Fat Is the Culprit

When the Holy Temple was recaptured by the famed Maccabees, they searched for a bottle of oil that still had the High Priest’s seal. Although they were allowed to use tainted oil, they would not do so, for then they would have won the war but lost the battle.

Defiling the Oil

Every war ever waged was basically for power or money except for one. The war which the Greeks waged against the Jews over 2,000 years ago was waged for oil. Olive oil to be exact.

It wasn’t Jewish money the Greeks were after. Had they been after our wealth, they would have emptied the Holy temple. But the Greeks did not strip the Holy temple clean. They defiled it. They offered pigs as sacrifices on the altar. And they opened the little bottles of pure olive oil that were used daily to kindle the seven-branched menorah.

Weren’t those Greeks dumb to leave the wealth but despoil the oil? No, they weren’t so stupid.

The Greeks were content to let the Jewish people live. They knew from looking at our first 2,000 years of miraculous existence that we could not be destroyed. And they were wise, so they accepted this fact. What they could not accept was that there is something higher than the mind, something more sublime than human wisdom, something greater than their deities who were no better than people save their immortality.

All of this was symbolized by the purity of the olive oil. The Greeks did not totally destroy the oil for doing so would not have allowed them to realize their ultimate goal.

They defiled the oil by breaking the seals. And their message to the Jews was loud and clear: “Go ahead, use the oil now. Use the impure oil in your menorah; we don’t believe that there is such a thing as purity. There is no such thing as spirituality. There is no such thing as an All-knowing, Allpowerful G-d. Man is the apex, man’s understanding is the utmost, man’s physical prowess and power is the peak.

But the Jews refused to give in to the Greeks physically or spiritually. When the Holy Temple was recaptured by the famed Macabees, they searched for a bottle of oil that still had the High Priest’s seal. Although they were allowed to use this tainted oil they would not do so, for then they would have won the war but lost the battle.

Just as the Greeks made a statement by defiling the oil, the Jews made just as strong of a statement by refusing to use that oil. They cried, “we believe that there is something higher than our own intellect, we believe in the All-powerful, All-knowing G-d, we believe that eventually good will prevail and that G-d will ultimately bring the time when everything will be totally pure, forever more.”

The main custom of Chanukah—lighting the Menorah-revolves around oil, thus commemorating the miracle of the small bottle which lasted not one, but eight days and also commemorating the strength of the Jewish spirit.

The Secrets of the Torah

But oil is significant for another reason, a reason which gives us additional insight into oil’s message in our lives in general and the Chanukah miracle in particular.

Oil, like wine, symbolizes the secrets of the Torah, the mystical aspects of Judaism. These formerly hidden concepts are becoming more revealed as we come closer to Moshiach’s imminent arrival. For the Messianic Era will be a time when all of the Torah’s secrets will be revealed for everyone to grasp.

Until the moment comes when Moshiach is anointed with the sacred oil, however, it is imperative that each of us learns as much of the “oil” of Torah as possible, thus preparing ourselves for Moshiach’s imminent arrival

From the book Light from the Future: Chanukah by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.