Tag Archives: candles

Zot Chanukah

Posted on by
Reply

The 8th day of Chanukah,  is the only day of the festival that is given its own particular name: Zot Chanukah, which means “This is Chanukah” .  This special name for the last day of Chanukah is taken from the Torah reading from the end of Parashat Naso that emphatically announces ZOT CHANUKAT HA-MIZBEI’ACH – this is the dedication of the altar. But why is a special name given to just one day of the festival, and why to the very last one?

 Rabbi Joseph Caro, author of the Shulchan Aruch, suggested that it may have been given in case one might think that Chanukah should only be celebrated seven days, since the single flask of oil found by the Maccabees was sufficient for one day, and therefore the miraculous illumination was really only for seven days. The eighth day we celebrate could be understood then as a calendrical correction in case the commencing date was wrong, and not concerned with the miracle upon which our Chanukah is predicated.  This, he said,  is why the eighth day is called “ZotChanukah“ – “This is Chanukah“ – to emphasize that it is an actual day of the eight-day celebration and not merely a day celebrated because of  ambiguity in the calendar as other festivals sometimes have extra days added.

Zot Chanukah: This is Chanukah. The 8th day of Chanukah issignificant. Being the last night and because of the ruling of Hillel that we increase in holiness and therefore add a candle each day of the festival, rather than starting with 8 and decreasing the candles, the eighth day gives us the brightest outpouring of light – in effect the eighth day is the essence of the holiday – the illumination of faith in the darkness of fear.

Much has been written about the significance of the number eight – and it is generally based on the idea of it being 7 plus one. The number seven signifies completion / perfection. Shabbat is the seventh day of the week; Creation took seven days to complete, so seven is the mystical number of wholeness and perfection in tradition. The number 8 is therefore said to transcend the realm of this mundane and physical world and allude to the exalted and holy. In the natural world, time is based on a seven-day week and according to mystical tradition by sheva kochavei lechet – the seven orbital planets but God transcends all this, and therefore the number eight represents God’s Holiness.  The power of 8 is one beyond the completion often implied by the number 7 in our tradition. 8 is one more, beyond the limits of time, signifying the presence of God, whose light is ever present in this world.

According to the teachings of Kabbalah and Hasidism, this day is the final “seal” of the High Holiday season of Yom Kippur, and is considered a time to repent out of love for God. In this spirit, many Hasidic Jews wish each other G’mar chatimah tovah (“may you be sealed totally for good”), a traditional greeting for the Yom Kippur season and it is taught in Hasidic and Kabbalistic literature that this day is particularly auspicious for the fulfilment of prayers.

Zot Chanukah, the eighth day of special holiness, is a day that goes over and above the usual span of time  The phrase “Zot Chanukah” can be translated as “this is dedication”.  But at the same time as it reminds us that while every day of life is miraculous, even the mundane days of ordinary work or unexciting activities,  it also points out that above and beyond these days there can be yet another miracle, one which is achieved by living as best we can, with persistence and determination, and our going over and above what we might otherwise offer.

Mikketz: raising up the light and keeping hope alive

Posted on by
Reply

Rabbi Hugo Gryn famously told a story of his father in the winter of 1944, while they were together in a concentration camp called Lieberose. Having announced that it was the eve of Chanukah, he took a homemade clay bowl and lit a wick immersed in is precious, now melted ration of margarine. Before he could recite the blessing, Hugo looked at his father and protested “we need the food – we can’t afford to waste it on a candle” his father looked at Hugo then His father looked at Hugo-and then at the lamp—and responded, “You and I have seen that it is impossible to live up to three weeks without food. We once lived almost three days without water; but you can’t live at all without hope.”

Rabbi Moshe Prager told the story of a young boy in Auschwitz whose Barmitzvah fell on the first day of Chanukah. He too painstakingly collected scraps of oil to craft a makeshift candle and invited a small group to celebrate with him late at night in his ‘bunk’. In the blackness of the night in Auschwitz, a small band of hungry and frightened Jews huddled together to watch the Barmitzvah light the candle and intone the blessings when a Nazi guard entered the hut and shouted at the lad at the centre of the activity to put out the candle. The Barmitzvah looked at the Nazi and said “we Jews do not extinguish light, we make light”

What both the stories have in common is the importance of retaining identity, and that in holding on to who we essentially are, we keep alive not only ourselves and our hope, but also God’s place in our world.

At the very beginning of creation God commands y’hee or – let there be light. Long before the sun and moon have been created, even before night and day have been differentiated, even before the division into light and darkness, the command booms out in the Universe – y’hee or. God, who commands us to walk in God’s way and emulate God’s actions as best we can, enters the tohu va’vohu, the confusion and blackness of the deep and brings light. It is a command for us to do the same.

In the sidra Mikketz, which is always read on Shabbat Chanukah, Joseph, the arrogant young boy who had been sold into slavery by his brothers and who had, by his own efforts, survived Egyptian imprisonment and become a noted interpreter of dreams, seems to shed his own Hebrew identity and becomes an officer of Pharaoh’s court. His name is changed to an Egyptian one – Zaphenat Parnea, he marries an Egyptian woman Asenat, the daughter of an Egyptian priest and wears the clothing of Egyptian nobility.

Nachum Sarna explains the etymology of the new name – Zaphenat Parnea in this way:

“Traditional exegesis connects the name with Joseph’s penchant for interpreting dreams, seeing in the first element a derivation from the Hebrew stem ts-f-n to hide, and rendering the second contextually as “to elucidate”. The name would thus mean “The revealer of hidden things”. However an Egyptian origin is evident and a widely held view regards it as the transcription “God speaks; he lives” … In choosing this name, Pharaoh finds a title for Joseph as the one in whom God speaks, and the people live

So even Joseph, the assimilated one, the one who leaves home and family and chooses never to go back; even Joseph, who marries out and whose children are adopted back into the family as half-tribes; Joseph who gives his sons Hebrew names even while describing them as the ones who will help him forget his own past; with all of this, even Joseph retains his essential identity, keeping alive hope, keeping alive God’s place in the world, bringing light into the world through his management of resources and his conduit to God’s speaking.

We always read Mikketz in Chanukah. We always read of the name change on a day we will be lighting the candles of witnessing to God’s continuing care for us. We always face the tensions embedded in Jewish identity, in Jewish historical experience at this time. We read about Pharaoh’s description of the most assimilated of our ancestors as “a man in whom there is the spirit of God”. The story reminds us – as do the two Chanukah stories of the holocaust with which I began – that no matter how dark, how distressing our world, God is not really hidden far away. Maybe hidden, but not far away, and we can bring forth light for ourselves and so reveal the divine that is all around us.