Always increasing Jewish spirituality

We start to celebrate Hanukkah this Sunday night. Hanukkah is a unique holiday. We often say, “what is the definition of a Jewish holiday? ur enemies wanted to kill us, God saved us, let’s eat!”

But really, the deeper story of Chanukah is a bit different. The enemies of the Jews, the Syrian-Greeks, were not particularly concerned about the life or body of the Jews — they were very concerned about and fought against the spirit of the Jews, especially the observance of the Torah.

This is why we celebrate the holiday of Hanukkah with the lighting of the candles — which represents spirituality.

Hanukkah is the only holiday in the Jewish tradition when we increase the observance each day! This is unlike, for example, the holiday or Rosh Hashanah when we blow the shofar the same the first day and the second day; or on the holiday Sukkot when we shake the lulav, the same exact way every day of the holiday’s eight days.

On Hanukkah, we do change, increase our observance. The first night we light one candle plus the center candle, the shamash. On the second day, we light two candles and the shamash — then the third, fourth and fifth and so on, increasing each night until the eighth night with eight candles and the shamash.

The message is, when we come to our body, our needs, we could reach to a level where we are satisfied. But when it comes to spirituality, to our connection to ourself, our soul, to God, we always have to increase. And when one candle was good yesterday, tomorrow we have to light two, and then three, and more and more.

We wish all of you a beautiful holiday to our family and all in our community.

Rabbi Tenenboim is the director of the Chabad of Hewlett.