The one day oil supply miraculously lasting eight days in the Ḥanukah story carried an important message to the Jewish people.
We had already been fighting a successful guerrilla war against Seleucid-Greek rule for a few years and had enjoyed some impressive victories.
But not everyone agreed that the war we were fighting was miraculous in nature. Or that it carried a Divine stamp of approval. There were disagreements within Israel over whether or not to support the militant Maccabi faction.
The miracle of the oil, following the battle of Beit Zur and the liberation of Jerusalem, came to show our people that we still lived in a world of miracles – that the entire war was actually miraculous – and that the Kadosh Barukh Hu was with us in our struggle for freedom from foreign rule.
When the State of Israel was established in 1948, following centuries of exile and bitter persecution, it was still possible for some to deny the fact that history had changed and that the Holy One had put an end to the exile of our people.
For 19 years, a very poor and vulnerable Jewish state existed in truncated borders – without ancient Jerusalem or our ancestral heartland – and many still questioned whether this state could survive.
But then in 1967, we experienced one of the most openly miraculous wars of our entire history (perhaps only second to the sun remaining still for Yehoshua in the Battle of Giv’on). In only six days, Israel achieved a stunning victory over impossible odds that not only granted Israel defensible borders and reunited us with the cradle of Jewish civilization but also revealed the entire enterprise of the return to Zion and renewed Jewish sovereignty to be of a miraculous nature.
Like the one day oil supply lasting eight days for the heroic Maccabees, the Six Day War served as a stamp of Divine approval for our entire liberation movement and the restoration of Jewish independence in our land.
We were expecting a long and painful war with thousands dead. We had prepared huge cemeteries all over the country. Many assumed that – short of a miracle – Israel would be destroyed.
But then what actually happened shocked the world. In only six days, Israeli forces decimated three regional armies equipped with the most advanced Soviet weaponry. We returned to Jerusalem and to portions of our homeland we had previously been unable to reach.
But we made a mistake. We assumed that Jewish history had finally attained its happy ending. And we therefore neglected to dream of the next stage.
It’s time we begin to discuss what’s left to accomplish and how we can be characters in the story of its fulfillment. The cultivation of our soil, revival of our language, ingathering of our exiles, attainment of independence and unification of Jerusalem merely represent important stages in a larger revolution that still isn’t over.
We’ve been waiting for you.
