Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Did The Greeks Really Contaminate All Of The Oil?

The gemara says that the Greeks defiled ALL of the oil in the heichal [beis hamikdash]. So how does the gemara turn around and say that they found a vial of pure oil when it JUST SAID that they defiled ALL of the oil?

I have read this gemara about 10,000 times and never thought of that question.

But the Sfas Emes did [5633]!

2 answers.

1] Maybe they found the pure oil buried underground, so it was not in the heichal.

2] Hashem created a new miraculous oil after the Greeks defiled everything. This would also answer the question, why 8 days when the miracle was really only seven days [because they found enough for the first day, it was the last seven that were miraculous]? But now we understand that the vial that they found was a miraculous vial of oil.