What is Chanukah?... When the Hasmonean family overpowered the Greeks, they searched and found only a single cruse of pure oil... enough to light the menorah for a single day.

A miracle occurred, and they lit the menorah with this oil for eight days.

The following year, they established these eight days as days of festivity and praise and thanksgiving to G-d. (Talmud, Shabbat 21b)

Many miracles, great and small, accompanied Israel’s liberation from Hellenic oppression. But only one particular miracle is given as the sum and substance of Chanukah: the small cruse of pure oil that burned for eight days.

The challenge faced by Israel at that time was unlike any before. Hellenism, a noxious blend of hedonism and philosophy, could not be resisted by the conventional tools of Jewish learning and tradition.

Only the cruse of pure oil--the supra-egotistical essence of the Jewish soul, from which stems the intrinsic loyalty to G-d — could illuminate the way out of Hella’s mudswamps. Only by evoking this deep inner reserve of purity were we able to rekindle the torch of Israel as a light unto the nations.

But naturally, this was sufficient for only a single day. Our highest powers flare only fleetingly, soon receding to the supra-conscious place from which they came.

When our deepest self is challenged, we are highly stimulated, but then the moment passes, the cataclysmic levels off into the routine, and we are back to our ordinary self.

The miracle of Chanukah was that this oil continued for eight days — that the flame blazed on beyond the single moment of truth, beyond the day of reckoning. The small pure cruse of oil burned beyond its one-day lifespan for an additional week, illuminating the seven Kabbalistic chambers of the soul.

No mere flash of light, this flame was destined to shed purity and light for all generations, under all conditions.

Thus, it was only the following year that Chanukah was established as a festival. Only the following year, after weathering all the annual fluctuations, seasons and transmutations, could the victory of Chanukah be considered truly permanent.

Nightlight

The mitzvah of kindling the Chanukah lights begins at sunset. They are placed in the outer doorway of one's home; if one lives on the second floor, one should place them in a window which looks out to the street.

Winter brings evening early, filling the streets with darkness and cold, as the street lights come on. Amid the electrical glares, a warm, pure glow asserts itself from Jewish doorways and windows.

“A mitzvah is a lamp, and Torah is light” (Proverbs 6:23). The essence of our mission in life is to shed light: every time we fulfill a mitzvah we are lighting a lamp, illuminating a world of ignorance and strife with the wisdom and harmony of the Creator.

Each and every mitzvah is a lamp, but there are two mitzvot that mirror their quintessential function. These are the two mitzvot that involve the generation of physical light: the lamps of the holy menorah  lit each afternoon in the Temple in Jerusalem; and the Chanukah lights that we kindle at nightfall each evening of Chanukah.

Indeed, the Chanukah lamps are the offspring of those of the menorah, commemorating the miraculous rebirth of light in the Holy Temple.

The Temple's menorah was a five-foot high, seven branched-candelabra made of solid gold and topped with seven oil-burning lamps. Its seven flames, fueled by premium olive oil prepared under special spiritual purity, were the physical expression of the spiritual light which emanated from the Holy Temple.

For the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was the epicenter of G-d's manifest presence in the life of man, the point from which light emanated to the entire world. In their endeavor to supplant the spirituality of Israel with Hellenic paganism, the Greeks defiled it with their decadent images and rites, contaminating the oil for kindling the menorah.

But one family refused to yield to the darkness. Matityahu the Hasmonean and his sons the Maccabees rallied a small but determined group that drove the Greeks from the land. After liberating the Holy Temple, they searched for ritually pure oil with which to light the menorah. They found a single cruse of oil that survived Greek defilement.

Every winter of the over 2,100 winters since, we remember and reenact the triumph of light over darkness with our Chanukah menorah.

A Different Menorah

There are, however, several marked differences between the Chanukah menorah and the menorah in the Holy Temple:

a) The Temple menorah was lit during the day (no later than 1-1/4 hours before sunset) and burned through the night. The Chanukah lights are kindled at night.

b) The original menorah stood inside, in the Holy Temple’s inner sanctum, while the Chanukah menorah is placed at the perimeter of the home, at the doorway or window facing the street.

c) Seven flames burned in the Temple menorah. The Chanukah menorah holds eight lamps, all of which are kindled on the festival’s climax.

Why these differences? Generally, rabbinic observances are modeled after their biblical prototypes. Why, in instituting the kindling of Chanukah lights, did our sages differentiate between them and the lights they are meant to commemorate?

Standard Operating Procedure

G-d saw the light that it is good, and He separated between the light and the darkness. And G-d called the light day and the darkness He called night; and it was evening and it was morning, one day. (Genesis 1:4-5)

In the beginning, darkness and light were one single, seamless expression of the goodness and perfection of their Creator. But G-d wanted contrast and challenge in His world. So He separated between light and darkness, between revealed good and concealed good, challenging us to cultivate the day and sublimate the night.

On the most fundamental level, our task is to harness the light of day so that it extends to illuminate the night. We strive to preserve and develop all that is good and G-dly in our world, and to direct these positive forces to overcome and transform the evil and negativity of the dark side of creation.

This process was exemplified by the menorah in the Holy Temple: kindled in the light of day, its rays reached deep into the night; kindled in an inner sanctum brimming with divine light, it radiated its glow to the mundane world without.

But there are times when darkness invades the divine lighthouse, extinguishing the menorah and defiling its oil. Times when we can no longer draw from the day to illuminate the night.

At such times, we must turn to the night itself as a source of light. We must search for the hidden single cruse of pure oil, for the undefiled and undefilable essence of creation. We must delve below the surface realities of day and night to unearth the primordial singularity of light and darkness.

Therein lies the significance of Chanukah, when the menorah moves from within the Holy Temple out into the street, and from the daytime to the evening. Chanukah transforms the menorah from a tool that disseminates the light of day into a tool that extracts the luminous essence of darkness itself.

So goes the journey of light: a journey through time and space to ever duskier vistas, to increasingly alien environments; a journey from midday in Jerusalem to the darkest reaches of a world awaiting redemption.

Cycle and Circumference

This is also the significance of the difference between the number of lamps in the Temple and the Chanukah menorahs.

Seven symbolizes creation. G-d created the world in seven days, employing the seven divine attributes (sefirot) to serve as the seven spiritual building blocks of creation. Seven is thus the dominant number in all natural cycles and processes. Hence, the standard operating procedure to bring light to creation is associated with the seven-branched menorah of the Holy Temple.

If seven is the cycle of nature, then the number eight represents the circumference that defines and contains it, the pre-creation reality that both transcends and pervades the created reality.

If the seven lamps of the Temple menorah embody the normative process of overriding darkness with light, the eight lamps of the Chanukah menorah represent the endeavor to access a higher reality--a reality in which darkness is but another ray of divine truth.