Hanukkah has come and almost gone this year. Locally, I have heard and read very little in
our media about this Jewish holiday. In
past years there has been a picture of a menorah on the first day of the
holiday as a banner in our local newspaper, and the T.V. news would feature a segment each night of a
large public menorah being lit during the eight days of remembrance. But here we are on the second to the last day
and I see nothing.
Perhaps this holiday seems absent from me
because I’m Christian. I light our
Advent candles, one for the four weeks leading up to Christmas, (a time of
waiting and remembering), and then the Christ candle on the 25th of
December for the birth of Jesus.
If I were Jewish I would light a menorah--
one candle each night for 8 days. When
the Jewish people regained their temple from the Syrian army, all the oil for
the lamps had been destroyed except for enough for one day. But that lamp burned for 8 days, which gave
them time to make more oil. This was a
sign from God and it is remembered annually during Hanukkah, which means “to
dedicate” ( "חנך").
These two traditions blend with a similar
kind of ritual of lighting candles, waiting, and remembering.
So with
two days left of Hanukkah, I decided to find the old dreidel (spinning top) is kept
in the front room drawer. (I don’t know
where it came from and rarely take it out.) It’s a Hanukkah game and it’s
played like this:
The four sides of the top bear four Hebrew letters: nun, gimmel,
hey, and shin. Players
begin by putting into a central pot or “kitty” a certain number of coins,
chocolate money known as gelt, nuts, buttons or other small objects. Each player in turn
spins the dreidel and proceeds as follows:
- nun – take
nothing;
- gimmel – take
everything;
- hey – take
half;
- shin – put one in.
The letters on the dreidel are reinterpreted to stand for
the first letter of each word in the Hebrew statement “Neis gadol hayah sham,” which
means “A great miracle happened there”.
In my online research I found an excellent article by Rabbi Eliyahu Safran where he writes, “Dreidels are my
talisman, my touchstone. They reassure me in the most innocent and delightful
way that our miracles will continue.”
What
is hidden is never lost. Remember the
candles and remember the light from them.
Here is Rabbi Safran’s story:
