[This essay is elaborated from a column I published in the Metro West Daily News in December 1996 and, in revised form in The Outpost in January 1997. It is even more timely now and its message merits expansion. A fuller version is posted in the December 2006 archive. Years fly; truth remains].

Hanukkah is the supreme holy day: light in the darkness; the triumph of Judaism and the loving, long-suffering Jewish people after millennia of slaughter and persecution. Courage, victory, sovereignty, Torah and light held within each family till it can fill the world…

There will be nothing without victory: liberation, service, endurance, faith must culminate in victory to be complete. G-d is not a magician; He requires us to complete His work and draw close to Him. Faith is proved in deeds; Joshua completes Moshe.

Hanukkah is a joyous re-dedication of worship, purity and national integrity. Like all Jewish holy days it is a memorial (tziyun from tZion), it commemorates a refusal to bend the knee to state power and concludes with a miracle achieved through active faith.

It also is relevant that the original triumph memorialized by Hanukkah did not, in the historical sweep of things, have staying power. The battle between a Torah state and those who follow the international cult of the body, of force, fraud and sexual extravaganzas still rages, (more…)