The מהר״ל explains that חציוניות עולם is עשרה מאמרות and פנימיות העולם is עשרת הדברות. This idea is seen throughout his ספרים. As important as the world of science and human thought are, one must understand that there is something which transcends all that. The idea of the Infinite G-d is something we can’t comprehend. We know He’s there, but we don’t grasp it. The רמב״ן, talking about Aristotle, writes that he believed מה שלא הבין אינו קיים. Ideas which were beyond his scope didn’t exist. He defined the sciences based off his subjective understanding. If you ever looked at Aristotelian astronomy or anatomy, you’ll think it’s a joke. They never opened a cadaver. They just used their למדות. It should be this way and that’s the reality. It took many ways until science opened anyone up.
Aristotle was a paradigm of the Greek worldview. You know what Greece glorified? It was the world of Harmony. The world of aesthetics, especially the body, was glorified by the Greek. They were enamored by the beauty and symmetry of science. Everything is perfect. They glorified aesthetics because it was the harmonious merging of elements. They glorified beautiful speech. They were word-smiths. You should give them credit. Without them, we would all be barbarians. חכמת יון is a tremendous thing. But you it’s only an אמצעי for a מטרה. It’s the שפחה for the גברתה. The עיקר is the חכמה הנבדלת. It’s bowing down to a truth beyond your comprehension. We’ve experienced prophecy. We know there is a G-d. That’s what we live for and die for throughout our whole history.
What Greece wanted from us wasn’t so much to change the religion. What they wanted to take away was our Weltanschauung since it rejected the fundamental assumption of Greek philosophy. Greek simply didn’t accept a truth beyond their comprehension. Even their gods were de-deified. Their gods are not pristine, pure beings representing truths. They were a dysfunctional family. It’s a bunch of hulks. There is no truth or beauty in Zeus or Mercury. Greek mythology simply describes the never-ending struggle of forces. Brutality is the name of the game. You control nothing. Gods are just forces like dragons. They’re just a nuisance. Focus on man and you’ll be good. Greek polluted genuine religion. You can have your temples but they will be defiled. You can have your oil but it will be tainted.
With Greece the capability to see מסוף העולם ועד סופו is gone. Understand that there is nothing else out there. Man, stopped looking for truths in religion and turned inward towards his own logic. Man’s logic is very limited. You will only focus on the temporal and functional. All the rest - forget about it. It’s meaningless. That’s יון. They didn’t mind if you had a different religion than theirs. They were quite tolerant in that sense. But it was only in Judea where there was intolerance. Why? It was because the people were a thorn to the back of the ethos of Greece. We transcended science and logic and bowed down to something beyond our comprehension. We took their idol, the culture of aesthetics, and demoted it to the status of the butler. They didn’t like that. They wanted those transcendent lights, the אור הגנוז out of the picture. They wanted us to become myopic. They wanted us to focus on the עשרה מאמרות without looking for the עשרת הדברות. It’s that שמן which was to be used to enlighten us which became defiled. The ספרי חסידות explain that טומאה is finite. The אבי אבות הטומאה is death. Everything else is a certain reality of life whose potential was cut. It’s a life that stopped. It’s over. It’s טומאה. טימאו את השמנים means that they put limits with our perception.
This was the culture of Greek. And it was a major challenge. Can religion survive in such a culture? At the time, it was a clash. In contemporary culture, as the world becomes more focused on the here and now, forgetting about the past and future, can we really be religious or are we defined as merely traditional and observant? Can we have a religious quest or just be orthodox? That’s the challenge of יון. It’s very contemporary and relevant in our time as well. Can we bow down to the Infinite, the Un-comprehendible, to שם הגדול? That’s what השתחוויה לה׳ is. It’s the total subjugation of the self to Him. That’s why על הנסים is found in Modim. כל מי שלא השתחוויה במודים שדרו נעשה נחש. The person who doesn’t bow, his stature is subject to the נחש הקדמוני. You’re going back to the old sin, seeing the world subjectively and walking away from the objective reality of pure thought. You don’t want to see the אמת. You just want to see the טוב ורע. You can’t bow in front of G-d since you live in subjectivity.
That’s why in על הנסים we talk about the כהנים הקדושים lighting נרות קודשים. This is the uniqueness of the חינוך הבית of חנוכה. It was a גזירה on the מנורה. The מנורה represents wisdom. If you want חכמה, the Gemara says, daven towards the south since the מנורה was positioned on that side of the מקדש. Greece campaigned a war on חכמה. It was an assault against קדושה. This is the uniqueness of the חינוך of חנוכה. The perseverance of maintaining a religious quest under the pressures of a culture that glorifies the temporal. That’s what this יו״ט is about.
[Rav Blachman]
