Hanukka and the Land 4

 

As Al haNissim states, the Greeks "rose up against Your people Israel to make them forget Your Torah." It is Eretz Yisrael which stands against this plot, since she is the prime venue of Torah: In terms of miztvot, approximately forty percent of the 613 mitzvot can be fulfilled only within the Land; in terms of Torah study, our Sages teach "there is no Torah comparable to the Torah of Eretz Yisrael," [Breishit Rabba 16:4], and "the atmosphere of Eretz Yisrael conveys wisdom." [Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 158b]

 

Hanukka and the Land 3

 

There is a conceptual congruence between Hanukka and Eretz Yisrael. The struggle of the Hasmoneans, the loyalists of Torah, against the Greeks involved a clash of world outlooks. The Greeks deified nature, while Jewish tradition asserts that nature exists only through the will of God, Who daily renews the universe, as we say in the daily morning prayers: "Who in His goodness daily renews the work of creation."  

Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe writes that the distinction between the Land of Israel and all other lands is that:

Within Eretz Yisrael it is necessary to introduce sanctity into nature. The challenge of life within the Land is to imbue natural life with the supernatural, to see that "nature" is an ongoing miracle, and not the result of "my strength and the might of my arms." [Deuteronomy 8:17]

Similarly, Rabbi Kook commented: "In Eretz Yisrael one sees the miracle within nature."

Thus, Ḥanukka and the Land of Israel express the same concept.