He once wrote the following in approximately these words: “The victory of the Maccabees because of which we celebrate Chanukah was actually the Jewish People’s greatest failure. Its result was that we remained with our outdated religion and all its stringencies disconnected from the great Greek civilization whose influence spread over the whole rest of the world. If the Greeks had won the war we would have been spared everything that happened to us in our long exile and we would be a happy normal nation today living as part of the family of nations.”

According to Lapid the victory of the Chashmonaim was in fact our downfall and he couldn’t understand why Israel’s secular community continues to celebrate Chanukah with candles sufganiyot dreidels presents and games.

Tommy Lapid was an intriguing personality. I once had a conversation with him in which he confessed to me that he was a total ignoramus when it came to Judaism; he was 25 years old when he first laid eyes on a pair of tefillin. And it seems that he was also lacking a basic understanding of Jewish history despite his sharp intellect and broad education.

Let us examine an ensuing scenario according to Lapid’s wishes. Had the Greeks been victorious over the Chashmonaim and succeeded in forcing Hellenism on the Jewish People then Hellenism would be the dominant culture in the world to this day with its polytheism and its idealization of the body valuing aesthetics far above ethics. Despite all the great philosophers of ancient Greece and their symposia the basic moral principles that govern human society would be unknown today (except for the concept of democracy which was practiced to a limited extent in Athens). Furthermore the liberal values so beloved in today’s Western culture and so prized by Mr. Lapid would never have found expression in the classical Greek state he wished we had assimilated into. There would have been no reason for the pagan lifestyle of that civilization to change.

Didn’t Mr. Lapid realize that in the end it was the Maccabean victory — via Christianity and Islam which stemmed from Judaism — that brought basic values of justice charity and the desire for tikkun olam to the Western world (all the evil that the Christian and Islamic civilizations have done to the Jewish People notwithstanding)? This was the dynamic that wiped out pagan idolatry and instituted faith in one Supreme G‑d and Creator. As the Rambam taught these two religions serve as a vehicle for conveying the idea of Mashiach and ultimate Redemption to the nations of the world. In addition the worldwide dissemination of the Tanach through these religions brought the whole world to a more “Jewish” outlook. Many non-Jewish historians have noted this point.

This influence is seen most prominently in the United States which was founded by Protestant believers in the Bible. In fact a researcher with the Rand Corporation produced a study showing how the American legal system has its roots in the Seven Noachide Laws the universal religion derived from our holy Torah for the nations of the world.

If Mr. Lapid were still among us I would have to disappoint him further by informing him that in the opinion of leading historians even the secular liberal ideas that dominate Western thought originated from the Torah although they have wandered far from their source. 

Much as Mr. Lapid might recoil from the truth the war of the Chashmonaim — which began as a fight by a group of faithful Jews for their right to live in their land in accordance with Hashem’s Torah — became a victory for all of humanity.

But Tommy Lapid was afflicted with a lifelong hostility toward Torah and Torah-faithful Jews unable to absorb the fact that the Chashmonaim were an indirect influence even on his secular liberal worldview which is composed largely of fallout from the Torah itself.

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Seemingly the worldwide victory over paganism is no more than a tangential effect of the localized victory of the Chashmonaim. Surely when they fought their miraculous war they did not have it in mind to redeem the entire world from paganism and establish Hashem’s kingdom on earth; they meant only to restore the Torah to its former glory to purify the Temple and to return to serving Hashem as in the past. The change that came to world civilization was only a side effect.

Deeper investigation however reveals that this really isn’t so. The worldwide revolution actually was the outcome of that struggle between the Greeks and Bnei Yisrael. Paradoxically this surprising change didn’t stem from the toppling of Greek and Jewish-Hellenist rule in Eretz Yisrael or the cleansing of the Temple but — surprisingly — from the very fact that the Greeks gained control over the Beis Hamikdash for a time and even defiled it.

I learned this idea from the gaon Rav Mordechai Shmuel Kroll ztz”l the Rav of Kfar Chassidim. In addition to being a great talmid chacham Rav Kroll was a thinker and writer par excellence and in his sefer Masa Damesek he wrote the following about Chanukah:

“The Greeks entered the Sanctuary… [and] defiled all the oil but they were expelled from there. They entered willingly and left under duress. True they defiled the oil but the defilement didn’t last long — it was purified. How? Just one flask of pure oil purified the Beis Hamikdash — but how wondrous it was! They left the Mikdash but they were not freed from it.… They merely entered and the power of kedushah pursued them until it vanquished them…. They wanted to bring Hellenism to the Sanctuary but what happened was that the spirit of the Sanctuary penetrated to the core of Hellenism…. The Torah was translated into Greek and that was the beginning of the downfall of paganism.

“Thus ‘He who touches them will be sanctified’ was fulfilled through us. A nation touched the Jews and vanquished them and it appeared that redemption had passed us by but a short time passed and we stood astonished… the vanquished became the vanquishers. The Torah of Israel vanquished Hellenism.

“Afterward came Rome. Rome too entered the Sanctuary and was not expelled from it. Not a remnant is left of the Mikdash but the very smoke of the burned Temple the very klei haMikdash that Titus carried away to Rome in his pride made their mark on Rome and its gods. On the coins of the Roman Empire an image was stamped of a sad and desolate woman her hands bound. ‘This is the vanquished Yehudah ’ the inscription proclaimed. True! Yehudah was vanquished. But while [Hashem’s] anger at the vanquished was poured out only on wood and stones the conquerors disappeared from the world. On the contrary many Romans in that period became gerei tzedek. The writer Tacitus expresses surprise: What possessed the nobility of Rome to take up the foreign custom of circumcision? Those writers did not know that because they entered the Mikdash — even for the purpose of destroying it — they could not come out unaffected.” (Masa Damesek)

Think of the stream of kedushah that bubbles forth from the depths of existence. If just one flask of pure oil remains its purity and holiness spreads out over the world. By the very fact the Greeks spent time in the Beis Hamikdash they were affected by its holiness and it pursued them until Hellenism and idolatry were eradicated. The same happened in Rome. Rav Kroll brings other historical examples of how that one flask of pure oil continues to spread its influence in the world in hidden ways protecting the Jewish People and changing the world through Torah and kedushah.

Mr. Lapid didn’t understand this secret. But while much of the Jewish nation doesn’t keep the mitzvos somehow it senses the eternity of the Chanukah light and knows that somehow it is shaped by it.

And these Jews join us in lighting Chanukah candles for the eight days of the festival reminding us all — each on his own level — that this is the light of eternity streaming kedushah to the entire world. 

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

It’s important to have mercy on the body to allow the light of all that the soul realizes to enter the body and refine it. Because the soul is constantly experiencing wondrous things but the body doesn’t automatically share that knowledge. (Rebbe Nachman of Breslov)