Rav Yitzchok Hutner and the Meaning of Hanukkah

 https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/rav-yitzchok-hutner

Here is Pahad Yitzhak (Hanukkah) 3.2-4:

3.2… Yose b. Yoezer and Yose b. Yohanan who lived in the time of the Greek war were the first [recorded sages] to disagree in regard to the laws of the Torah. … That is, because the Greek decrees forbidding Torah study caused the eyes of the sages to be darkened, this darkening/causing to forget was the cause of the first [recorded] dispute within the Sanhedrin that sat in the Chamber of Hewn Stones—so that the increase of viewpoints and the consequent differences of opinion in Torah discourse (lit., “war of Torah”) to the present day proceeds directly from that darkening of the eyes of Israel by means of the enforced forgetting of the Torah by the Greek decrees.

3.3 But “at times the nullification of Torah is its [continued] existence” (Menahot 99b). … The breaking of the tablets [containing the Decalogue] constituted its preservation [when Moses shattered the first tablets which eventually led to a reconciliation with God]. Thus, the Sages say that had the first tablets not been shattered, Israel would not have forgotten the Torah (Eruvin 54a). We learn therefore that the breaking of the tablets led to the forced forgetting of the Torah, and from this we learn a wonderful insight: the Torah can increase by means of forgetting of the Torah. See what the Sages have taught us: Three hundred laws were forgotten during the period of mourning for Moses but Othniel b. Kenaz restored them by means of his analytic ability (Temurah 16a). Thus, the words of Torah that were restored by analytic ability are identical to the laws that were multiplied only because of that forgetting of the Torah. Not only that, but the very increase of disputes in law occurred because of that forgetting, but despite this, the sages tell us that even though these declare an object ritually clean and others declare it ritually fit, these declare it invalid and others declare it valid, these declare something permitted and other declare it forbidden, etc., both are words of the living God; the upshot is that the increase in views and approaches constitute an enlargement of Torah and its glorification that proceed precisely from the forgetting of Torah.

3.4 An even greater insight than this proceeds from the foregoing: Our perception of the power of Oral Torah as revealed through disagreements is greater than when there is agreement. For within the principle that “these and those are the Word of the Living God” is included the essential principle that even the principle that is rejected as legal practice is nevertheless a Torah view, when it is expressed according to the norms of the discourse of the Oral Torah. This is because the Torah was given according to the sensibilityַ of the Sages of the Torah. … And if they then vote and decide according to the rejected view, the law then changes in a true sense. … The result is that in disagreement the power of the Oral Torah is revealed to a greater extent than by [the Sages’] agreement. The “war of Torah” (Torah debate) is thus not merely one mode of Torah discourse among others, but rather “the war of Torah” is a positive creation of new Torah values, whose like is not to be found in ordinary words of Torah [where there is no disagreement].