Lights at the beginning of Shabbat and festivals. Lights when a baby is born. Lights at a b’rit milah.

Hebrew names such as Uriah, Light of the Lord, or Me’ir, light-bringer. Even Yiddish names involving light e.g. Feivel or Feivish (or Uri Feivel), from the Greek Phoebus. “Light” surnames such as Lapid or Lapidot (torch) or Lichtigfeld, Field of Light.

Light when a child started lessons (Psalm 27:1: “God is my Light”; Proverbs 6:23, “The Torah is a Light”). Synagogue lights donated by congregants. The bride and groom are escorted by parents bearing candles. Memorial lights after a bereavement.

Light isn’t only a one-off annual observance but throughout the year.

EIGHT DAYS INSTEAD OF SEVEN

Every year for over two millennia people have asked why Chanukah has eight days and not seven.

If we say that the Chanukah miracle took place on the first day, what followed – the oil burning for the next week (Talmud Shabbat 21b) – was a seven-day manifestation of God’s grace. So why don’t we merely have a seven day festival?

There are countless answers. One author wrote a book called Ner LaMe’ah, giving 100 (“me’ah”) answers.

These are some of the suggestions:
* The miracle was more than a seven-day wonder; the finding of a little jar of pure oil for the first day was already a miracle. (Why did it take so long to procure a fresh supply? The oil was prepared several days’ journey from Jerusalem, and it required four days to get there and four days to come back.)

* The enemy polluted the altar and the menorah, which had to be purified before use. The rededication was an essential part of the overall miracle. Rav Soloveitchik points out that the Torah readings on Chanukah deal with the rededication.

* Some scholars point to the similarities between Sukkot and Chanukah and say that the Jews kept Chanukah as an 8-day festival that compensated for their inability to observe Sukkot properly that year.

OMITTING THE HERO

Judah the Maccabee is given great credit in the Books of Maccabees as a military strategist and leader.

His name resounds through Jewish and military history. He made it possible to “deliver the strong into the hands of the weak”.

In art, music and literature, he is regarded as one of the great heroes of the Bible.

Yet with all this, he does not actually figure at all in the T’nach (though some Christian denominations included the Apocrypha in their Bible), and we would not have known about his greatness were it not for the Books of Maccabees (and the works of Josephus, based on the same source).

The rabbinic authors must have had their reasons for suppressing his name; perhaps it was the general antagonism of the sages towards the Hasmonean attempt to be high priests as well as rulers, or the feeling that Judah should not have entered into an alliance with Rome.