Every year, Jews around the world light candles for eight nights and tell the same familiar story: When the Holy Temple was regained from the Greeks, the Jews found just one small cruse of oil that burned far beyond what nature should have allowed. It is a beautiful story.

It is also strikingly absent from our prayers.

Open the Amidah (the central prayer of our liturgy) or Birkat Hamazon (Grace after Meals) during Chanukah and read Al HaNisim, the central liturgical text of the festival. There is no oil. No Menorah. No supernatural light. Instead, we find ourselves immersed in a description of war, brutal, asymmetric, ideological war.

This omission is so glaring that it demands explanation. If Chanukah is about a miraculous flame, why does Judaism’s official historical-theological summary ignore it entirely?

The answer is uncomfortable, and deeply relevant to the moment Israel finds itself in today.

Al HaNisim is not a children’s story. It is a meditation on power, survival, and moral responsibility. It tells us not what felt inspiring, but what truly mattered. And what mattered was not the miracle of oil, but the necessity and cost of fighting back.

The Greek threat was not merely military. It was ideological. “The wicked Greek kingdom rose up against Your people Israel,” the prayer states, “to make them forget Your Torah and abandon the laws of Your will.” This was not genocide. It was........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)