Chanukah 2- Kedushas Eretz Yisroel

By definition golus is when one is exiled in a foreign land. The third golus we went through as a nation- the one that gave us Chanukah, was that of Yavan- the Greek empire. Yet we were in our homeland, with the Bais Hamikdosh standing, all along. What about the struggles we went through with the Greeks is categorized as golus? The Marsha (Megillah 11a) answers: The objective of the Greeks in their conflict with Yisroel was to take the kedusha out of Am Yisroel. The Greek philosophy was that there is no kedusha in the world, nothing is holier then the next thing- Yisroel is just like any other nation, the Torah is just as mundane as any other subject and the Holyland, Eretz Yisroel, is just like any other land in the world. In their fight against Yisroel the Greeks were successful in uprooting the kedusha from Eretz Yisroel thus making our homeland foreign to us. The three golios that took place outside of Eretz Yisroel are compared to a son that is lost and far away from his father. The golus of Yavan is compared to a son who doesn’t recognize his father’s house, thus feeling like a foreigner while he is in his own home. With the kedusha taken out of Eretz Yisroel, Eretz Yisroel itself became the foreign land we were exiled to. The victory of Chanukah had to have included in it the freedom from this struggle. With the Neis of Chanukah the kedusha was put back into Eretz Yisroel and was once again the home of Klal Yisroel.
Chanukah was the completion of the dedication of the second Bais Hamikdosh. Chasmal tell us that when they returned to Eretz Yisroel to build the second Bais Hamikdosh, Ezra sanctified the land for eternity- ‘kudsha leshata ul’usid lavoh’. R’ S. R. Hirsch (Bamidbor 15;18) explains this to mean, that the goal of the second Bais Hamikdosh was to equip Klal Yisroel and prepare them for the centuries of dispersion that lay ahead of them. The victory over the mighty Greeks completed the work of sanctifying the land that Ezra had started, making the kedusha of Eretz Yisroel a reality for eternity. Bringing the second Bais Hamikdosh and the kedusha of Eretz Yisroel to completion- a kedusha to last for eternity.