The Following Year: Why Only the Oil Was Commemorated

1“What is Chanukah? For the Rabbis taught: On the twenty-fifth of Kislev … A miracle was done with it, and they lit from it for eight days. The following year they established them and made them festive days, with Hallel and thanksgiving.”

2The holy sefer Bnei Yissaschar asks:¹ could anyone imagine that the compilers of the Gemara did not know what Chanukah is? By their time, Bnei Yisrael had been keeping the mitzvos of Chanukah for several hundred years! What, then, did they mean by asking, “What is Chanukah?” He also asks about the Gemara's next words, “The following year they established them …”: why did they wait until the following year? Why did they not establish it for all generations right away, in the first year, as soon as they saw the miracle?

3Perhaps we can resolve this through a well-known question of the later authorities:² why did Chazal establish a remembrance for all generations only for the miracle of the oil? The victory in the war was a great miracle too, as we say, “You delivered the mighty into the hands of the weak, and the many into the hands of the few.”³ Yet for it they established no sign or remembrance for the generations.

4It seems that the explanation is this. The Gemara tells us: “Esther sent word to the Sages, ‘Write me down for all generations …’” And they did not want to establish it until they found a verse written in the Torah: “Write this as a remembrance in the book …”⁴ So Chazal established the festival of Purim only after they found a support for it in a verse. We see from this that not every miracle can be given a remembrance for all generations, only one that has a support in the Torah. We must therefore ask: what support in the Torah does Chanukah have, on the strength of which they saw fit to establish the miracle for all generations?

5aBut we know what the Ramban wrote on a teaching of the Midrash.⁵ The Midrash explains why the passage of the Menorah comes right after the chanukah, the dedication offerings, of the Nesi'im, the tribal princes. It says: “When Aharon saw the offerings of the Nesi'im, he was disheartened that he was not with them. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moshe: ‘Go tell Aharon: Do not be afraid; you are prepared for something greater than this. The offerings apply only as long as the Beis HaMikdash stands, but the lamps, “toward the face of the Menorah shall they give light,” forever …’”⁶ The Ramban explains: one might think that the lamps of the Menorah, too, were destined to cease when the Beis HaMikdash was destroyed. But the Midrash means a different lighting of lamps, one that applies for all generations: the Chanukah of the Chashmona'im, the Hasmoneans, which applies even after the Destruction, in our exile. That is the gist of his words. So we find a hint to Chanukah in the Torah.

5bEarly authorities, too, write that the mitzvah of the Chanukah lamp is hinted in the verse “to kindle a lamp continually”: by establishing the lighting of the Chanukah lamp as a mitzvah for all generations, they fulfilled the verse “to kindle a lamp continually.”⁷ It follows that there is a support in the Torah for establishing the mitzvah of lighting the Chanukah lamp for all generations. But the miracle of the war has no support in the Torah, so it is understandable that they could not establish a remembrance for it for all generations.

6This lets us explain the Gemara's question, “What is Chanukah?” The Gemara means to ask: two miracles were done for them, the victory in the war and the cruse of oil. Why, then, did they see fit to establish a remembrance for all generations for the miracle of the oil, rather than for the miracle of the war? To this the Gemara answers that in the first year they indeed established no remembrance at all, not even for the miracle of the oil, because they did not yet know of any support in the Torah for it. But the following year, at that same time, they sensed lights and holiness. They understood that Heaven was bestowing these lights on them so that the miracle would be established for all generations. Through this, they realized, the Holy One, blessed be He, wished to fulfill what He had told Aharon, that the lamps of the Menorah would give light forever. So they then established the remembrance of the miracle for all generations. But they established it only for the miracle of the oil, since only for that miracle had they found a support in the Torah. This also properly resolves our second question: why they established the festival only in the following year.

7What emerges is that these days are a time especially suited to sensing great and wondrous lights. As Chazal worded the blessing, “in those days, at this time”:⁸ the same lights and holiness that shone in those days are revealed at this time as well. We must therefore make good use of these holy days and add to our Torah and good deeds. Amen, may it be His will.