[Avodah] pach hashemen

[Moshe Y. Gluck]

R'n TK:
I was answering somebody who didn't think the pach hashemen was a big deal at all, since miracles were a common occurrence in the Bais Hamikdash.  I can't find my source now but I believe that miracles were /not/ a daily occurrence at all during the time of the Bayis Sheini.
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Then please check mine - to repeat, Yuma 21b and Avos 5:5. I also thought as you did, but could not find any textual basis for that, rather that the opposite was true. Can anyone enlighten us?
<SNIP>
The main reason was the victory of the Chashmonaim over the Greeks and Hellenizers.  And since that military victory was very short-lived, the main reason for Chanukah was the ultimate triumph of Orthodoxy over Reform and Conservative ersatz forms of Judaism -- well, sorry about the editorializing -- it was the triumph of the Torah camp over the Hellenizing camp.  It was this latter victory which did indeed prove to be permanent, despite the persistence, for a couple of centuries, of a Hellenizing yetzer hara.
 
As for the miracle of the oil, by itself it wasn't the reason for Chanuka, but it served as a sign that the military (and spiritual) victory were Divine miracles, too.  
 
Without that sign of something overtly miraculous, people might have understood the Chashmonai victory --as indeed secular Zionists do understand it -- as a tactical victory achieved through the superior military planning of a clever group of guerilla fighters.  (This narrative was especially popular when the guerillas were Jews fighting Brits in 1947 --  not so much now when the Jews play the Greeks and the Gazan Arabs play the Chashmonaim in the popular secular imagination.)
<SNIP>
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This article from R' Meir Kahane HYD is worth reading, I think: http://kahane.blogspot.com/2008/12/down-with-chanukah-december-15-1972.html

KT,
MYG