Hanukkah Day Eight — An Eternal Flame
Book of Maccabees, it was never made part of the Bible. So it makes sense that generations later the Jewish sages asked, "Why Hanukkah?" What is the reason for this holiday? Now, they could have answered that it was in order to remember the miraculous military victory of the Jews over the Greeks. But instead they cite the miracle of the oil. When the victorious Maccabees redeemed the Temple, they were lucky enough to find one jar of oil which was enough to light the lampstand for one night. Miraculously, it lasted for eight nights giving the Jews enough time to make new pure olive oil without any interruption in the burning of the light.
Why did the sages choose the miracle of oil over the military battle for the main focus of the holiday?
While the military victory was great and miraculous, it was not full or permanent. It would be another two decades before the Jews fully succeeded in ousting the Greeks from Israel. And even that liberty would be temporary; a few centuries later, Jerusalem fell to Rome. The miracle of the oil, on the other hand, was a victory that would last forever because it was not a physical victory, but a spiritual one.
When God first commanded Aaron and his descendants to light the menorah, the lampstand, in the Tabernacle and then the Temple, Scripture says that it is an eternal commandment. However, the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, so how could this commandment possibly be for all generations? The sages explain that when the Maccabees, a family of priests, lit the Temple menorah leading to the Hanukkah miracle, they made the lighting eternal. We fulfill the lighting of the Temple menorah by lighting our Hanukkah menorahs each year.
This is why the holiday was included in the Jewish yearly cycle. In Judaism, the menorah symbolizes the light of God and the light of the Torah. When we light the menorah on Hanukkah, we fulfill a biblical mandate after all. We bring the light that God desires into every generation. We rekindle our passion for His Word and share its light with others.
Hanukkah celebrates an eternal triumph of God's light over all darkness. This spiritual light is an everlasting one. Goodness will always overcome evil, and light will ultimately outshine the darkness forever.
Rabbi Yechiel Ecksteinis the founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which now raises more than $140 million per year, mostly from Christians, to assist Israel and the Jewish people. Since its founding, The Fellowship has raised more than $1.4 billion for this work. The organization has offices in Jerusalem, Chicago, Toronto, and Seoul.
