THE LIGHT OF THE SPIRIT NEVER DIES

There is an interesting question the commentators ask about Ḥanukka.

For eight days we kindle lights, and each night we make the blessing over miracles: She’asa nissim laavoteinu. But what was the miracle of the first night? The oil that should have lasted one day lasted eight. But that means there was something miraculous about days two to eight; nothing was miraculous about the first day.

Perhaps the miracle was this: that the Maccabees found one cruse of oil with its seal intact, undefiled. There was no reason to suppose that anything would have survived the systematic desecration the Greeks and their supporters did to the Beit HaMikdash. Yet the Maccabees searched and found that one cruse.

Why did they search? Because they had faith that from the worst tragedy, something would survive. The miracle of the first night was that of faith itself, the faith that something would remain with which to begin again.

So it has always been in Jewish history. There were times when any other people would have given up in despair: after the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash, or the massacres of the Crusades, or the Spanish Expulsion, or the pogroms, or the Shoah. But somehow, Jews did not merely sit and weep. They gathered what remained, rebuilt our people, and lit a light like no other in history, a light that tells us, and the world, of the power of the human spirit to overcome every tragedy and refuse to accept defeat.

From the days of Moshe and the bush that burned and was not consumed, to the days of the Maccabees and the single cruse of oil, Judaism has been humanity’s ner tamid, the everlasting light that no power on earth can extinguish.

❖ Points to Ponder

1. What did the Maccabees have faith in?

2. Why do you think Rabbi Sacks describes faith itself as a miracle?

3. Do you think having faith today is also a miracle?