A Talmudic rule obligates Hallel for any national salvation — and this one beat Chanuka’s odds.
Q. Should I say Hallel on Israeli Independence Day?
Our rabbis teach us that a new holiday must be instituted to celebrate and say Hallel upon each and every national salvation which occurs in Eretz Yisrael, and ends with independence for the Jewish people (Psachim 117a and Megilla 14). The victory of outnumbered, untrained skeletal immigrants from the holocaust and from undeveloped s’faradic countries over 7 larger invading Arab armies was militarily even more miraculous than the victory of Chanuka. There is just a disagreement whether one who doesn’t celebrate such a victory annually is a sinner mid’Oraita (from the Torah, the opinion of the Chatam Sofer, Resp. Y.D. 233) or a sinner mid’Rabanan (transgressing a rabbinical mitzvah, the opinion of the Netziv (on She’iltot, Chanuka, 26). Moreover, the Talmud (Sanhedrin 94a) teaches us that G-d wanted to make Hizkiya, king of Judea, the mashiach, but didn’t because Hizkiya did not sing His praise after they were saved from Assyria. This is written forever in the Talmud to teach us that if a similar occasion arises, we would be pretty stupid to repeat the same mistake.
If so, the question is contrarily, how can any Jew not say Hallel on Yom HaAtzma’ut?!
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