“What is Hanukkah? The Sages taught: On the twenty-fifth of Kislev… they searched and found only one cruse of oil that was placed with the seal of the High Priest…” (Shabbat 21a). One could ask – so what if it was sealed with the seal of the High Priest? We may be able to claim that even if it were touched from the outside it remains pure (because clay vessels only become impure from the inside not the outside), but nonetheless we must be concerned that it was tipped and thus became impure. The Tosafot addressed this difficulty by saying that if these events took place after the Sages had decreed all idolaters to have the impurity of a bodily issue, then we must say that it was placed in the ground and sealed in such a fashion that the vessel could not be tipped. The same seems true in the words of Rashi who wrote “with the seal, meaning that it was hidden away and sealed with his ring and thus recognizably untouched.” The Ran answered this problem by saying that if they had found it and tipped it, they would have broken it open to see if it held gold or jewels. Therefore, since it was found sealed with the seal of the High Priest it was certainly not found by the defilers. It is possible that this was Rashi’s intent as well when he wrote that it was ‘recognizably untouched.’: The reason that it was necessary to use that one jar of oil to light for eight days is that all of Israel were presumed to have the impurity of contact with the dead and it was therefore impossible to prepare pure oil until seven days had passed from they day of their defilement. Add to this one more day for crushing and preparing the olives to produce pure oil and you have eight. The Ran writes that there was pure oil four days away, and that they therefore needed eight days to go there and back. One could ask why they established an eight day celebration at all. After all, since there was enough oil in the sealed jar to light for one night then the miracle actually was for seven nights. One could answer that they divided the oil they found into eight parts and placed one portion in the menorah each night, which nonetheless burned until morning. Thus a miracle occurred every night. Further you could say that after they filled the menorah on the first night the jar remained full of oil as it was in the beginning, and thus the miracle was recognizable even on the first night. Alternatively, they poured all the oil into the menorah on the first night and though the candles burned all night they found them still full of oil in the morning, and so it happened each night.