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Eight Lights for Hanukkah

30 0
16.12.2025

Do you know all the secrets hidden in the roots of Hanukkah?
Why, really, do we say Hallel on Hanukkah?

  • In our part of the world, the week of Hanukkah is the darkest week of the entire year. The days are shortest, the nights longest, and toward the end of the month the moon itself disappears. Rosh Ḥodesh Tevet is the darkest twenty-four hours of the year. Only afterward does the moon begin to wax again, and by the end of Tevet the days themselves start to lengthen.
  • This is why the Talmud (Avodah Zarah 8a) speaks of eight days of fasting observed by Adam, in response to his realization that the days were growing shorter, out of deep anxiety that the world was sinking into darkness as a consequence of his sin. When Adam later saw that the days were growing longer he understood the fixed, benevolent order of creation and established eight days of celebration. Later, idolaters appropriated these days, turning them into pagan fire festivals and markers of a new year.
  • Precisely at this time, the olive harvest and pressing come to an end. The olive-oil season begins at Sukkot and concludes at Hanukkah. Hence the verse, “You shall observe the festival of Sukkot for seven days, when you gather in from your threshing floor and your winepress” (Deut. 16:13)—but your oil waits for Hanukkah. This is why the Mishnah (Bikkurim 1:6) rules that first fruits may be brought until Hanukkah.

    • These first three “lights” have nothing to do with the Hasmoneans. They are embedded in the natural rhythms of our land and of creation itself: the light of oil rises precisely at the annual low point of light.

  • The prophet Haggai describes the severe drought and the preparations for rebuilding the Second Temple in the second year of Darius. The drought ended when even “the olive tree failed to bear fruit,” and on the 24th of the month of Kislev, Haggai concluded his prophecy with the declaration that “from this day onward” (that is, from the 25th of Kislev)—the day the foundations of the Temple of the Lord were laid and construction began—“from this........

    © The Times of Israel (Blogs)