The heroic struggle of the Maccabees in the face of their much larger Syrian-Greek opponent has resonated through the ages. Jewish children are taught and retaught how the good guys won, how the oil burned miraculously for eight days, and how the Temple was rescued from the clutches of the idol-worshiping Antiochus.

What does Chanukah mean today? It depends where you look. Chanukah Israeli-style has acquired all the trappings of a national holiday among the secular part of the population. Chanukah has also become a symbol of religious freedom. In his Chanukah message last year, President Clinton wrote: "The Festival of Lights is a powerful reminder each year that the age-old struggle for religious freedom is not yet over. . . . This holiday holds special meaning for us in America, where freedom of religion is one of the cornerstones of democracy."

In these notions of Chanukah lies the tragedy. Because this is not what the holiday is supposed to be about. It is not my Chanukah, the Chanukah that our Sages consecrated.

The Talmud asks, "Mai Chanukah — What is Chanukah?"; that is, what is the essence of the holiday? The Talmud does not respond with a description of Maccabean military prowess, but by recounting the miracle of the menorah. The symbol of Chanukah is not a gun, but light, which represents Torah ("for a mitzvah is a candle and the Torah is light," Proverbs 6:23).

The Maccabees did not fight for Jewish independence or for freedom of religion. Rather, they sought to insure the continuation of the unalloyed practice of Torah, which is optimally accomplished in an atmosphere of independence. And so Chanukah is not a Jewish national victory and not a rallying point for religious freedom, but a proclamation of the superiority of Torah.

The corruption of Chanukah's meaning is part of a general defining down of Shabbos, yom tov, and other symbols that true Judaism holds sacred, wherein genuine meaning has been supplanted by vaguely echoic rituals and beliefs.

Witness an article in a recent issue of Hadassah magazine. It tells of a group of Israeli teenagers that tours the U.S. every summer, bringing a taste of Israel to far-flung Jewish communities around the country. The leader of one particular troupe found that at the start of the tour, only one of the ten teens involved was familiar with the mitzvah of Kiddush. He notes proudly that by tour's end, when their vehicle broke down in a remote area on a Friday night, the group desired to light candles (on Shabbos!), make Kiddush, sing zemiros, and bentch. Where did they do all this? At a nearby non-kosher fast-food restaurant! The troupe leader writes that this episode made him realize how thirsty kids are for Judaism, and how there certainly is room for Conservative and Reform Judaism in Israel. In other words, they want something, but prefer not to have the real deal. Kiddush at Burger King will do just fine.

In a speech this past October at Denison University, in Ohio, the noted legal scholar Robert Bork asked rhetorically: What will stem the tide of immorality in the United States? Answered Bork: an upsurge in religious commitment. Bork admitted that he did not know why religion was the antidote, but that historically a decline in religious observance precipitates immorality.

Bork is certainly right; beginning in the 1960's, religion has increasingly taken a back seat in American public and private life. And the decline has been steep. In 1984, Senator Gary Hart's campaign for the Presidency came to a grinding halt after the disclosure that he had acted immorally. Yet just eight years later, facing similar accusations, Bill Clinton suffered nary a scratch.

But Bork falls short when he says that we don't know why religion and immorality live a seesaw relationship, so that when one falls, the other must of necessity rise.

The reason that religion impacts upon morality so profoundly is that G-d is the source of all morality.

There is a common belief in Western society that its basic moral rules, including those against murder and theft, somehow have a "natural" basis, that is, they can be deduced as morally correct without resorting to religion. This is not true. Once laws emanate not from the Infinite One but from man, anything goes. One fellow's virtue is another's vice. If I believe something is moral and you don't, who is to say who is right? Without G-d, we are consigned to the vacuousness of moral relativism.

What is the remedy? Schools have tussled with the challenge of teaching morality without religion. But youth have proved by their increasingly unrestrained behavior that they are too smart to go along with moral emptiness; unfortunately, some adults are not smart enough to notice. Yet public schools are not ultimately the place to teach morality. As Jews, we have a justifiable fear of religion being taught in public schools, whereas most teachers in this country are Christian. In the final analysis, the house is our moral home plate, with houses of worship and religious schools serving as reinforcement. What parents teach to their children and how parents act is the first frontier in the battle for this country's moral soul.

Our children, and the kids of all good people in this country, need to know about right and wrong — about what G-d considers right and wrong. If parents do not teach them, as parents once did, our kids will embrace society's standards by default.

This year, let us restore Chanukah's true message, by resolutely confirming that we stand for G-d-centered Judaism, wherein is found true morality. Just as the Maccabees would not consider diluted oil, let us, in these times of moral equivocation, reiterate our belief in absolute values — values that can never lose their meaning, because they reflect the will of the A-lmighty.

Avraham M. Goldstein