Now, what is the flame trying to tell us? The truth is, many things. Everyone knows that something is awakened when gazing at the burning lights. As it flickers and dances it arouses something within us. Don’t you remember even as a child you sat and stared at the Chanukah lights and you were thinking? Not only about Mattisyahu and his heroic children who gave their lives fighting for Hashem's Torah; you were thinking of many things – because that's the magic of a flame – it brings forth from the depths of our minds various emotions. And the Sages knew that; they wanted the flames to inspire our souls and teach us many things.
And yet, even though it’s many things, more than anything else the flame is trying to tell us about what we really accomplished ןַמ¿ּזַּב ם≈הָה יםƒמָּיַּבה∆ּזַה; that it wasn’t what took place on the battlefield that was most important. If the battlefield is your concept of Chanukah, it falls very short of the truth because the greatest accomplishment, the greatest miracle, took place far away from the battlefield – the greatest accomplishment took place in the privacy of our own hearts, in the battle for our minds.
Culture Shock
I’ll explain that. If we’re going to really understand what the light of the menorah represents we have to first understand that the Syrian-Greeks came not only with the power of a tremendous army but they came with the power of a tremendous culture. That was more powerful and more threatening than the army. The civilization of Greece was behind them. It wasn’t just the Syrian-Greek army. It was their way of life; it was the Greek culture they were facing and at that time it was the culture of the world.
It was the entire civilized world they were facing. To the north, there was Syria. Then there was Greece and the whole Mediterranean sector of the world. Egypt was already entirely Hellenized. Asia Minor was all Hellenized. And Italy was under Greek influence. And so the entire civilized world at that time was Grecian. If you were anybody in this world, you had fallen under the spell of Greek enlightenment.
They had everything – everything that was considered important in those days. They had philosophy. They had a certain understanding of chemistry. They had mathematics, geometry and trigonometry. They had a very big literature. And not only a literature of serious philosophy. They had a literature of entertainment, a big romantic literature. They had the drama; Greek theater was very much developed. They had art and music. They had sports on a big scale, hippodromes. In one word, the Greeks were the exponents of civilization in those days.
Rejecting Man-Made Culture
Now we, the Am Yisroel, up till that time, we were isolated from all the umos ha’olam. We had our own ‘culture’ lehavdil, our own ways, and there was no interest in what the world had to offer. It was the Jewish attitude to remain within their own four cubits because our Torah is a Torah not made by men; it was given by Hashem at Sinai and therefore we didn’t want to water it down by bringing in manmade ideas.
The Greeks, however, when they saw this little enclave of the Israelites, the Jews, they thought it would be the biggest favor if they could import Greek civilization to this benighted people. It’s always like that – if you don’t understand Torah attitudes, Torah living, so from the outside you imagine that you have what to offer. And so when they began proposing to the Jews that they adopt the ways of the Greeks, they were surprised at the reluctance of the Jews. And they became offended because it seemed so stupid to them – these savages, these superstitious and backward people are actually opposing us.
Not only offended; a hatred developed. After all, everybody else willingly joined into the Greek celebrations. When the time came to get drunk at the Greek festival, everybody joined in. If it’s wine and women and song, everybody is a customer for that – especially if you give it the name ‘culture’ – and therefore at the festivals of the Greeks, everybody was there!
Of course, a Babylonian, let’s say, who still had his own gods, so after he finished with the Greek festivals, he’d go and the next week get drunk at the Babylonian festival. He had no objections, however, to the Greek festivals. He joined in with all his heart!
No to Nightlife
But when the Greeks were celebrating, they looked around and they saw there was one group that refused to join them. “Who are you?! Are you so enlightened that you’re able to resist the Greek culture? Who does the little backward Jew think he is?
“We’re offering you an enlightened civilization! Here, instead of your lifeless cities, we’ll give you life. What do you have in your cities at night? For how long are you going to be so stubborn in your loyalty to your G-d? We’re offering you nightlife!”
It’s like when Teddy Kollek was defeated as mayor of Jerusalem, so the one who sat shivah for him most was the New York Times. “Ay, ay, ay, a tragedy that Jerusalem should lose such an enlightened figure.” They were praising Teddy Kollek – the good things he did for Yerushalayim. “When he was in power, it started becoming a modern city and there’s even a little bit of nightlife there,” they said. You hear that ‘praise’ on him – a little bit of nightlife also was beginning to develop in Yerushalayim and now, nebach, he was defeated. That’s what the New York Times understands that we’re missing. From Manhattan, the armpit of the world, that’s what they’re telling us – “What do you have?”
The Original Nightlife
What did we have? Torah. At night, they gathered together and they sat on the ground and the teacher taught them. That’s how it used to be. We have chessed! We have families! We have nachas! We have mitzvos! We have Olam Haba! We have Shabbos! We have yomim tovim!
But the Greeks however had other ideas. Our Shabbos, our yomim tovim, were days of quiet and reserved happiness while the Greek celebrations were loud; the entire city was garlanded with flowers and everywhere there was a sound of music. There were huge throngs coming to see the Greek plays and the games. And so they thought that into the backwards cities of Judea they were going to bring in now the light of Greek culture. They were going to modernize us; to give us a nightlife and entertainment, gymnasiums and theater; they were going to bring the gaieties of life to the lifeless Jews.
The Fifth Column
Now we shouldn’t shy away from the fact that they were encouraged in this by the Hellenizers. Just like you have today, quislings, weaklings who aren’t loyal to Torah ideals but they couch their weaknesses in wanting to bring light to their fellow Jews, then also there were certain Jews who had tasted of the gentile ways, and they buckled. Of course, they didn’t say that – they had ‘pity’ on their fellow Jews. This old kind of life is only for backward people and it’s time that we taught our nation that there are more important things in life; we’ll teach them to enjoy, to understand what’s better. And therefore they encouraged Antiochus to force Greek culture upon the Jews in Eretz Yisroel.
They spoke to fellow Jews too. “Look. You see what’s happening. This is the wave of the future. After all, these people are educated. They have all their luxuries and have all their progress and that’s what’s happening all over the world today! And you’re going to oppose them? The Greek culture,” they said, “is conquering the world!”
And so we have to understand what a test our forefathers had, what an ordeal they had. Not merely as we thought, an ordeal of battling against a superior military force, of fighting an empire. No, that was nothing compared to the real battle. The actual battle was the ordeal of withstanding an onslaught of ideas and attitudes; of culture and enlightenment and advancement and good times. It was a battle not only of the sword. It was a battle of the mind. That was the real battle we were fighting against the Greeks.
Acid Tests
And it was a most difficult kind of battle. It’s not easy to oppose a world civilization; that was the acid test that our forefathers were confronted with. I know it was a bitter test because I saw with my own eyes what happened in America many years ago when the greenhorns were still coming to America from Europe. The first and biggest nisayon was that they came from shtetlach, small towns. Most of the towns had no electricity at all – maybe all of them. In 1900, 1905, they came to America and everywhere there were gas lights. Gas light was a very great invention in those days. The streets were well-lit. In the homes also you had gas lights. And so they came to a place that wasn’t backward.
And that was the biggest factor. They were small shopkeepers, small-town people from little villages, who never saw any of these inventions that they had in all homes in America at that time, and because these greenhorns were terribly impressed, they became batel to the culture of America. They caved in entirely. They were overwhelmed by this powerful superior culture and they thought ‘we're batel; we're nobody’. Not only we're nobody but our whole tradition is nothing. And they caved in and got lost.
It was so difficult that even people who learned in the yeshivos caved in. I remember I saw a Telzer yeshivah man who had a grocery store open on Shabbos. He sat in the store on Shabbos and between the customers he learned Gemara. That’s how it began, a little bit of weakening. What happened to his children? Gone. All gone. One child is in a nunnery. It was a generation of Jews that was swallowed up in the crematorium of America. Baruch Hashem a little bit remained. A sha’ar yashuv, here and there, but most caved in under the pressure of a new, more ‘advanced’ culture.
Keeping Our Promise
But in those days it wasn’t one in a thousand that remained loyal. In the time of Chanukah the spirit of the Am Yisroel did not falter, didn't yield, and a great majority remained loyal to the Torah. Not only they fought fiercely and bravely on the battlefield – but more important is what they were fighting for. They were fighting for the promise they had made to Hashem many years before on Har Sinai. They had made a promise - naaseh v’nishma – and they weren’t going to budge an inch. That’s why they fought – because they didn't want to yield to the power and the wealth and the culture and the influence that was being exerted against them.
In those days the Am Yisroel demonstrated the fire of their spirit, that no matter how great and powerful and cultured and wealthy your opponent is, we are the Am Hashem; the old traditional ‘backward’ people of Hashem. We’re facing backward from the whole world and that’s how it’s going to be no matter what you entice us with.
