Table for Five: Hanukkah Edition

One verse, five voices. Edited by Salvador Litvak, the Accidental Talmudist

Dr. Sheila Tuller Keiter
Judaic Studies Faculty, Shalhevet High School

Hanukkah, oh Hanukkah, most misused of holidays. When not grossly cast as a Jewish equivalent to Christmas, Hanukkah is often reduced to a generalized, even secular festival of light. The candles offer vague representations of hope, bringing lightness into a dark world at the darkest time of year. Bah humbug. Hanukkah has a distinct historic context. It celebrates the miraculous victory of Jewish freedom forces against the aggressively Hellenistic Seleucid Greek empire in the second century BCE. Emphasis on miraculous. The Jewish forces were ragtag, under-equipped, and wholly inexperienced. The Seleucids were well-trained, experienced warriors. As for equipped, they had elephants! The Hasmoneans attributed their unlikely victory to God and had no qualms about expressing it. Hence, our liturgical line is incomplete. We may not use the Hanukkah candles other than to look at them… “in order to thank and to praise Your great name for Your miracles, Your wonders, and Your salvations.” 

John Adams is often quoted as suggesting Independence Day be celebrated “with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other.” People conveniently forget his prior exhortation that “It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.” So too Hanukkah. Do not let the lights blind you. Hanukkah is a holiday expressing gratitude to the Savior of Israel. Without that, Hanukkah is just an excuse to save 20% on this year’s hottest toys, games, and electronics.

Rabbi Avraham Greenstein
AJRCA Professor of Hebrew

Unlike the Shabbat candles, which are meant to illuminate and enhance the Shabbat meal, the Hanukkah lights are not meant to illuminate anything except our hearts and our perspectives. Not only is the light of the Hanukkah candles distinctly non-utilitarian, but the holiday of Hanukkah itself does not specifically address the needs and pleasures of the human body. Hanukkah differs from Shabbat and from nearly every other Jewish holiday in that there are no prescribed feasts on Hanukkah. Oily food on Hanukkah is traditional, but it is essentially optional. What is required is merely the kindling of the Hanukkah lights, and that they be seen. This mode of celebration invites contemplation and a feeling of inner contentment instead of a reliance on food and drink to gladden us. 

The purely sacred nature of the candles reminds us that the purpose of our lives is—more than anything else—a sacred one. Hanukkah is a celebration and reaffirmation of Jewish values and Jewish spirituality. Each night of Hanukkah, we look at the candles in gratitude for the opportunity to make each moment, even those that seem dark and cold, pregnant with light and the warmth of divine activity. Hanukkah reminds us that we can find solace and inspiration in the words of prayer and in Torah and holy deeds. We are not alone. God shines into our lives through the light of the Hanukkah candles so that we can live with the memory of the Hanukkah lights even in our trying moments.

Rabbi Peretz Rodman
Head of Israel’s Masorti (Conservative) bet din

Struggling to keep Torah traditions alive and relevant for modern Jews, Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Ha-kohen Kook famously wrote, “Let the old be renewed, and let the new be sanctified!” It is in that spirit of bold innovation that the Rabbis (as we call the founders of our Judaism) innovated a surprising, even shocking blessing: “Blessed are You… who has commanded us to kindle the Hanukkah light.” 

Where in the Torah is that mitzvah recorded? Nowhere, of course; the events it commemorates postdate the entire Bible. On whose authority, then, is the practice required? Why, that of the Rabbis themselves. It is they who established it, who debated and decided its form—increasing the lights each night rather than decreasing, as some had suggested—and its prescribed time and place. And it is they who laid claim to divine authority to back them up: these lights are not just lovely and traditional; they are kodesh, “sacred.” 

Modern Jews who care about Jewish traditions and community strive to balance fidelity to the past and relevance in the present. Jewish leaders need to be as bold as the Rabbis, and as Rav Kook, declaring even some of what is new to be as sacred to us as if it had been given at Sinai.

Romain Hini-Szlos
Photographer / www.rhsgallery.com

Hanukkah is on its way, the Festival of Lights. So why aren’t we able to use those lights for our benefit? It’s not as if Hanukkah is a seven-day Yom Tov. The answer is found in the story of Hanukkah, and how that little droplet of oil lasted eight days. In Judaism, eight represents superseding nature, into a realm of the miraculous. 

The reason we light the Hanukkah candles (or oil) is to elevate us beyond the limits of nature. So why are we not permitted to benefit from this? The purpose of Hanukkah is to use those eight days as a reminder that miracles do happen in times of darkness. If we use the light of miracles to our own benefit, it becomes mundane, without much difference from a regular light switch, and loses its purpose. 

These eight days of holidays remind us that miracles happen to light up our eyes, warm up our hearts and remind us of the source of those miracles by simply looking at them and kindling our neshamot. The light of the Menorah will kindle our hearts and our neshamot, and then, that same light that we internalize will be expressed to the world through us by our actions — a light that’s spread limitlessly, like miracles themselves. 

Miriam Yerushalmi
CEO SANE; Counselor; Author, Reaching New Heights

Oil represents chochmah, the wisdom of our G-dly soul; a wick represents the body, the strength of the animal soul. The Menorah is the vessel, created by our prayers, that contains both so they can work together. The absorption of the oil into a wick represents bitul, the level of self-sacrifice that allows us to implement our wisdom through action, by performing the physical mitzvot that cause our neshamah to shine brightly. Our mitzvos are absorbed into our body like oil into a wick, and then “burn away” our negative animalistic character traits while our holy deeds are elevated to Hashem like smoke ascending heavenward. 

The Zohar asks, why does King Solomon tell us “The wise man’s eyes are in his head,” (Ecclesiastes 2:14)? Where else would eyes be? The Alter Rebbe explains the deeper message: A wise man constantly uses his eyes and his head, contemplating every step, to see if it will bring him closer to producing the oil that will allow the Shechinah to rest upon him. If not, he desists from it. We pray meditatively so that our knowledge can be brought into practical use and our light, and the light of the Shechinah, can shine. The lights of the Menorah shine with oil for the Shechinah. Only the Shechinah can utilize them. We cannot use them for ourselves or our own ego, to light up our name. Powered by our mitzvot, the lights will burn eternally for the Shechinah.