Temple. Neither exists today.
So what, exactly, does endure?
To answer this, we must understand the nature of the Greek threat. The Greeks were not primarily interested in destroying the Jewish people physically. Their goal was something far more insidious: “Le’tamei u’lechalel—to defile and to desecrate.” The word chilul literally means to hollow out. The Greeks sought to strip Judaism of its inner spiritual meaning, leaving behind only an empty shell.
Greek culture celebrated the external: external beauty, external wisdom, external power, and external achievement. Their worldview denied the primacy of inner sanctity and transcendent purpose. What they wanted was not our annihilation, but our spiritual neutralization: a Judaism emptied of its soul.
The message of Chanukah, therefore, is not that the spiritual and physical must always be in conflict. Judaism does not reject the physical world. But when there is a conflict, Chanukah teaches that the spiritual must take precedence over the physical.
This is precisely what we articulate in Al HaNissim: “You delivered the mighty into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the wicked into the hands of the righteous.”
We readily understand the miracle of the few overcoming the many, and the weak defeating the strong. But why is it a miracle that the righteous prevailed over the wicked?
The Greeks possessed the physical advantage in numbers, strength and military might. The Jewish people, however, possessed the spiritual advantage of purity, righteousness, Torah, and emunah. And when a confrontation arises between those armed with physical power and those anchored in spiritual truth, Chanukah proclaims that spiritual depth ultimately prevails.
This is the deeper meaning of the miracle of the oil. Quantity was irrelevant. What mattered was purity. One small cruse, uncontaminated, was enough. The menorah itself embodies this truth: a magnificent physical vessel whose sole purpose was to serve as a base for spiritual light. The object mattered only insofar as it carried the flame.
This is why, when we sing Ma’oz Tzur, we list mighty empires that once dominated the world—each with overwhelming physical power—and yet no longer exist. No one sings about them anymore. They have vanished into history.
And yet we are still here.
We stand by our candles and sing about them not because we defeated them militarily, but because we outlived them spiritually. We did not possess land, armies, or empires. We possessed something far more enduring: the light of the menorah, the inner flame of faith and meaning.
That is the salvation of Chanukah that exists until today.
