Powerful hidden message of Channukah

Chanukah is named for the day the Jews rested from the war, the twenty-fifth of Kislev, not for the victory itself. The Siftei Chaim finds that very strange: a nation that wins a miraculous war would name the holiday after the win, or after Hashem who gave it. Why name it for resting? The answer says what the war was really about, and it connects to the Mesilas Yesharim's picture of life as a hallway. At a Yom Kippur Neilah in a Russian village, one man makes a request that is hard to forget.