Hanukkah message

“Blessed be God who worked miracles for our forefathers in those days, at this time.” The Chanukah candle-lighting blessing is a contradiction in terms. After all is it “in those days” or “at this time”?

The Chanukah holiday seems to systematically place us in front of opposites so that we can seek balance. Several symbols linked to the festival of lights express contradictions, and challenge us to look for an intermediate path.

“In those days, at this time.” History needs to dialogue with everyday life. Without history we are trees without roots. If we have only history, we will turn into a museum of antiquities. It is precisely the rereading of history in a creative way that gives relevance to contemporary Judaism.

The main reasons for celebrating Chanukah are the victory of the Maccabees over the Greeks and the miracle of oil that lasted eight days. There are important lessons here: Believing in God is important. We must have hope even when physical and material conditions are extremely adverse. Judaism invites us to have faith always. At the same time, the miracle of the oil would never have happened if not for the courage of Matitiahu and his sons. If Yehuda Hamaccabi had not led a revolt in favor of our religious freedom, no miracle would have happened. The miracle, from the Jewish perspective, is the responsibility we delegate to God after doing absolutely everything within our reach.

Chanukah candles are special. We light Shabbat candles inside our homes. The correct place to place the two flames that illuminate our Friday dinners is near the dining table, so that we can use the light of the flame during the meal. On Chanukah, it is different. We should place the candle near the window or outside our homes. This happens because the miracle must be publicized. We have an obligation to spread the light beyond our homes. We must strengthen Jewish particularism to be better citizens of the world. Once again, we see the search for balance between what is private to us and our universal responsibility.

Light itself brings an interesting contradiction. When there is no clarity, we are lost. At the same time, when we are exposed to excessive light, we become blind. The Aramaic term for blind is sagei nahor, or overly enlightened. Excessive light does as much harm as absolute absence of light. Our challenge is to seek light that is strong, on the one hand, but that does not obscure our vision on the other.

The correct way to light candles is the subject of a famous discussion between Shammai and Hillel. While Shammai wanted us to subtract one candle each day from the eight in the Hanukkiah, Hillel maintained that we should add a candle each day until we reached eight candles. His reasoning is that, in terms of holiness, we must always increase and never decrease. However, we know that Hillel’s goal is not possible. We know that our religious observance waxes and wanes throughout our lives.

Oil is another symbol of this festival. For this reason,  we eat fried foods such as donuts and latkes. There are other meanings: We know that when we put olive oil in a glass of water, the two don’t mix. Only a thin layer of oil comes into contact with the water. Such is the challenge of Jewish survival. If we mix completely, we lose our own identity. At the same time, if we ignore the world around us, we lose the opportunity to enrich ourselves with what is strange and unfamiliar, and we fail to fulfill our mission of making the world more human.

The main challenge of Chanukah, I believe, is to remind us to find balance in a complex world, reconciling past and present, individualism and universalism, excessive darkness and light, identity and isolation. “In those days, at this time.”

— Michel Schlesinger is the rabbi of the Hewlett East-Rockaway Jewish Centre.