The greatest miracle in the story of Hanukkah, which begins tonight, Thursday night, is that more than 2,000 years after the initial event, Jews are still celebrating. That continuity is a sign that the holiday offers a deep lesson that touches all of our lives.
Hanukkah commemorates a battle won, despite astonishing odds, by the Maccabees against the Seleucid monarch Antiochus and those Jews allied with him, who appeared ready to abandon their tradition. But later rabbis, uncomfortable with military-themed celebrations, focused the holiday on the miracle unmentioned in the book of Maccabees—that in the Temple, after it was cleaned out, a cruz of oil that should have lasted one day lasted eight.
