Summary of the festival

Hanukkah (from 25 Kislev, eight days) marks the victory of the Hasmoneans over the Greco-Syrian army and the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem in 164 BCE. It is the festival known even beyond the Jewish people as the “Festival of Lights”. There is no prohibition of work, but there is full Hallel and the lighting of candles every night, so it is above all a festival of light and miracles.

The mitzvot of the festival

• Lighting the Hanukkah candles (Shabbat 21b): one on the first night, with one more added each night up to eight on the last, in addition to the shamash. We light right after nightfall, in a place visible from outside, to publicize the miracle (pirsumei nisa). On Friday evening we light before the Shabbat candles.
• “Al HaNissim” in the Amidah and in the Grace after Meals, and full Hallel every day.
• “Maoz Tzur”: the hymn sung after the lighting (and in many communities also “HaNerot Halalu”).
• Restrictions: no eulogies and no fasting, and it is the custom that women do not work while the candles burn (Rema, Orach Chayim 670).
• Customs: doughnuts (sufganiyot) and latkes (for the oil), the dreidel (“A great miracle happened there”) and “Hanukkah gelt” for children. In Tunisian, Moroccan and Libyan communities the Chag HaBanot, the festival of daughters (in memory of Judith), is celebrated on Rosh Chodesh Tevet.

Origin in history

After the death of Alexander the Great, the land of Israel passed under Seleucid rule, and King Antiochus IV Epiphanes banned the Sabbath, circumcision and Torah study, and defiled the Temple in 167 BCE. Mattathias the priest and his sons, led by Judah the Maccabee, began a revolt and managed to liberate Jerusalem. On 25 Kislev in 164 BCE they purified the Temple and rededicated the altar (I Maccabees 4:52). That is the historical background, told in the books of the Maccabees (not in the Bible) and in Josephus. The Talmud (Shabbat 21b) adds the story of the jar of oil: only one jar of pure oil was found, enough for a single day, and it burned for eight days. Nachmanides (on Numbers 8:2) adds that the menorah of Hanukkah is tied to Aaron’s menorah: since Aaron had no part in the offerings of the tribal princes at the dedication of the Tabernacle, now the Hasmoneans, priests, restored the light.

The message for today

Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai disagreed on whether to add a candle each night or to decrease them (Shabbat 21b), and the law follows Beit Hillel: “we go up in holiness and do not go down”. We do not stay where we are; we rise. Maimonides (Laws of Hanukkah 4:12-13) writes that the mitzvah of the Hanukkah light is “exceedingly beloved”, and that even someone who has no money for food must sell their garment to light. And its light, according to the prophet, is not force but spirit (“Not by might nor by power but by My spirit”, Zechariah 4:6). Hanukkah struggled not only against an army but against assimilation: against the Greeks, and also against Jews who wanted to be like the Greeks. Today it reminds us to put a small light in the window without embarrassment.