We are familiar with the basic obligation to the recount the Exodus from Egypt, with all its details. We are commanded, as a basic tenent of our faith, to recall how G-d brought us out of Egypt, and all that transpired. ""And you shall tell your sons", the Torah commands us, and we do so on the Seder night.
There is no such obligation on Hanukkah. On Hanukkah, we aren't commanded to learn the details of the Jewish revolt against the Greeks during the Second Temple Period. After all, Hanukkah is a different kind of holiday than Passover. The story of the Exodus is the very basis of the Jewish faith, even more crucial than the story of the creation of the world, and our daily prayers constantly refer back to the miraculous events that accompanied the Exodus. Unlike Passover, the story of Hanukkah does not stand as the root of our faith; we are not commanded to know details of the history of the Hanukah miracle and the battles of the Hashmonaim – but that doesn't mean we have to be uninformed regarding what happened!
Many of us do not know much regarding the fundamental point of Hanukkah - the wars! The "Al Hassim" prayer we recite mentions nothing about the miracle of the oil, but focuses strictly on the war – the few against the many, the weak against the strong…. Yet, the story of the Hanukkah is one big blur to most of us: There was Judah Macabee, there was Antiochus, there were Hellenists…. But so little is really known, because we are concentrating on the miracle of the oil, which was an appendage to the miracle of our victory in war.
We are robbing our children of a great heritage and a chance to instill in them real Jewish pride. The recounting of the practically suicidal self-sacrifice of Mattitiyahu (Matathias)and his sons are legendary, much more inspiring than another "vort" (Torah insight) about jelly donuts. The details of the brilliant guerilla tactics of Judah Macabee against the Greek army is infinitely more uplifting than one more dvar Torah about dreidels. We are talking about a 25 year war, with victories and losses, and finally – victory; where all the brothers were killed during different stages of the revolt, except for Simeon who was assassinated much later.
Read a Jewish history book about this era – "The Book of the Maccabees", or Moshe Pearlman's "The Maccabees", or "Megilat Hanukkah" by Chagai ben Artzi. It will put a new light on Hanukkah for you - an authentic Jewish light.
How and why have we relegated this amazing holiday to discussing one miracle? How did the wars of the Hashomnaim take a second seat to the miracle of the oil? A lot has to do with our 2000 year exile, which limited Judaism to the private sector deeming any kind of nationalistic concept such as "wars" or "vengeance" as irrelevant.
But there may be other reasons. After all, the major struggle of the Maccabees was against the Hellenists, those Jews who wanted to turn Israel (the area was called at that time "Judea") into a copy of Greece and the Temple as a place of worship to Zeus, a kind of civil war, not to be encouraged in the Diaspora.
And today, the very idea of a handful of Jews going out with incredible self-sacrifice and against all the odds to start a revolution against the spreading Hellenism in their country…. that has implications. Indeed, better to talk about dreidels and oil.