Letter from the Rabbi – Light up the World with Hope!

Dear Friends,

What is a miracle? That may seem like an obvious question but times being what they are, and because we could certainly use a miracle or two, this is the question on my mind. What is a miracle and what can Hanukkah teach us about miracles?

Jewish tradition relates that when the Maccabees entered the damaged and desecrated Temple in Jerusalem after taking it back from the Syrian Greek Empire in around 165 BCE, they looked to see if there remained any oil sealed by the high priest with which they could light the Temple Menorah. They found one cruse of oil that was enough for one day. But the small amount of oil burned for eight days, which was long enough for the priest to prepare more and keep the light continuous.

But wait: if they found enough oil for one day, what was miraculous about the first day? That light burned as expected. Why wouldn’t you say that only the next seven days constituted a miracle?

This question, asked by 16th-century Rabbi Joseph Karo, was answered with a suggestion by one of my teachers, Rabbi J.J. Schachter. The miracle on the first day was that the high priest went ahead and lit the oil lamp at all. He could easily have said that it was not worth trying, that there would never be enough oil to last until they could prepare more oil. So why bother? I can even imagine lots of logical and practical people around him advising, “don’t even waste the oil that you have. It will just burn out after a day. There is no hope.”

And yet he did have hope. And it is hope, I believe, that was the miracle of that first day. It is hope that Hanukkah offers as one of its central teachings. And it is hope is so central to Jewish teaching, that one of Judaism’s many names for God is indeed “Hope,” Mikvei Yisrael, according to the prophet Jeremiah (17:13-14).

I want to explore the spiritual meaning of hope in a way that can guide us in these difficult times. There was no logical reason for those in the Hanukkah story have hope in that situation. And yet someone, whether the priest, or perhaps other people around him, people without titles yet with strength of spirit, had hope. They chose hope. As scholar Cornell William Brooks said about Martin Luther King Jr., “He reminded us that hope is not empirically demonstrated; it’s morally chosen.”