Hannukah is a wonderful Jewish holiday, full of light and happiness, hope and resolve. Jews around the world, at varying levels of observance celebrate it and create an amazing sanctification of God's name.
Yet He is generally curiously absent when discussing the holiday. Whenever seeing celebrations of discussions of Hannukah, many themes come up: the national victory over our oppressors as celebrated in Israel, or the spiritual and material festival of joy as expressed in the Diaspora.
But even among the observant, we don't talk much, if at all, about God. Oh, we discuss halacha plenty. But God? Eh. Maybe the occasional mention of His hidden hand in all of it. But that's about it.
This is strange, because Hashem suffused and permeated the thought of the actual Maccabees and Hazal regarding the Hannukah miracle.
The reported proximate cause of the rebellion was Jews being forced to commit sins before God, not the social sins of Bein Adam Lechaveiro. The very name Hannukah refers to the purification of the Temple and its rededication to His service.
The prayers we say - including all Hanissim and others - simply presume that the great military victories of the Maccabees, who then became the Chasmonaim, were thanks to Him, sometimes openly and sometimes implicitly.
Nor could it be otherwise. As the Torah, the Tanach, and Hazal remind us over and over - we do what we can and must for Him and ourselves, but ultimately it is up to Him whether we succeed.
I have never felt this more than over the past horrible year. We were at our nadir. It seemed like everything was falling apart.
Every expert worth their salt predicted our doom in every military operation before it was launched, claiming we would suffer casualties even greater than the horrible day of October 7 if we didn't surrender or such crushing isolation that we might collapse.
Yet none of that came to pass. Yes, many have fallen. Some of the hostages were murdered during operations, and some remain in captivity. But by and large this has been a year of success no-one foresaw but all see in retrospect.
Some will attribute this solely to the careful and effective planning and training of the army, or the determination of the government - especially the Prime Minister, who deserves credit for the victory as much as blame for the prior failure - or to many an explainable human cause, just like historians do the victories of the Maccabees.
But I find this unsatisfactory, as the victors of Hannukah would. History is full of careful efforts at military comebacks and planning and strategy that fail dismally. It is full of "righteous causes" that faltered in the face of indifference, hostility, or simple power politics.
I do not for one second discount the incredible bravery and achievement of our soldiers and our nation and our friends throughout the world. But without His help, we may still have failed. This, I truly believe.
May it be that He continue to guide our hand in smiting our many enemies, that we not fall into the trap of "my might (alone) and the strength of my hand did this," and may all the hostages - living and dead - return to us to be in their rightful place while all our enemies are put in theirs.
Hannukah Sameach!
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