Perhaps the most significant aspect of the most important feature of Hanukkah – the Hanukkah candles – is the increase in the number of candles from day to day. The lighting of the candles is progressive; that is, we proceed from least to most. The first night we light one candle, the second night two candles, the third night three candles, and so until the eighth night, when the candelabrum is ablaze with all eight candles. What we have is growth and increase and progress. It was the House of Hillel which gave this order its legal form when it said that mosif ve’holekh, the number of candles is to be increased each night, because ma’alin be’kodesh, because one must rise, increase, or progress in holiness.In a sense, this idea of increase, of addition, of the progressive candles, is a very deep and incisive commentary on Jewish life and what it should be. The Hanukkah candles represent more than merely the military victory of the Jewish Maccabeans over the Greek Antiochus. They symbolize as well the clash of cultures, the war of world-views. There was the Greek world, steeped in its oriental idolatry, pitted against a Jewish minority stubbornly proud of its pure belief in one God.One should not dismiss the Greek world lightly. The world’s greatest philosophers were nursed in the cradle of Greek culture. But the great difference between Hellenism, as the Greek culture is known, and Judaism, lies in this: The Greek world glorified contemplation, the Jewish world glorified behavior, mitzvot. The Greeks stressed creed, while we insisted upon deed. The Greeks were inclined to inactivity – the perfection of form, while the Jew insisted upon activity. The Greeks had many philosophers but few saints; many thinkers but few doers. With the Jews this was reversed. Our world was not one of cold thought, but one of warm action. And this Jewish attitude is best represented by the progressive candles – increase, growth, action, progress. I have no doubt that if the Greeks had won…

The festival of Chanukah offers us a real opportunity to discuss a much misunderstood topic – the Jewish attitude towards beauty. On the one hand, Chanukah is that holiday when an attempt is made to beautify the home and the synagogue and the services. Jews vie with each other in owning a more beautiful Chanukah menorah. On the other hand, Chanukah symbolizes the cultural differences between ancient Greece and Israel. The Greeks, we are told from year to year, worshipped beauty, while we insisted on the aspects of holiness. It is usually reduced to the simple formula: ethics versus aesthetics. However, it is not really that simple. Is it true, for instance, that Jews always looked down upon physical beauty? Does Judaism really take a negative attitude towards beauty and art and aesthetics? Just what does Judaism have to say about beauty? What is the meaning of beauty for the Jew – or better – what is the Jewish meaning of beauty?Let us understand, at the very outset, that the Jew certainly appreciated beauty. While he was not a pagan who worshiped it, he still found some very positive values in physical beauty, and his admiration for it was not less than that of other peoples. And let us realize, too, that we do not mean any sort of abstract beauty, or spiritual beauty. We mean beauty of form and color and harmony and symmetry – the word “beauty” as the layman means and understands and appreciates it. Our Bible and rabbis took this attitude for the simple reason that there is nothing in the world that is wrong or sinful with beauty that should prevent man from delighting in it. When our Torah tells us that Rachel was “beautiful of appearance”, it means just that. And when our Father Abraham told his wife Sarah “Behold, I know that thou art beautiful”, he, too, meant what he said. So too, when our rabbis allegorize and say that of the ten measures of beauty bequeathed to this world, Jerusalem took nine, they mean that Jerusalem was a charming and delightful city. No…

In the special Al Ha’nissim prayer which we recite on this Chanukah holiday, thanking G-d for all His favors to us, we recite a short account of the Chanukah story. In the course of so doing, we mention the evil Greek rule over Palestine, and the fact that conquering Greeks sought le’hash’kicham torassecha, to make them (the Jews) forget Thy Torah. Now, while it might be true that many an enemy of Israel has attempted to “make them forget Thy Torah,” we do not find that the Greeks expressly prohibited the study of Torah. We know that a couple of centuries later the Romans specifically forbade it. But the Greeks, according to the Book of Maccabbees, forbade only three religious institutions: Shabbos, Chodesh, and Milah. We have no record of them forbidding Torah. Why, then, this statement in the Al Ha’nissim that the Greeks tried le’hashkicham torassecha? Let me ask that question in another way: Rabbis are always upbraiding their people, demanding of them loyal adherence to the Torah. We cry and protest and lecture because the Jews are being alienated from their Bible. We want Jews to be good Jews, not Jews by birth or friendships alone. And yet there is always the wayward layman who asks: But am I not a good Jew? So what if I don’t observe Shabbos, Chodesh, Milah, so what if I smoke on the Sabbath, or never come to a synagogue to know when Rosh Chodesh prayers are to be recited, so what if I allow a doctor – a non-Jewish one yet – to circumcise my child? Does that mean that the Bible is not mine as well as the next fellow’s? Does that mean that I am not a good Jew? My diet may be non-Jewish, my work-schedule may be non-Jewish, my lack of support of a synagogue may be not in keeping with Jewish demands, but I’m good-natured, generous, I support certain social agencies which are Jewish-sponsored and I occasionally lend some money to my brother-in-law. Isn’t that what G-d wants? Isn’t that in the Bible? How can you say that I have forgotten the Torah, that I’m not a g…

(1) Throughout the ages, Chanukah has been variously interpreted. It is to the credit of this minor festival that it has a unique meaning for every age. And important, therefore, to show its relevance to our own day with its problems, values and aspirations. (2) Through the ages, we have always recalled the miracle of the oil. It is important to remember this nes shemen, for the beauty, the warmth and the religious quality of this aspect of Chanukah is eternally fresh and captivating. But – not enough.(3) At the beginning of Zionist era, when it was important to educate Jews to a more militant attitude, emphasis was placed not on nes shemen but on nes milchamah. The military victory was given prominence, and the Maccabees lost their priestly character and became Zionist heroes, Jewish Legionnaires, Haganah leaders; while anachronistic historically, were extremely valuable pedagogically. Their fight was for the homeland, nothing more nothing less…That too is an important and integral part of Chanukah. It is a call to activism, to resisting oppression and preserving the homeland and nation. But it is a great and treacherous mistake to make of the Maccabees merely secular military heroes. If that were the case, Chanukah would be celebrated with military parades and cannon salutes, and we would revere symbols of warfare. But the fact is that we say Hallel, not parade, and light candles, and not reverence swords. Fact is that we recall nes milchamah only as praise of God – it was He Who delivered us, not the Maccabees (merely instruments of God's redemptive powers); it was our love for Torah that stood us in good stead, not our strategy; the victory was not a human one but a divine one.In America, in addition to the purely religious aspect (nes shemen) and the influence of Zionism in establishing the military aspect (nes milchamah), a third aspect comes to the fore. The Maccabees fought for freedom of religion, freedom of conscience. It was a war which was the first of …

On this last day of Hanukkah, the second Shabbat Hanukkah this year, we direct our attention to a question concerning the entire festival itself. Why is it that we make such a festive holiday, filled with prayer and thanksgiving, with the lighting of candles and the singing of songs, for the cleansing and the purifying of the Second Temple, which was rededicated in the year 155 before the Common Era, and we have no equivalent or comparable festival to celebrate the initial building of the First Temple by Solomon many hundreds of years earlier? Was not Solomon’s first great campaign, building a sanctuary which his father, David, had foreseen, at least as important as what seems a subsequent minor detail in the history of the temple?And the answer, my friends, lies in the difference between building and rebuilding, between constructing and reconstructing, between dedicating and rededicating. When there is a new movement, a new campaign, a new idea, a new vision, anything that has with it the power of novelty, then it is almost assured of freshness and vigor and enthusiasm. The decision to build something new is not a spiritually difficult achievement. Everyone is anxious, everyone is aroused, everyone is excited. The people involved in such a project generally move forward with a great surge of strength and spirit.But – the decision to rebuild, that is far more difficult. To approach a rubble and try to make of it a habitable home; patiently to pick up the pieces of the past and paste them together; to take the tattered ruins of a former majesty and somehow restore them; to patch together what time and circumstance have ravaged – for this the masses have little enthusiasm, less spirit, and no patience.Thus, when King Solomon took it upon himself to build a new Bet Ha-mikdash, it was a comparatively easy enterprise. He was able to ride on the crest of popular appeal and mass sentiment. But when many hundreds of years later the Maccabees returned to a desecrated temple…

In discussing the commandment of Chanukah lights, the Talmud raises a problem which it formulates as: hadlakah oseh mitzvah, or hanachah oseh mitzvah. That is, what is the essential mitzvah of the lighting of the Chanukah light, is it the kindling of the light itself, or the placing of the lit menorah in its proper place. For just as we must kindle the light, so must we make sure that the menorah is placed in the proper spot. Thus, for instance, it must not be too low, and it must not be too high. More important in the days of the Talmud, before the advent of crowded cities and skyscrapers, when every family lived in a house which opened into a courtyard, which in turn opened into the public square, the Chanukah menorah was to be placed outside the door, in the courtyard, so as to ensure proper pirsum of the miracle – to publish or proclaim in public the fact that God’s providence extends over His people Israel. What then is the major aspect of the mitzvah of Chanukah: hadlakah or hanachah – kindling the light, or carrying the light to its proper place?Insofar as the Halakhah is concerned, the Talmud must of course choose one or the other; hadlakah or hanachah, kindling or carrying. In the larger sense however, when we deal with the light of Judaism, it seems to me that both are true. We must have both hadlakah and hanachah, the kindling of the light and the carrying it to its proper place. For the triumph of Torah, for the dissemination of Judaism, we need both kindlers and carriers – those who will provide the substance of the Jewish spirit, and those who will endow it with proper method; those who will give it content, and those who will shape its form; those who will provide the inner light of the spirit, and those who will drape it with the proper outer appearances; those, in other words, who will kindle Judaism’s light and those who will carry it to the darkest and remotest recesses of the hearts of almost lost Jews and Jewesses.Our problem in Jewish life has…

Silence, it is said, is golden. Our Rabbis taught that it makes for wisdom. Yet, the wisest of all men preached, that while there is a time for silence, there is also a time to talk up. Et la-chashot v’et le’daber. Just as there is a time for passivity and restraint, so is there a time for activity and protest. This morning we shall speak of the importance of et le’daber, of speaking out, and of carrying the virtue of silence to an excess. In the last two portions of our Torah, we read of three occasions when Jacob could have talked up but did not. In each he revealed a remarkable self-control, a fully disciplined spirit. Jacob, the ish tam, stands out as a man who is pure almost to the point of innocence. He has an abiding faith in humanity which ordinary men perhaps do not deserve. So distant is he from evil, that he no longer truly believes that it is a real factor in the life of man and the constitution of society. And the Torah, in recording the silences of Jacob, suggests an indirect criticism of Father Jacob. The Torah reminds us that just as et la-chashot, so et le’daber.One such case occurs in our Sidra, where we read: va-yekanu bo echav, v’aviv shamar et ha-davar – “And his brethren envied him: but his father kept it in mind” – the brothers were jealous, and Jacob merely made a mental note of it (Gen. 37:11). Imagine if instead of merely passively observing the budding hatred and envy that was developing amongst his children, Jacob had actively stepped into the picture and reproached the oldest brothers, saying: you are all older and mature men. How can you keep your self respect while envying a mere teen-ager because of his adolescent daydreams and ambition? But Jacob wanted to spare their feelings. He was himself a sensitive individual. Furthermore, he did not believe that this kind of emotion could last long in the hearts of his beloved children. Had he not been addicted to periods of silence, had he talked up, he might have stopped then and there the …

The Shulhan Arukh codifies a Halakhah or law which is not only of practical importance to those who wish to observe Hanukkah properly, but also, as we shall later see, is of wider significance. The law concerns an akhsenai or lodger, a traveller, who is away from home during the Hanukkah holiday. How is he to observe the kindling of the Hanukkah lights? We read, akhsenai she’ein madlikin alav be’veito, a traveller who knows or suspects that his family has failed to kindle the Hanukkah candles for him at his home, and who cannot therefore fulfill his obligations through them from a distance, can do one of two things. Im yesh lo petah patuah le’atzmo, tzarikh le’hadlik be’pitho, if he has his own apartment, with its own entrance, let him light his menorah at the entrance to his rooms. If, however, his accommodations are not so adequate, if he has but a small room without a separate entrance, then tzarikh la-tet perutah le’baal ha-bayit le’hishtatef imo be’shemen shel ner Hanukkah, he should give a coin, some money, to the innkeeper and thereby participate with him, the owner of the house, in his lighting of the Hanukkah menorah. By giving him this monetary gift, the akhsenai or lodger becomes a partner, as it were, with the baal ha-bayit or owner in the mitzvah of the Hanukkah lights (Sh.A., Orah Hayyim, 677:1). This is an important law, especially for us American Jews who, because of our economic position and the availability of transportation facilities in modern times, have become akhsenaim like never before. Our travels, both for business and pleasure, are unprecedented – and Jewish Law teaches us how to remember Hanukkah no matter how far from home we are.But there is a larger sense in which we can all be regarded as lodgers. Some two thousand years ago, the Greek Jewish philosopher Philo taught that every human being is an akhsenai, a traveller on the face of the earth. Man is essentially a “citizen of heaven,” a divine creature with heavenly aspirations, and t…

For eight days, beginning later this week, we shall be lighting the Hanukkah candles and, after reciting the blessings, shall read the Ha-nerot halalu, a brief excerpt from the Talmud, Masekhet Soferim. In the course of this passage, which explains the reason for the observance of Hanukkah, we shall add the following well-known words: ha-nerot halalu kodesh hem, v’ein lanu reshut le’hishtamesh bahem, ela lirotam bilvad, these candles are holy, and we are not permitted to make use of them, only to gaze at them. This refers to the law that Hanukkah candles, unlike Shabbat candles, may not be used for profane purposes; for instance, we may not use them to illuminate the house. (That is why we always provide an extra candle, the shammash, so that if all other lights are extinguished it will not be these Hanukkah candles alone that will provide the illumination for members of the household.) For the candles are holy, and what is holy may not be used, only gazed at and contemplated. There is something quite remarkable about this idea that what is holy may not be “used” for any other purpose, no matter how worthy, that there are certain things that are valuable in and of themselves even if they serve no other function. It is, let us readily confess, a fairly un-modern and un-American idea. The ideal American is tough-minded and eminently practical, and his guiding philosophy is pragmatism or instrumentalism: ideas are meaningful only if they work. Things have to work, wheels have to turn, projects must be completed, one must lead to another, things must get done. The most modern of modern questions is, “of what use is it?” And when the true modern wants to express despair and hopelessness, he says, “What’s the use!” – as if that which has no use is as good as dead, utterly worthless.Our Hanukkah lights, then, take exception to that rule. They have no use – we may not use them – for they are holy. The inventiveness of the practical man and the ambition of the pragmatist al…

Two themes are central to the festival of Hanukkah which we welcome this week. They are, first, the nes milhamah, the miraculous victory of the few over the many and the weak over the strong as the Jews repulsed the Syrian-Greeks and reestablished their independence. The second theme is nes shemen, the miracle of the oil which burned in the Temple for eight days although the supply was sufficient for only one day. The nes milhamah represents the success of the military and political enterprise of the  Maccabees, whilst the miracle of the oil symbolizes the victory of the eternal Jewish spirit. Which of these is emphasized is usually an index to one’s Weltanschauung. Thus, for instance, secular Zionism spoke only of the nes milhamah, the military victory, because it was interested in establishing the nationalistic base of modern Jewry. The Talmud, however, asking, “What is Hanukkah?,” answered with the nes shemen, with the story of the miracle of the oil. In this way the rabbis demonstrated their unhappiness with the whole Hasmonean dynasty, descendants of the original Maccabees, who became Sadducees, denied the Oral Law, and persecuted the Pharisees.Yet it cannot be denied that both of these themes are integral parts of Judaism. Unlike Christianity, we never relegated religion to a realm apart from life, we never assented to the bifurcation between that which belongs to God and that which belongs to Caesar. Religion was a crucial part – indeed, the very motive! – of the war against the Syrian-Greeks. And unlike the purely nationalistic interpretation of Hanukkah, we proclaim with the prophet (whose words we shall read next Sabbath), “For not by power nor by might, but by My spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.” In fact, the Maccabeean war was to a large extent not a revolution against alien invaders as much as a civil war against Hellenistic Jews who wanted to strip Israel of its Jewish heritage. Hence, Hanukkah symbolizes a victory through military means for spiritual…