The First Night: The Kindling That Brought Teshuvah

1The Rishonim ask:¹ on the first night there was no miracle at all, since the cruse held enough oil to light for one day. We can answer this, but at first glance there is a further difficulty.² Why did they establish the miracle for all generations because blessing was found in a cruse of oil? Surely that is a common kind of miracle. We find it with R' Chanina ben Dosa, and the like.³ In later generations too, the Maharshal writes in the introduction to his Yam Shel Shlomo that a miracle happened to him as well with a mitzvah lamp.⁴ The story is told in the Kav HaYashar: once he had only a small candle, and it gave light like two large candles.⁵ So why did they not establish the festival on the other miracles of that time, which seem greater than this one?

2aThe truth is this. When the Jewish people as a whole, or a single person, the tzaddik of the generation, walk in the ways of Hashem and His Torah, blessing is common. As it is written, “If you walk in My statutes …,”⁶ and “Hashem will command the blessing to be with you.”⁷ But when they do not walk in the way of the Torah, Heaven forbid, the blessing is not among them, and it can even turn to the opposite. In the days of wicked Greece, the Jewish people had sunk very low, onto an evil path, until the Greeks told them, “Write on the horn of the ox that you have no portion in the God of Israel.”⁸ [“On the horn of the ox,” and not on the horns of other animals: to show them that the merit of the Avos and the merit of the Akeidah had run out for them, and they were left only with the horn of the ox, which is unfit for a shofar, for “it is called a horn; it is not called a shofar.”⁹] “No portion” meant even the Divine portion that dwells within them, a portion that no blemish touches. As Chazal said, “Even though he sinned, he is Yisrael”:¹⁰ the portion within us has not sinned. But that generation blemished even this portion. These wicked Greeks sensed how low Israel had fallen, and so they came against them in war, as is the nature of Amalek.

2bWhen the cruse of oil remained and the Kohen lit the Menorah, which alludes to the Menorah on high, he made a light shine in the darkness of the holy congregation's heart, by the power of his own holiness and the holiness of the mitzvah. Think of a coal with sparks of fire still in it: when one blows on it, it bursts into flame. So the Kohen, by the power of the mitzvah's holiness, lit up the heart of Bnei Yisrael and kindled a flame in their hearts. He rolled the stone of stumbling off them and removed the screen that separated them [from Hashem], until they saw how they had blemished, and before Whom, and how far the matter reaches. And they came to complete teshuvah. Then the miracle and the blessing came of themselves on the other nights as well. This answers the Rishonim's question: the first night holds within it all seven of the days that follow, and it is the source of the blessing.

2cThe Gemara's wording is precise: “On the twenty-fifth of Kislev, the days of Chanukah are eight.”¹¹ On the twenty-fifth itself, all eight days are already present in potential. And the power of this season reaches through every generation: every year, when this time comes, the Kohen's holiness shines out in this kindling. Any Jew who truly wants it, even one caught in the thicket of sins, whose soul is bowed to the dust, can come to complete teshuvah. He can feel the holiness of these days and draw down upon himself and upon all Israel “a mitzvah is a lamp, and Torah is light,”¹² to shine out of the darkness in every matter, spiritual and material. Amen.

3These words of ours also explain why the laws of Chanukah appear in the Mishnah only by allusion, in R' Yehudah's words: “With a Chanukah lamp, he is exempt.”¹³ For Mishnah (משנה) has the same letters as neshamah (נשמה), the soul, a person's inward part. And that generation had blemished even the inward part of their souls, as we saw with the Divine portion within them. Yet it is the nature of holiness that even when it is forced to withdraw from a person, a reshimu, an imprint of holiness, remains within him. That is why Chanukah is mentioned in the Mishnah too, as such an imprint, by allusion.¹⁴