WALL STREET JOURNAL
Lighting Candles for Liberty
by Ruth R. Wisse
December 4, 2015

…The [Hanukkah] festival commemorates the recapture and rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem almost 22 centuries ago, initiating eight decades of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel. Today’s defenders of Israel fight not only for their own restored political and religious freedom but for the right of all nations to freedom from increasingly violent and maddened enemies…I was amused re­cently to find this caution on a Jew­ish web­site: “Note that the hol­i­day com­mem­o­rates the mir­a­cle of the oil, not the mil­i­tary vic­tory: Jews do not glo­rify war.” Yet ob­vi­ously the mir­a­cle of the oil cor­re­sponds to the im­prob­a­ble vic­tory of the Mac­cabees over in­surmount­able mil­i­tary odds. Hanukkah cel­ebrates not war but the self-rule that was un­at­tain­able with­out it. READ MORE SUBSCRIPTION CONTENT