Hanukkah is not a holiday that gets a lot of attention in the earliest rabbinic texts (the Mishnah and its sister text, the Tosefta). It is known as a holiday but only a few of the dos (say Hallel, read Torah) and don’ts (say Musaf, declare a fast day, have excessive wailing at a funeral) are described. The reasons for celebrating Hanukkah are never given, and its most central ritual, the lighting of the Hanukkah lamp, appears only incidentally, in a context that isn’t particularly about Hanukkah at all. Read more...

Short hours of sunlight.  Long nights of darkness. In these, cold, almost-winter days of December, is can easily be that the sun has barely risen when we leave our homes and is already set when we leave our offices.  And, if you’ve had the experience I’ve had, you sometimes find yourself feeling like it is the middle of the night when, in reality, it is barely past 5 pm.  And, it is just at this time that Hanukkah arrives, when for eight nights, our primary mitzvah is to illuminate the darkness of night with the lights of our menorah. Read more...