The Miracle of Chanukah
Chanukah is colourful, exciting and popular, ranking with Purim in carnival spirit. Every type of talent is part of the festival: art, music, drama, cookery. The games are absorbing.
The songs centre on Ma’oz Tzur, with the debate as to whether the final stanza is authentic. There are many attempts to modernise the song with a new verse about the Holocaust and Israel.
The lights are lit, with the proponents of oil-lights ranged against those who prefer candles. The chanukiyyot come in a plethora of shapes. Some are elegant works of art; in the Bayswater Synagogue in London we had a dazzling display ranging from a chanukiyyah carved out of a potato, another made of bullet shells, a third built out of toy chairs. In the Hampstead Shule, our grand chanukiyyah was pressed into service one winter when we had an electricity blackout and the shule had no lights.
It wouldn’t do for a yom-tov to be without heroes and villains. There also must be miracles, but which miracles?
– Getting a fresh supply of oil took four days’ journey from Jerusalem, plus four days to return.- The experts able to produce fresh oil had become ritually impure and had to wait for the defilement to end. They could then prepare the fresh oil on the eighth day.
– Seven days were needed to rebuild the altar and the sacred vessels of the sanctuary. Only then could the seventh day be devoted to preparing fresh oil.
– There were actually two miracles. One is the discovery of the one-day supply of oil; the second is the continuation of the day’s supply for a further week.
Rav Soloveitchik sees the festival as serving another purpose, the rededication of the altar.
Rabbi Raymond Apple served for 32 years as the chief minister of the Great Synagogue, Sydney, Australia’s oldest and most prestigious congregation. He is now retired and lives in Jerusalem where he answers interesting questions.
Jewish Oral Torah פרדס logic prevailed over Greek philosophy/logic.
Chanukah
is a delayed Sucot. The main teaching of Chanukah should be the principle of”Picuach Nefesh”
to day one can run a modern state when the fireman ,the nurse ,police are on duty .