What distinguishes our chochmah from the wisdom of the Greeks?
Ask a child which animal he associates with the Chanukah story and he’ll likely answer an elephant. Elephants were the prehistoric version of a tank, and when straddled by a battle-hardened Greek soldier, they were a military’s most-feared apparatus.
These colossal animals featured significantly in the battles waged between the Chashmonaim and the Greeks; Elazar HaMaccabee was crushed and killed by a collapsing elephant.
However, when we examine the Chanukah story through the lens of the Torah, the dominant creature is not an elephant, but rather… a leopard.
Sefer Daniel recounts a famous nevuah where Daniel perceives the four principal nations to enslave Klal Yisrael as four different animals. Far from a random pairing of animal and nation, each creature embodied the defining essence of its corresponding nation. A leopard is the animal who symbolizes Yavan (Assyrian Greece). What is their common characteristic?
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