CHANUKAH a ZIONIST MOMENT!
Tonight 25 Kislev Jews around the world will light their Chanukia and remember the miracle HaShem brought about in the year 142 B.C.E.
Over the next eight days, we need to ask ourselves what specifically brought about the miracle of one day’s oil burning miraculously for eight days.
We need to go back to the year 165 B.C.E. When the Greek King Antiochus Epiphanes introduced a policy of spiritual genocide on the Jews of the time.
He targeted the Jewish population with decrees that were aimed at annihilating the memory of Zion from the face of the earth.
Antiochus desecrated the Beit HaMikdash and trampled on the Holy city, renaming it Olympian Zeus. Jews were made to worship idols, eat the flesh of swine, to ignore the law of circumcision and cease keeping Shabbos.
Eventually, something snapped in the Jewish soul of those few who remembered Zion.
A national liberation movement spontaneously rose from the dust lead by the righteous Mattathiasyahu and his sons. The Hasmoneans had awoken determined to rid Eretz Israel of the Greeks who had violated Zion.
“Who is for the L-rd, unto me!” was the cry of the Maccabean’s and martyrdom and sacrifice with Bitachon brought about the miracle of Chanukah we remember tonight and for the next eight day’s.
The temple mount was liberated, purified, till Jewish sovereignty was re-established by the last brother Shimon in the year 142 B.C.E.
let us today with courage and audacity immersed in Bitachon to resolve “Eretz Israel will never again be lost to us”.
It is this Bitachon in HaShem that brought about the miracle of the oil for eight days and will bring about the miracle of our people’s ongoing Return to the Promised Land.
