In his account of the story of Chanukah, Rambam (Laws of Megillah and Chanukah 3:1) chooses to accent an element of the triumph over the Greeks—the restoration of Jewish sovereignty—not previously noted in the Talmud’s telling of that story:

“The sons of the Hasmoneans, the High Priests, overcame [them], slew them and saved the Jews from their hand. They appointed a king from the priests, and sovereignty returned to Israel for more than 200 years, until the destruction of the Second Temple.”

That period of Jewish sovereignty was not all that Jewish and not all that sovereign. Many in the parade of kings that led us during that period were violent and unfaithful to Torah tradition, one of them going so far as to slaughter virtually all the members of the Sanhedrin. Additionally, they were often client kings and even puppets of the Greeks and then of the Romans. Yet, Rambam considers even this diminished and distorted form of Jewish sovereignty a cause for celebration.

Why?

Concurrent with the reign of these kings, a different challenge was brewing, one that Rambam (Laws of Prayer 2:1) characterizes as our most critical issue, the emergence within the Jewish people of heretical movements. These were the years of the rise within the Jewish community of the growing movements of the Sadducees, the Boethusians and eventually the Christians, all of whom rejected core faith principles of Judaism including the divine origin and eternal truth of both the written and oral Torah. It was in this context of general religious decline that Rambam celebrated the restoration of even a diminished Jewish sovereignty. Why?

Rambam (Book of Mitzvos, Positive Mitzvah 173) saw the unification of the nation as the principal task of the king. While the king was commanded to constantly carry a Torah scroll and abide by all the instructions of the Torah and the prophets, setting the people on the path of faith and virtue, he primarily served as the rallying force of national identity. As Rambam noted elsewhere (Laws of Teshuva 3:11), side-by-side with faith and religious observance there is critical importance to identifying with the nation and the fate of the Jewish people.

In that 200-year period of religious weakness during which the unifying power of faith and observance was in retreat, the emergence of even a diminished form of Jewish sovereignty was a saving grace for our people. While before the Chanukah triumph the Hellenized Jews were abandoning their faith, their observance and their Jewish identity, the divine miracle of the restoration of Jewish sovereignty allowed the next generations of the religiously disconnected to retain at the least a national identity with the Jewish people.

Bayamim haheim bazman hazeh. This miracle has repeated itself in our time. The weakened commitment of wide swaths of the Jewish people to faith and observance has led to widespread Jewish disaffiliation. And just as in the days of the Chanukah miracle, God in His ultimate kindness and eternal commitment to our people gave us a pathway to a solution. In the void created by weakened religious connection, God placed a new and riveting anchor of Jewish identity, the reborn sovereign Jewish State of Israel. Millions of Israelis with little knowledge and observance of Torah nevertheless identify completely with the nation and the fate of the Jewish people.

The State of Israel has played a similarly critical role for the wide swaths of diaspora Jewry disconnected from Torah. Concern for Israel and pride in its accomplishments have united and galvanized American Jews and served as the most effective anchor of broad Jewish connection. Though there is a growing trend of American Jews to whom Israel has tragically and misguidedly become a source of embarrassment, modern Israel continues to be an effective tool of engagement for synagogues, federations, schools and camps; Birthright Israel and MASA have developed the Israel experience as the ultimate vehicle to inspire a journey to fuller Jewish identity.

All of this has only increased since Simchat Torah/October 7, and has not only strengthened national identity, but has gone further to fuel a surge in interest in Torah learning and observance. Thus, once again, in a modern-day version of the Chanukah miracle, the restoration of Jewish sovereignty has served as a critical anchor of Jewish identity for Jews everywhere.

Rabbi Moshe Hauer is executive vice president of the Orthodox Union (OU), the nation’s largest Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization.