When the Jewish people celebrate Hanukkah each year in the winter month of Kislev,

what are we celebrating? The story of Hanukkah is the story of rededicating the temple in Jerusalem,

after it had been occupied and defiled by the Seleucid Greeks, who,

with the disgraceful aid of the Mityavneem, the Hellenized and Hellenizing Jews of the land of Israel,

were not content only to have conquered the land, but demanded that the Jews living there

relinquish their religious way of life, too. Now, think of it. At the time, the religious way of

life sustained by the Jewish people was the only monotheistic religious life connected to the

God we learn about in the Hebrew Bible. And with that tradition, so close to being snuffed out,

that means that the fate of monotheism itself, the fate of man's knowledge of the creator of heaven and earth, was nearly snuffed out.

The stakes were great, and each and every believing Muslim, Christian, and Jew who walks the earth today owes some measure of debt to those days when a small remnant of a small people whom God had for his own reasons chosen resisted

the mightiest military empire on earth. So Hanukkah combines the tactical military success of

the Jewish insurgents, the religious way of life that they fought to preserve, and edifying

lessons about acculturation, simulation, Jewish pride, and Jewish particularism.

But what's Hanukkah really about?

Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver.

On today's show, we think about that question, guided by a classic essay by one of the leaders

of 20th century Jewish orthodoxy, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,

known reverently by his students, simply as the Rav.

The essay that guides our conversation is called The Everlasting Hanukkah,

and it can be found in a volume of the Rav's writing called Days of Deliverance.

I'm joined in this conversation by my friend and colleague

Rabbi Mark Gottlieb. If you enjoy this conversation, you can subscribe to the Tikva podcast on

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