The Rebbe discusses the uniqueness of the miracle of the Chanukah lights as opposed to the other miracles that involved lights/candles which the Sages decided to make into holidays.
The commemoration of Chanukah was established over a vial of oil which only had enough oil in it to last one day but instead lasted for eight. We find that a similar miracle occurred with Sarah and Rivkah when their Shabbos candles burned from one Shabbos to the next. Nevertheless, it's understood that in the miracle of Chanukah, there's a novel aspect that we don't find in the case of Sarah and Rivkah. And it's not that the Chanukah miracle lasted eight days and Sarah and Rivkah's for seven.
The miracle of Chanukah is explained generally in two ways:
1) Quantity..miraculously, oil was being continuously added to last for eight days.
2) Quality..the amount of oil that was merely enough to burn one day instead burned for eight, i.e. every day only 1/8th of the oil was used.
According to the second explanation, both miracles are in the same category - a qualitative addition in the power of the burning of the oil.
On the other hand, according to the first explanation, the Chanukah miracle is in a different category: there was created miraculously the existence of more oil, which is not the case with the candles of Sara and Rivkah
However, even according to this, in the essential miracle of Chanukah, there was nothing new in that we find this type of miracle of candles in the miracle of increased oil in the story of Elisha the Prophet.
So the question comes back: what is the uniqueness of the miracle of the Chanukah lights that we don't find anywhere else?
Besides this basic question, we also have difficulties with each of the 2 above-mentioned explanations.
According to the "quantity" version of the miracle, how are we allowed to light the Menorah with miracle oil since the verse says you should light the Menorah with "pure olive oil...."?
Additionally, the second explanation in the "quality" that every night only an eighth of the oil was used contradicts the law that states "put into it ..., so that it burns ....that it should be a 1/2 lug" in addition to the issue that a serving vessel has to be filled to capacity. Thus it follows that from the second day on, they couldn't fulfill this requirement !
So there is a third version of the miracle which does not have the above-mentioned difficulties and by which one can see that the miracle of the Chanukah lights indeed has a novelty not duplicated anywhere else.
The Beth Yosef explains the miracle of Chanukah according to the first opinion: that they put all the oil in the lamps and in the morning they found the lamps still full of oil.
This means that not that the oil burned out and the men refilled the lamps with miracle oil, but that the oil burned and yet the amount of the oil was not diminishing !!!
The upshot of this is that here we have an event and its opposite.
A natural fire from oil that "naturally" must come from the consumption of the oil while simultaneously nothing was being depleted from the oil. The oil burned yet it was not consumed.
Likutei Sichos, vol.15 , Parshas Chaya Sarah, 5th sicha
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