Chanukah Meditations for Eight Nights (3)

What is the Miracle of Hanukkah? Eight Explanations

Rabbi Joseph B. Meszler

1) Miraculous Light: Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 21b

When the Hellenists entered the Temple, they defiled all the oil in it, and when the Hasmoneans defeated them, they searched and found only one jar of pure oil, for one day's lighting only; yet a miracle occurred and the lamp burned for eight days.

2) The Weak Over the Strong: Al Hanisim

In the days of Mattathias the Hasmonean, the tyrannical empire sought to destroy our people Israel by making them forget their Torah, and by forcing them to abandon their ancient way of life. Through the power of Your spirit the weak defeated the strong, the few prevailed over the many, and the righteous were victorious.

3) The Right to Worship: Flavius Josephus

From that time to the present we observe this festival, which we call the Festival of Lights (chag haorim), giving this name to it, I think, from the fact that the right to worship appeared to us at a time when we hardly dared hope for it.

4) Peace: Kitzur Shulchan Aruch

These days are called Hanukkah, a hyphenated word meaning: they rested on the twenty-fifth (chanu = they rested, kah = 25, the numerical value of these letters being twenty-five) from their enemies.

5) Covenant: Eliyahu Ki Tov

The Greeks prohibited circumcision; when the Hasmoneans prevailed against their enemies, they rejoiced over the renewal of the covenant of circumcision, which is set for the eighth day in a child’s life…

6) Hope: Eliyahu Ki Tov

The very fact that they did not despair from lighting the lamps even the first day, despite the knowledge that they would be unable on the morrow to fulfill the Torah’s command to light “a perpetual lamp,” was in itself a great miracle, a miracle which enables the people of Israel to endure through all generations and every exile.

7) Religious and Cultural Diversity: Theodor Herzel Gaster

Hanukkah commemorates and celebrates the first serious attempt in history to proclaim and champion the principle of religio-cultural diversity in the nation… There is an important meaning in this, one feels, for our own day, and especially in connection with the problem of safeguarding civil rights.

8) Dedication and Education: Hebrew root

The word Hanukkah (“dedication”) has the same Hebrew root as chinuch, which means “education.” “Dedication” to one’s tradition and “education” come from the same linguistic source. There is no commitment to Judaism without learning.