“Sparkling Community Connections: The Enchantment of the Lights”

I commence by extending warm wishes to our readers who observe Christmas, wishing you a joyous and blessed festive season. As we near the dawn of a new year, it is my hope that the coming year of 2025 brings health, joy, and fulfillment to us all, and that it may herald a decrease in violence, conflict, divisiveness, unprovoked animosity, and the insensitivity and avarice that have tainted our past and proved so harmful to the welfare and prosperity of our communities.

The timing of Jewish celebrations, dictated by a lunar calendar, fluctuates over a period exceeding three weeks within the civil year. This year, Chanukah occurs at the latest point on the civil calendar. The first candle will be lit on the evening of Christmas day, with the weeklong celebration concluding at sunset on Jan. 2. To me, this overlapping of festivities is a delightful coincidence, celebrating alongside my non-Jewish neighbors and friends this year.

The origins of Chanukah trace back to a victorious uprising led by the Jews against the Hellenistic king Antiochus IV from 167 to 164 BCE. This king ruled over an empire based in Syria, which included the territory of Israel, and attempted to abolish the practice of the Jewish faith in order to unify his realm, insisting that the Jews adopt and blend into Greek religion and culture. A coalition of Jewish faithful and patriots opposed Antiochus’s edict, reclaiming the Temple in Jerusalem, which had been occupied and desecrated by the king’s troops. The Jews purified the Temple, reinstated Jewish worship, and relit the Menorah, the seven-branched candelabrum meant to be illuminated each evening to shed light on the Temple’s innermost and sacred areas.

The Hasmonean dynasty (descendants of the Maccabee family who led the resistance against Antiochus) ultimately succeeded in expelling the Syrians and establishing an autonomous Jewish kingdom that endured until Roman governance began in 63 BCE. Fast forward several centuries, Jews found themselves under the yoke of Roman rule and revolted against their imperial masters on two occasions. Both uprisings were quelled, the Temple in Jerusalem was devastated, and although a Jewish presence was consistently represented in the land, many Jews were scattered throughout the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions.

In this context, the sages who developed the rabbinic tradition chose to emphasize a different narrative, focusing not on the martial achievements of the Maccabees but rather on a miracle associated with the relighting of the Menorah. According to the rabbis, when the Jews reentered the Temple, they discovered only enough ritually pure oil for the Menorah to light for a single night. Amazingly, that small amount of oil lasted for eight nights, providing sufficient time to procure a fresh supply.

Chanukah is sometimes called the Festival of Lights. It is also a moment when we recognize and celebrate miracles. Each night of the holiday, as we light the Chanukah candles, one of the blessings recited expresses gratitude for the miracles God performed for our ancestors “in those days and at this season.”

Whenever I reflect on that tiny container whose oil endured beyond all expectations, it serves as a symbol of resilience, representing our human ability to survive, to persevere, and to thrive, even when our resources appear exhausted. To me, the oil that lasted for eight nights signifies a much more profound miracle – the ongoing survival and perseverance of the Jewish people throughout the centuries and millennia. A community that has withstood severe persecution, expulsion, discrimination, vilification, pogroms, and the Holocaust is still here, still connected to its spiritual legacy, still innovative, and still carrying a robust sense of its identity.

The lights we ignite at home each evening during Chanukah are gradually increased one by one every night, starting with one candle on the initial night, two on the second, and so forth, until on the eighth and final evening, we are lighting eight candles. This might seem counterintuitive: the flames from that small vessel of oil were likely weakening as the nights progressed, suggesting that we should be reducing the number of lights. However, Jewish tradition chose to augment the number of lights to represent that each successive night that the light endured was an even greater miracle. For me, the custom of increasing the number of lights serves as a potent reminder of the mission of people of faith and goodwill – to amplify the light in the world, spreading the light of knowledge, the light of truth, the light of conscience, and the light of spirituality, which connects us to the creator and source of all light.

Rabbi Barry Marks is rabbi emeritus of Temple Israel in Springfield.