Some Chanukah Thoughts

#1: Chanukah and the "Beyond"

There is more to us than flesh and bones. There is more to the world than its physical appearance. There is something “beyond” – beyond nature, beyond our physical limitations, beyond this world.

Chanukah reminds us of the existence of this “beyond.” It is a holiday of 8 days. The world was created in 7 days – that is the simple physical truth of nature. But 8 – that is “beyond” creation, beyond nature, beyond the normal workings of the world.

For the Jews to have won against the Syrian Greeks was a piece of this “beyond,” as was the miracle of the light lasting so long – “beyond” its normal natural physical limitations.

We are more than we think we are, and there is more to the world than we see at all times. Light, fire is a symbol of this divine spiritual energy, felt yet difficult to hold or explain, effervescent yet extremely powerful.

We are not allowed to “use” this light we light on Chanukah for normal physical purposes, to count coins, for instance. And women have a custom not to do any practical work during the time the candles are lit, laundry or cooking, for instance. Why? Because Chanukah is not about the practical in this world. It asks us to take a step out of our normal selves and see that we are more than physical bodies needing to count coins and do laundry and cook meals. Yes, fire is practical – it helps us see and cook and be warm. But there is also a spiritual fire – kodesh hem – these candles are sacred – they partake of the divine light of our spirit, the part of each one of us that is from the “beyond.”

We often feel so daunted by our limitations in this world, so weighed down by mere survival and getting through our daily routines. Chanukah asks us to remember the spirit, to remember the “beyond” that is inside us and all around us, to feel the spark that is not limited by the normal workings of the world.


#2: Chanukah: An Education in Miracles

Chanukah is related to the word chinuch, education. On Chanukah we educate ourselves, we train ourselves in the ability to see miracles in the world.

Daliya Wallenstein, one of my high school students, had a beautiful explanation for Bet Shammai’s Chanukah candle-lighting opinion. According to Bet Shammai, we begin with 8 candles and light one fewer each night until on the last night we light one. Why? This student suggested that it is a matter of spiritual training.

When we begin Chanukah, we are not yet adept at seeing miracles in the world. The only type of miracle we can acknowledge is the really big one, the kind that has 8 candles with all their sparkling fireworks, the kind that hits us over the head with its magnificence and clarity, like the miracles of Chanukah itself, the uneven battle and the oil that kept lasting. We can look back on history and marvel, and acknowledge that God’s hand is in this world through such miracles. So that’s the starting point – we are turned on to thinking about miracles through a jolt to the system of 8 candles and great miracles.

But gradually the point of this exercise is to learn to see the smaller miracles, too. It is a training in our eye-sight. At first we can only detect the light that is really bright, but gradually we learn to see light that is a little less bright, too, 7 candles worth, then 6, and so forth, until on the last night we are able to see the light of a single candle; we have learned to see even the smaller miracles of this world. Now we are ready to return to the everyday world and see the hidden miracles there, too.

Another support for this conception of Chanukah as a training specifically in “seeing” is the strange halakhah, not often put into practice, that if one will not be able to light candles that night, and one “sees” someone else’s lit menorah, one can say the brachah of she’asah nissim on the simple act of seeing the light. This is the brachah in which we acknowledge that God did miracles for us. Lighting the light is important, but there is also here something key about the ability to see, to learn to see and witness God’s miracles in this world.

Though we don’t follow Bet Shammai, may we learn from him to train ourselves to “see” even the smaller lights of the miraculous in this world, perhaps, like Bet Hillel, learning to see more and more of them over time.