From the Teachings of Rav Yitzchok Hutner, Adapted by Rabbi Pinchas Stolper (Part Two) and from "Hidden Lights: Hanukkah and the Jewish/Greek Conflict" (David Dov Publications, 2005, Chapter 32) by Rabbi Pinchas Stolper.
For Part one, "The Effects of the Greek Confrontation with the Jewish People," by Rav Yitzchok Hutner (1906–1980) and adapted by Rabbi Pinchas Stolper (1931–2022), click the link at the start of the sentence.
Presented and adapted by Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin.
The following is based on excerpts from Pachad Yitzchok (Hanukkah 3):
1. How Torah Forgetfulness Caused the Renaissance of Torah: Torah forgetfulness was caused as a result of the (cultural, spiritual, philosophical, religious, political, military) conflict between the Jewish People and Ancient Greece. Paradoxically, it became the source of a new renaissance (rebirth) of Torah scholarship among the Jewish People. How did the efforts by the ancient Greeks to abolish the Torah, Torah study and Mitzvah observance become the source of its re-establishment in the form of the Torah She'beal Peh (Oral Law, Talmud) by the Tannaim, the Jewish scholars of the Mishna?
2. How a Torah Renaissance Was Created and Strengthened: Hanukkah was instituted at the very end of the series of Jewish Holy Days that were established for all generations. The profound message of this phenomenon is the insight that with the advent of Hanukkah all the temporal elements were in place to guarantee the spiritual passage of the Jewish People through Time, all the way until the Messianic Era.
Until the Jewish Sages had established Hanukkah as a festival, the final section of the bridge that leads to the Messianic Era had not yet been installed. With the institution of Hanukkah, the path was paved for the Jewish People to travel upon until the completion of the future inauguration of the Messianic Era.
3. The Four Kingdoms: The subjugation of the Jewish People to "four foreign kingdoms" preceding the arrival of the Messianic Era, is described in the vision of Daniel (Book of Daniel). The Jewish Sages teach that this subjugation is so fundamental that it is prophetically rooted in the Torah's description of Creation (at the beginning of the Book of Genesis).
The first kingdom, or empire, to subjugate the Children of Israel/Jewish People is Babylonia. The second kingdom/empire to subjugate the Children of Israel/Jewish People is Persia. The third kingdom/empire to subjugate and oppress the Jewish People is ancient Greece. The fourth kingdom/empire is Rome also called Edom, that eventually mutated and became the Roman Catholic Church, the Western World, and the Christian world in general to the present day.
To explain: In Genesis 1:2 it states: "וְהָאָרֶץ, הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ, וְחֹשֶׁךְ, עַל-פְּנֵי תְהוֹם; וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים, מְרַחֶפֶת עַל-פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם"— "And the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters." The four terms that precede "the spirit of God": 1. "unformed", 2. "void", 3. "darkness", 4. "face of the deep", are symbolic and prophetic predictions of the Four Kingdoms/Empires that will afflict the Jewish People and that precede the coming of the true Jewish Messiah:
1. "Unformed" (תֹהוּ) refers to Babylonia.
2. "Void" (בֹהוּ) refers to Persia.
3. "Darkness" (חֹשֶׁךְ) refers to Greece.
4. "Face of the deep" (פְּנֵי תְהוֹם) refers to Rome.
The words "the spirit of God" (רוּחַ אֱלֹהִים) refers to the spirit of the eventual Jewish Messiah who will come to redeem the Jewish People. The "darkness" of Greece indicates that Greece "darkened (blinded) the eyes of Israel with its anti-Torah edicts."
While Babylonia and Persia inflicted great harm on the Children of Israel/Jewish People in the past their influence has waned while the subjugation of the Jews under ancient Greece left behind residual and ongoing problems for the Jewish People such as Hellenization and Assimilation. It is the kingdom of Rome/Edom/Western Civilization/Christianity/Modernity that continues to dominate the Jewish People at the present time.
4. The Uniqueness of Torah Law: Rashi (Rav Shlomo Yitzchaki, 1040–1105) and the TOSAFISTS (Talmudic commentators who lived in the 12th to the 15th centuries) in their commentaries on the Talmud (Chagigah 16a) teach that Yose ben Yoezer and Yose ben Yochanan who lived in the times during the conflict between Judea and Greece, about 2200 years ago, were the first Jewish Sages who disagreed about a point in Torah law. This was a direct result of the influence of ancient Greece that "darkened the eyes of Israel [(the Jewish People) with its anti-Torah edicts to make the Jews forget God's Torah.]"
The malicious influence that led to the "darkening" of Torah knowledge and the subsequent forgetting of Torah laws among the Jews, resulted in the first disagreement among the Jewish Sages of the ancient Sanhedrin.
There is a straight line that runs from that time throughout Jewish History until the present where it can be said that the multiplicity of opinions and differing views among Jewish Sages that expresses itself in the "Battle of Torah" (Milchamta Shel Torah) was and is caused by the forced forgetting of Torah resulting from the Greek edicts that brought about a spiritual and religious "darkness"' of forgetfulness of Torah for the Jewish People.
It may superficially seem that these are battle scars of the Jews' struggles with the Greeks. However, the Jewish Sages bequeathed to the Jewish People a much deeper understanding of this phenomenon.
5. Torah Forgetfulness as a Positive Force: The Jewish Sages teach in the Talmud that: "There are occasions when the effort to destroy Torah actually leads to its preservation" (Menachos 99b). How is this derived? When Moses descended Mount Sinai and saw the Children of Israel worshipping the Golden Calf, he smashed the Tablets of the Covenant (that he was holding and that had on them the Ten Commandments). The Talmud explains that God told Moses: "I commend you for breaking the Tablets"! The Jewish Sages teach that were it not for Moses' smashing of the Tablets the Jewish People would have been forever protected from forgetting any aspect of Torah (Eruvin 54a). The breaking of the first Tablets is the original cause of Torah forgetfulness. This is a mysterious and mystical concept.
From this a fascinating and novel concept emerges — that Torah forgetfulness (or the forgetting of Torah) can paradoxically cause the enhancement of Torah. This truth is so significant that it is conceivable, as in the case of Moses, that under certain circumstances one actually deserves to be congratulated for causing Torah to be forgotten as in the case of Moses when he broke the first Tablets and was surprisingly congratulated by God.
6. The First Instance of Torah Forgetfulness: The Jewish Sages of the Talmud teach that: "Three hundred Torah laws were forgotten during the period of mourning for Moses after his death. These laws were restored by Osniel ben Kenaz through the use of logical inference." (Temurah 16a). The intellectual effort that brought about the restoration of these 300 Torah laws created a significant body of subsequent resulting Torah scholarship. This scholarship came about due to the earlier forgetting of Torah laws.
In fact, all disagreements among the major Jewish Sages concerning Torah were caused by Torah forgetfulness. The Jewish Sages teach that in spite of the fact that Jewish scholars disagree with each other, the sum total of their disagreements is that both sides of a differing opinion are "the words of a living God" (Chagigah 3b, Eruvin 13b). The end of this process is that all legitimate Torah disagreements enlarge and expand the Torah, and all of this Torah scholarship was created as a result of forgetfulness.
7. How the Oral Torah Thrives Through Disagreement: The phenomenon of Torah forgetfulness and its subsequent revival by the Jewish Sages of the Oral Law (Talmud) created an even greater innovation: Namely, that the power of the unwritten Oral Torah (Torah Shebe'al Peh) is much more pronounced when there is disagreement rather than agreement. It is known as the Milchamta Shel Torah ("warring of Torah [opinions]" as well as "Rischa De'oraisa" and "Pilpulin De'oraisa").
Implicit in the concept "Eilu Ve'eilu Divrei Elokim Chaim" that "both these and those are words of a living God" is the principle that even a minority opinion which does not become operative Torah law, becomes an integral part of the corpus of Torah truth, providing it was expressed by the set rules of Torah argumentation. The Ramban (Rav Moshe ben Nachman, known as Nachmanides, 1194–1270) in his commentary on Deuteronomy 17:11 states that: "Indeed, the Torah was given with the express purpose that it be studied and interpreted by the Jewish Sages of the Oral Law."
8. The Conflict With Greece Revealed Hidden Torah Values: It therefore emerges that disagreement between the Jewish Sages of the Oral Law reveals the power of the Oral Law-Unwritten Torah much more than agreement between the Jewish Sages. The ongoing debates among the Jewish Sages which establish Torah Law and determine Torah Truth is not just one method among many!
Torah debate and struggle is a unique creation in and of itself and a constructive method to creating Torah Values which are not necessarily found in any other Torah source.
9. Creativity Through Torah Conflict: Torah debate, meaning debate between the Jewish Sages about Torah, engenders superior relationships between the Jewish Sages and ensures a higher degree of creativity than can be attained through other types of Torah study and learning. There is paradoxically a love relationship between the Jewish Sages that grows out of their bitter Torah disputes and that intensifies as a result of the disagreements between the Jewish Sages. While each Jewish sage and Scholar forcefully puts forth his own unique point of view in a Torah dispute, simultaneously each Jewish Sage and Scholar becomes a partner in the creation of a new, reborn, revived and rejuvenated Torah Value that has come out of the battle of Torah ideas that is now called "Battle of Torah' (Milchamta Shel Torah) — or, "the struggle over Torah Truths"!
10. Overcoming the Darkness of Greece: The presence of disagreement in Torah matters — which is a continual phenomenon that began with the spiritual and cultural darkness brought about by Ancient Greece and continues until today — should not be viewed as a shortcoming in the redemption from all that Greece stood for and symbolized. On the contrary, the liberation of Hanukkah that was brought about by the Hasmonean Court (the Maccabees) represented a complete victory over the Darkness of Greece. So much so, that it actually processed and produced Light out of the darkness that Greece sought to impose on the Jewish People. From that point on the Torah could grow and be enhanced — through the forgetting of Torah!
The negation of the Jews and Judaism became the new foundation of Judaism as symbolized by the victory of the Jews over the Greeks on Hanukkah.
Summary: Whereas the fall of the Babylonian Kingdom/Empire and the Persian Kingdom/Empire only served as the historical "antidote" to their domination of the People of Israel, the fall of the the Greek Kingdom/Empire included a positive outcome and "medication" which was fashioned from the "disease" itself! The Kingdom of Greece rose to try to erase the memory and practice of Torah from the Jews, but instead the beginnings of forgetfulness engendered great Torah discussions from which emerged new wellsprings of Torah comprehension.
The effort by the Jewish Sages to restore clarity brought intense analyses that plumbed new depths of understanding in Torah wisdom, law and practice as symbolized by the new festival of Hanukkah that was enacted after the Jews' victory over the failed Greek culture and dominance.
11. Hanukkah Spans the Generations: Hanukkah is therefore the last of the instituted Jewish Holy Days that are meant to span the generations until the end of time. Within the very experience of Torah being lost and forgotten from memory, it paradoxically enables the Jewish Sages and the Jewish People during all subsequent times, until the end of time, to find new sparks of Torah growth and rejuvenation, creating an ongoing well-spring of Torah renaissance. From the time of the events that resulted in Hanukkah's creation, it becomes possible for Jews to walk confidently into history and the future as it unfolded and continues to unfold, with the following clarity:
That as much as the 2,000 years old Roman Exile may jar the Jews' historical memory of Torah, the Jewish People have a national resource that guarantees the full restoration and even the enhancement of any Torah knowledge, laws, wisdom and practice that may be lost on the long historical road that has lasted over 2,000 years surviving exiles, wars and persecutions, on the path to the ultimate Messianic Era with the arrival of the true Jewish Messiah.
That as much as the 2,000 years old Roman Exile may jar the Jews' historical memory of Torah, the Jewish People have a national resource that guarantees the full restoration and even the enhancement of any Torah knowledge, laws, wisdom and practice that may be lost on the long historical road that has lasted over 2,000 years surviving exiles, wars and persecutions, on the path to the ultimate Messianic Era with the arrival of the true Jewish Messiah.
12. Concluding Comments: Ancient Greece was the first society in human history that was not a worshipping society:
-While the People of Israel based reality on spirituality, Greece was only interested in the material.
-Greece was self-centered while Israel was God-centered.
In the Jewish People's struggle with Greece and its culture and philosophies, the Light of Torah, the original Light of Creation, as represented and symbolized by the light of the Menorah, was rescued from within the primordial Darkness itself that stood at the heart, mind and body of Greece's raison d'être.
Miraculously, as a result of the Jews' conflicts and the spiritual, cultural, philosophical and military wars with Greece, Torah knowledge, wisdom, law and practice was increased and enhanced as symbolized by the new festival of Hanukkah all as a result of the Jews' forgetting of Torah brought about by the Greek onslaught. The Jewish Sages taught that the "abolition/negation [of Torah] is its establishment/existence" (Bitulo Zehu Kiyumo).
The defeat of Greece locked in the healing salve that emerged from the plague itself! The Jewish Sages also taught that a little bit of light dispels a great deal of darkness!
Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin was born to Holocaust survivor parents in Israel, grew up in South Africa, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is an alumnus of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and of Teachers College–Columbia University. He heads the Jewish Professionals Institute dedicated to Jewish Adult Education and Outreach – Kiruv Rechokim. He was the Director of the Belzer Chasidim's Sinai Heritage Center of Manhattan 1988–1995, a Trustee of AJOP 1994–1997 and founder of American Friends of South African Jewish Education 1995–2015. From 2017–2024 he was a docent and tour guide at The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Downtown Manhattan, New York.
He is the author of The Second World War and Jewish Education in America: The Fall and Rise of Orthodoxy. Contact Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin at izakrudomin@gmail.com