“History,” wrote C.V. Wedgewood “is lived forward but is written in retrospect. We know the end before we consider the beginning and we can never wholly recapture what it was to know the beginning only.”

It’s hard to get excited in a movie when you have already seen the ending. It’s hard to get excited in a football game when you already know the final score. The future, with all its suspense and mystery, is exciting. The past, when all is already known, not so much. Only great artistry and talent can make the past come alive. And money. Think Titanic. Presumably—spoiler alert—most people knew the boat sank. But the talent of James Cameron, plus the largest movie budget in history (as of 1997), can create an experience vibrant enough to gross almost $2 billion and win 11 Oscars.

But what does that mean for us Jews, when so much of what we do is related to the past? Whether to celebrate or to mourn, we already know the ending, we already heard the score. So our problem is bring the past alive again, so we can “recapture what it was to know the beginning only.” But our Ritual Committee doesn’t have $200 million.

In fact, it doesn’t have $200.

Certainly we sense this problem when we celebrate the holiday of Chanukah. We already know that the Maccabees won. But imagine what it was like being them, dozens against thousands, hundreds against tens of thousands of the most feared warriors on the planet.

How can we recapture the intense mood of the time? The fear, the cruelty, the sense of violation and debasement, the feeling of being overwhelmed, the despair…and finally, gloriously, the hope and the triumph. How can we recreate even a fraction of those powerful experiences?

The answer, for us, is: prayer.

Hence, the prayer al hanisim “For the miracles”: “A cruel power rose against Israel, demanding that they abandon Your Torah and violate Your mitzvot. You….delivered the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the corrupt into the hands of the pure in heart, the guilty into the hands of the innocent….You have wrought great victories and miraculous deliverance….”

With each phrase, the siddur invites us to fantasize. What would it mean if someone forced us to abandon Torah? What would it mean if we were forced to violate mitzvot? What would it feel like to be a weak victim of a much stronger opponent? And so forth. And, given all that, what would it mean if, in spite of it all, we were able to overcome all the challenges. Literally miraculously.

That was what the Maccabees felt. And with the proper kavvanah (mindful concentration), we too can feel what they felt “in other days, and in our time.”

Or, with apologies to Celine Dion,

“Far across the distance/
And spaces between us/
You have come to show you go on.”