Today is the darkest day of the year.  Yeah, I know some of you will say that the winter solstice holds this honor.  And I will say you are wrong.  The winter solstice is the longest night of the year.  However, when the moon is full on the winter’s solstice, which does happen, that night is pretty well lit up.  Especially if there is snow on the ground.  Hanukah, and specifically, the 5th day of Hanukah, is the night of the dark moon closest to the winter solstice – and this is the darkest night of the year.

So, why does Hanukah include this night?  And why does Hanukah fall on the darkest week of the year, which includes the first few days of the new moon?  To answer this question, I want to start with a little history lesson to make sure we all remember the common reason to why we are celebrating the holiday.  The Greeks (the world power at the time)  were trying to destroy the Jewish people.  They had captured and desecrated the temple and they had made a series of laws preventing the practice of the tradition.  A group of priests led a revolt against the Greeks and won back the temple.  When they purified the temple, they found only enough pure oil to light the menorah for 1 day.  Unfortunately, 8 days are needed to purify new oil.  They decided not to wait for more oil and lit the menorah with the pure oil they had.  And that one day’s worth of oil lasted 8 days, the exact amount of time needed to purify more oil.  Hence we celebrate 2 miracles:  the defeat of the Greeks and the oil lasting for 8 days.

This is a great story, but it does not explain why we celebrate the miracles during the darkest week of the year.  So, let me see if I can shed some light on that subject.  First, I want to mention that Hanukah is a hebrew word that means “Dedication.”  This makes sense from the story, for we re-dedicated the temple to god.  However, there is something else that needs dedication.

The story is a parable for each of us.  Sometimes we feel like we are facing overwhelming odds.  And somehow we managed to defeat those odds and become a success… only to find that we now have a big mess that we need to clean up in order to continue.  This cleaning, this purification can feel like a huge daunting task and we begin to wonder if we are up to it after the huge amount of effort we just put out to overcome whatever was blocking our way.  That shining light that we held onto seems to have gone out and everything is so dark.  So much to do.  What’s the point?  That is where we are on this day, this day of the new moon closest to the winter’s solstice, the darkest night of the year.

Fortunately we have Hanukah and the lighting of the candles to give us a little light.  And with this light we can look inside ourselves and try to find that small pure oil of hope to carry on.  It might not seem like much.  It might not even be enough for us to clean up the mess and move on in our life.  But what do we have to lose.  Let’s light that oil and spark our hope into action.  Let’s use that hope to re-dedicate ourselves to the work we are doing.  By doing this simple act of faith and hope, god will reflect back to us that small flicker of light by bringing back the light of the new moon and by starting to increase the length of our days, and provide us the strength to go on and do the work of putting things right in our lives so we can move forward and grow into our potential.  This strength will feel like a miracle for it is so much more that we knew we had when everything was so dark.  This is the secret of Hanukah today.  Happy holidays.

About the Author

Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.