Was Antiochus the real enemy? Not at the beginning, as Rabbi Shubert Spero points out in an essay on 
Traditionalists were up in arms against what they saw as the death-knell of Judaism.
Chanukah. The original problem, says Rabbi Spero, was within the Jewish community itself, where two parties were in conflict - the Hellenisers and the traditionalists.
The Hellenisers wanted Greek culture to permeate Judea. Joshua would become Jason and Menasseh would be Menelaus. Intermarriage would be encouraged as a means of integrating the Jewish and the Greek cultures. Jewish practices such as Shabbat, kashrut and circumcision would be superseded. Greek athletics would become more important than studying the Torah. Jews would no longer be so different. Judea would become more cosmopolitan.
Naturally, the traditionalists were up in arms against what they saw as the death-knell of Judaism. Elias Bickerman says in his book, The Maccabees: "The wrath of the Maccabees was poured out over the Jews and not over the heathen."
Antiochus and the Syrian Greeks now saw their opportunity to bring the Jews into line. However, their eagerness to impose Hellenistic ways almost certainly went further than the Jewish assimilationists had envisaged. Not even the Hellenisers could view with equanimity the sight of the Temple being defiled. No wonder Victor Tcherikower says in his Hellenistic Civilisation and the Jews: "It was not the revolt which came as a response to the persecution, but the persecution which came as a response to the revolt."
Thanks to the Maccabees, the revolt was successful, the persecution was overcome, and the sanctuary was cleansed and rededicated.
So, Is Chanukah Really Worth Celebrating?
The Maccabean victory which gave rise to Chanukah did not endure: the freedom it achieved lasted less than a century. So why should later generations regard the event as worth celebrating?
The sages recognised the problem when they asked the question: Mai Chanukah? - "What is Chanukah?" (Talmud, Shabbat 23b) A strange question when everybody already knew the answer. But their explanation is important both for what it says and what it does not say.
The sages said that when the Greeks entered the Temple and defiled the oil, the Hasmoneans succeeded in finding only one cruse of undefiled oil. A miracle occurred and the oil in the cruse burned for eight days.
What the rabbinic explanation does not say is that nationalism had triumphed, freedom had been regained and political goals had been achieved. No-one needed to tell the rabbis that these were the facts of life, but neither did anyone need to remind them that the victory was not permanent.
No-one needed to tell the rabbis that these were the facts of life.
What the rabbis were asking was: "What is the significance of Chanukah in every set of circumstances?" And their answer was to emphasise the miraculous power of faith and hope.
The Maccabees could have said, "There is not enough pure oil to rekindle the light; it is not worth trying." What they did was to take what little they had and to have faith that God would support their efforts. A paradigm of Jewish history: sometimes we lacked physical freedom, but our spiritual and cultural freedom were unbounded.
Today, there is a new challenge. Almost every Jew in the world lives in conditions of physical freedom. We have to ensure that we do not allow our spiritual and cultural freedom to diminish because of complacency or indolence. However little we sometimes have to build on, we have to have faith that we will succeed.