Last night, the eighth night of Chanukah, my family and I went to the Western Wall for the final candle lighting of the holiday. There were thousands of Jews packed into the plaza, all gathered around the large menorah as the flames were kindled one last time. A choir stood before the ancient stones, voices rising into the Jerusalem night, singing songs about the Temple’s rebuilding. The sound echoed off those massive stones, the last remnant of the Second Temple standing behind them. They were singing about the Third.
It’s hard to describe how moving it was. We were standing at ground zero of every attempt to destroy the Jewish people, openly celebrating Chanukah in the exact location where the miracle occurred, anticipating the rebuilding of what our enemies thought they’d destroyed forever. This wasn’t just a ceremony. It was a declaration.
The Haftarah (reading from the Prophets) for Shabbat Chanukah comes from the prophet Zechariah:
The Rabbis chose this passage deliberately, and at first it seems to contradict the Chanukah story itself. The Maccabees did fight with might and power. They were warriors who drove out the Syrian-Greeks through military force, who cleansed the Temple with their own hands, who established an independent Jewish kingdom. Why deny the military dimension?
But look closer at that military victory. A small band of religious Jews, poorly armed and vastly outnumbered, defeated one of history’s most powerful empires. The Syrian-Greeks had professional armies, war elephants, superior weapons, endless reinforcements. The Maccabees had farming tools and faith. By every military calculation, they should have been crushed in the first engagement.
That’s why Zechariah’s words fit perfectly. The military victory was miraculous though it just looked like a battle. And the oil that burned for eight days revealed the truth – that what happened on the battlefield wasn’t just military prowess. They’re two aspects of the same thing. What appears to be human strength succeeding is really divine spirit manifesting through human action. The two miracles aren’t separate – they’re two ways of seeing the same impossible survival.
The Chanukah story is just one chapter in a much longer story. Pharaoh had real might and power – chariots, armies, an empire – and a small band of slaves walked through the sea. The Canaanite kings had fortified cities and iron weapons, and Joshua’s trumpets brought down walls. Haman had the king’s seal and authorization for genocide, and Esther’s courage undid it all. The pattern was already ancient by the time Antiochus arrived.
But Antiochus IV didn’t know this history, or didn’t believe it applied to him. He had real might and power. His armies controlled the entire region. He outlawed Jewish practice, desecrated the Temple, massacred those who resisted. He had every military advantage, every rational reason to believe he would succeed where others had failed – that he would finally hellenize the stubborn Jews, absorb them into Greek culture and erase their distinctiveness.
He failed. Not because the Maccabees were stronger, but because something stronger than military might was at work.
Rome had even greater might and power. They destroyed Jerusalem, burned the Second Temple, killed over a million Jews, enslaved hundreds of thousands more. They were so confident in their victory that they minted coins declaring “Judea Capta” – Judea Conquered. They renamed the land “Syria Palaestina” to erase even the memory of Jewish presence. They scattered survivors across their empire, certain that within a generation or two, these Jews would disappear into the populations around them like every other conquered people.
They failed.
The Crusaders came with crosses and swords, slaughtering entire Jewish communities as they marched toward Jerusalem. The Inquisition had torture chambers and burning stakes. The pogroms had the backing of governments and churches. The Nazis industrialized murder itself, turning genocide into a factory process. Six million dead. One third of world Jewry exterminated. Every rational analysis said the Jewish people were finished.
They failed.
Here’s what makes this impossible: there is no historical precedent for what the Jewish people have done. None. A people scattered for two thousand years, exiled from their homeland, living as minorities in often hostile lands, maintaining their identity, their language, their prayers toward a specific city, their connection to a specific plot of land – and then returning. This doesn’t happen. Ancient peoples disappear. The Hittites are gone. The Philistines are gone. The Moabites, the Edomites, the Babylonians who exiled us – all gone.
But there we were last night, singing at the Western Wall on Chanukah.
And the attempts to destroy us haven’t stopped. On October 7th, 2023, Hamas invaded southern Israel with explicit genocidal intent – to massacre Jews, to wipe out entire communities, to ignite a regional war that would finish what others started. The United Nations passes resolution after resolution denying Jewish connection to Jerusalem, to this very Wall. University students across the West chant for Israel’s elimination. Iran funds proxy armies on every border, openly declaring their goal of wiping Israel off the map.
They have might – the might of international bodies, of diplomatic pressure, of global media sympathetic to their narrative. They have power – military backing, oil wealth, numerical superiority. They have, as every enemy before them has had, every rational reason to believe they’ll succeed.
But they won’t. Because this has never been only about might and power.
Standing at the Western Wall last night, watching that eighth candle being lit, I understood what Zechariah meant. Israel today maintains a powerful military – the world has taught us we must. We train our soldiers, develop our weapons, defend our borders with real, tangible strength. This matters. The Maccabees fought fiercely, and we honor their courage. We’re not passive recipients of miracles.
But here’s the truth the Maccabees discovered and we keep rediscovering: our strength alone has never been enough. It’s never been sufficient to explain our survival. The Israeli Defense Forces are formidable. But even when we are the mightier force, even when our army is superior in training and weaponry, the outcome still depends on something beyond military calculation.
What endures is the spirit Zechariah spoke of, a divine force working through our strength, ensuring outcomes that military power alone cannot guarantee.
And who are the people through whom this spirit works?
We are a people who remember. Who light candles every year, telling the same story, singing the same songs. Who look at these ancient stones and see not a ruin but a promise. Who’ve been praying three times daily toward this spot for two thousand years, through every persecution, every exile, every attempt to make them forget.
Who stand there now, not in secret, not in hiding, but openly – thousands of us, with our children, singing about a Temple that hasn’t existed since the year 70, singing about its rebuilding as if it’s not a question of “if” but “when.”
The spirit that Zechariah spoke of, God’s spirit, won’t be extinguished. Not by Antiochus. Not by Rome. Not by Crusaders or Inquisitors or Nazis or Hamas. Not by UN resolutions or campus protests or any power that rises against us. The Lord’s spirit works through our hands when we fight. It burns in the oil when we light candles. It’s the divine force that makes the impossible happen again and again, in ways that look like military victories and in ways that look like miraculous lights.
Watching that final flame being kindled at the Western Wall, I realized that we are like that oil – still burning when we should have run out long ago. We should have been wiped out a dozen times over. Every rational analysis, every historical precedent, every military and political reality should have finished us.
And yet there we stood. Not just surviving but celebrating. Not hiding but singing. Not mourning what was lost but anticipating what will be rebuilt. In the exact spot where every empire thought they’d erased us forever.
Not by might. Not by power. But by God’s spirit – a spirit that works through both, that burns on eternally.
