Hanukah with PM Netanyahu

Just wondering...

Bibi is not a Rabbi, so the candle representing the oil lamp that was lit, and then discovered to still be lit, is the one lit by the ‘guest’.

I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying that the Shamash is the “the oil lamp that was lit, and then discovered to still be lit”?

CHanukhah is the Festival of Lights right?
So, what light? How many days of the Festival are there?
Why so many days? How much lamp oil existed for the creation of this Festival? What time in history was this lamp lit? By whom? what is the real meaning of this Festival? is it the ‘gelt’ giving? is it the lamp? is it the lamp’s light? is it the oil? is it who ‘made it happen’?

I know I sound like ‘The Book of Why?’

look for the bigger picture of the whole event, and the meanings underneath, and NOT because it happens to be near the time of the Christian gift-giving (so it seems) Christmas.

To celebrate any event of The Divine, to where the table setting has Uncle Albert in the same seat year after year (even though you may love him), without the knowledge and remembrance of the event, as it once was, becomes family tradition, only.

Chanukhah is a time of Divine intervention and miracles.
Christmas is too.

I know the story of Hanukkah...but that does not answer my question. There is a place for ritual, properly understood, it gives extra meaning to your actions. That is why I was asking about Netanyahu. Had I misunderstood the proper way to light the Hanukkah menorah? Your bigger picture does not tell me!

Thanks. It makes sense.

I am a Christian, but every year I light a virtual menorah at http://www.reformjudaism.org/light-virtual-hanukkiyah-menorah
I like to remember the story of the miracles of Hanukkah, then read the blessings and light the menorah.

Chag Chanukah Sameach!

I wasn’t aware of a custom to light the 1st light before the Shamash, but what do I know! We enjoy Chanukah because it is an annual reminder that Hellenization (secularization, PC mandates, majority opinion et al) can and should be kicked to the curb. The supression and rejection of Torah is the rejection of Truth. Just say no.

Happy Hanukkah to all Jewish FReepers.

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Don't mean to put words in his mouth, but imo Yehuda correctly states in post 4, it's a war holiday. WADR, Chanukah is about destroying those who would destroy Israel.

Not just about defeating the Greeks, but defeating the apostates who had taken up not just Greek culture, but idolatry. As far away from multiculturalism, you get Christmas, the terrorists get Ramadan (also a war holiday), I get Chanukah, as you can get. Not an opinion that always brings agreement, but hard to refute.

A not which to my knowledge isn't frequently related to the significance of what were clearly violent actions. The Temple Menorah contained 7 cups, to be lit at dusk, estinguished (self I think) at dawn. However depending on the source the center cup, lit first, burnt throughout the day, despite having the same amount of oil Some say three cups. A sign of the divine presence residing in the Temple. Eight cups would signify the same thing.

DOWN WITH HANUKAH
By Rabbi Meir Kahane
1. If I were a Reform rabbi; if I were a leader of the establishment whose money and prestige have succeeded in capturing for himself the leadership and voice of American Jewry; if I were one of the members of the Israeli Government's ruling group; if I were an enlightened sophisticated, modern Jewish intellectual, I would climb the barricades and join in battle against that most dangerous of all Jewish holidays - Chanukah.
It is a measure of the total ignorance of the world Jewish community that there is no holiday that is more universally celebrated than the "Festival of Lights," and it is an equal measure of the intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy of Jewish leadership that it plays along with the lie. For if ever there was a holiday that stands for everything that stands for everything that the masses of world Jewry and their leadership has rejected - it is this one. If one would find an event that is truly rooted in everything that Jews of our times and their leaders have rejected and, indeed, attacked - it is this one. If there is any holiday that is more "un-Jewish" in the sense of our modern beliefs and practices - I do not know of it.
The Chanukah that has erupted unto the world Jewish scene in all its childishness, asininity, shallowness, ignorance and fraud is not the Chanukah of reality. The Hanukah that came into vogue because Jewish parents - in their vapidness needed something to counteract Christmas; that exploded in a show of "we-have-lights-just-as-our-goyisha-neighbors" and in an effort to reward our spoiled children with eight gifts instead of the poor Christian one; the Chanukah that the Temple, under its captive Rabbi, turned into a school pageant so that the beaming parents might think that the Religious School is really successful instead of the tragic oke and waste that it really is; the Chanukah that speaks of Jewish Patrick Henrys giving-me-liberty-or-death and that pictures the Maccabees as great liberal saviors who fought so that the kibbutzim might continue to be free to preach their Marx and eat their ham, that the split-level dwellers of suburbia might be allowed to violate their Sabbath in perfect freedom and the Reform and Conservative Temples continue to fight for civil rights for Blacks, Puerto Ricans and Jane Fonda, is not remotely connected with reality.
This is not the Chanukah of our ancestors, of the generations of Jews of Eastern Europe and Yemen and Morocco and Spain and Babylon. It is surely not the Chanukah for which the Maccabees themselves died. Truly, could those whom we honor so munificently, return and see what Chanukah has become, they might very well begin a second Maccabean revolt. For the life that we Jews lead today was the very cause, the real reason for the revolt of the Jews "in those days in our times."
What happened in that era more than 2000 years ago? What led a handful of Jews to rise up in violence against the enemy? And precisely who was the enemy? What were they fighting for and who were they fighting against? For years the people of Judea had been the vassals of Greece. True independence as a state had been unknown for all those decades and, yet the Jews did not rise in revolt. It was only when the Greek policy shifted from mere political control to one that attempted to suppress the Jewish religion that the revolt erupted in all its bloodiness. It was not mere liberty that led to the Maccabean uprising that we so passionately applaud. What we are really cheering is a brave group of Jews who fought and plunged Judea into a bloodbath for the right to observe the Sabbath, to follow the laws of kashrut, to obey the laws of the Torah. In a word everything about Chanukah that we commemorate and teach our children to commemorate are things we consider to be outmoded, medieval, and childish!
At best, then, those who fought and died for Chanukah were naive and obscurantist. Had we lived in those days we would certainly not have done what they did for everyone knows that the laws of the Torah are not really Divine but only the products of evolution and men (do not the Reform, Reconstructionist, and large parts of the Conservative movements write this daily?) Surely we would not have fought for that which we violate every day of our lives. No, at best Chanukah emerges as a needless holiday if not a foolish one. Poor Hannah and her seven children; poor Mattathias and Judah; poor well meaning chaps all -- but hopelessly backward and utterly unnecessary sacrifices.
But there is more. Not only is Chanukah really a foolish and unnecessary holiday, it is also one that is dangerously fanatical and illiberal. The first act of rebellion, the first enemy who fell at the hands of the brave Jewish heroes whom our delightful children portray so cleverly in their Sunday and religious school pageants, was not a Greek. He was a Jew. When the enemy sent his troops into Modin to set up an idol and demand its worship, it was a Jew who decided to exercise his freedom of pagan worship and who approached the altar to worship Zeus (after all, what business was it of anyone what this fellow worshiped?) And it was this Jew, this apostate, this religious traitor who was struck down by the brave, glorious, courageous, (are these not the words all our Sunday schools use to describe him?) Mattathias, as he shouted: "Whoever is for G-d, follow me!"
What have we here? What kind of religious intolerance and bigotry? What kind of a man is this for the anti-religious Ha'shomer Ha'tzair, the graceful temples of suburbia, the sophisticated intellectuals, the liberal, open-minded Jews and all the drones who have wearied us unto death with the concept of Judaism as a humanistic, open-minded, undogmatic, liberal, universalist (if not Marxist) religion, to honor? What kind of nationalism is this for Shimon Peres (he who rejects the 'Galut' and speaks of the proud, free Jew of ancient Judea and Israel)?
And to crush us even more (we who know that Judaism is a faith of peace which deplores violence), what kind of Jews were these who reacted to oppression with force? Surely we who so properly have deplored Jewish violence as fascistic, immoral and (above all) un-Jewish, stand in horror as we contemplate Jews who declined to picket the Syrian Greeks to death and who rejected quiet diplomacy for the sword, spear and arrow (had there been bombs in those days, who can tell what they might have done?) and "descended to the level of 'evil" thus rejecting the ethical and moral concepts of Judaism.
Is this the kind of a holiday we wish to propagate? Are these the kinds of men we want our moral and humanistic children to honor? Is this the kind of Judaism that we wish to observe and pass on to our children? Where shall we find the man of courage, the lone voice in the wilderness, to cry out against Chanukah and the Judaism that it represents - the Judaism of our grandparents and ancestors?
Where shall we find the man of honesty and integrity to attack the Judaism of medievalism and outdated foolishness; the Judaism of bigotry that strikes down Jews who refuse to observe the Law; the Judaism of violence that calls for Jewish force and might against the enemy? When shall we find the courage to proudly eat our Chinese food and violate our Sabbaths and reject all the separateness, nationalism and religious maximalism that Chanukah so ignobly represents? Down with Chanukah! It is a regressive holiday that merely symbolizes the Judaism that always was; the Judaism that was handed down to us from Sinai; the Judaism that made our ancestors ready to give their lives for the L-rd; the Judaism that young people instinctively know is true and great and real. Such a Judaism is dangerous for us and our leaders. We must do all in our power to bury it.
[Excerpts were published in the THE JEWISH PRESS, NY on December 15, 2000]

dear yeh,

‘hellenizers’????

IIRC, it was NOT ‘the Greeks’ that were in charge of the land at the time of the never extinguished lamp.

In ancient history, outside of ‘the Greeks’, I cannot find any other country or civilization that kicked the butts of the Persians, or Assyrians, until more recent moments, the Romans, who were NOT ‘hellenizers’.

No wonder the Jews of Hollywood did not want Mel Gibson to makes film about the Maccabees. He would have portrayed Judas as what he was: a hero of God.