Chanukah 5786
In my family, I’m the self-appointed Grinch Who Stole Chanukah, the one who stands dutifully by to throw a monkey-wrench in the best attempts of others to gather the family for a Chanukah party. Why? Because it’s hard to make the timing work. To gather for an afternoon or evening affair means getting home late, and delaying the candle lighting. And, as I like to point out from time to time (with a fair amount of snark), having the kids eat latkes with their grandparents and cousins is not actually a mitzvah. Lighting Chanukah candles is.
So Chanukah Brunch it is. Not quite the same. And everyone’s peeved.
Bwahaha.
Maybe I’m getting softer in my old age, but perhaps it’s time to reexamine the issue. What’s wrong with lighting a bit later, anyway?
In the beginning of Hilchos Chanukah (772:2), the Shulchan Aruch quotes the Gemara in Shabbos that provides the timeframe for lighting Chanukah neiros, citing as the endpoint, “ad shetichleh regel min hashuk—the time at which people are no longer populating the marketplaces.” At this point, one is no longer capable of broadcasting the message and import of the Chaunkah candles to the masses, the imperative of pirsumei nisa—of publicizing the miracle—is no longer achievable, and the opportunity for the mitzvah has lapsed.
The Rema, though, quotes a dissenting opinion. He points out that today we light indoors, not outdoors. And as a result, the intended audience for the candles is those already gathered in our homes, not those still roaming the streets outside. If so, some argue, one can legitimately light later on in the evening, so long as there are still family members or friends gathered in one’s home to see the lit candles.
It’s a compelling argument, but one that the Rema himself rejects. Ultimately, he says, it’s best to light at the originally established time, for the first half hour of the night, when people would traditionally have flooded the streets on their way home from work.
What is confounding about the stance of the Rema is the lack of explanation. While a logical argument is offered to defend lighting later, none is given to support lighting at the original time. If we’re going to cancel the Chanukah parties, shouldn’t we at least have a reason?
The most sensible argument would actually appear to be, that there’s little argument to be offered. Logic and reason would indeed seem to point away from lighting precisely at the beginning of the night. If everyone will be awake and buzzing around for another few hours anyway, we sacrifice nothing in pirsumei nisa by lighting later. So why not do so?
Yet for all that logic, we’d be veering from tradition. The fact remains that in the original formulation of the mitzvah, the Chachamim instituted the beginning of nightfall as the proper time. It was then that the most people were around to see the candles being lit, and it was then that they established one should fulfill the mitzvah of lighting the neiros.
Logic directs us towards lighting later; tradition compels us to light earlier. The Rema encourages that we follow tradition.
Which is a calculus that could well be applied to any number of mitzvos. It is not uncommon that due to a cultural or technological change we encounter the opportunity to perform a mitzvah differently than it had been generations earlier. And, at least in a vacuum, there is much to be said for maintaining tradition.
But what is true of halacha broadly captures special resonance on Chanukah. At the core of the great military struggle between the Jews and the Greeks lay a deep-seated cultural tension. The Greek worldview placed the human being on a pedestal. The perfected human specimen was cheered for his athleticism, vaunted for his beauty, and replicated in marble and bronze. Thinkers and philosophers whose wisdom stretched the limits of human comprehension were revered for the achievements of their minds. A deep concern with how the human eye processes space and beauty preoccupied the great architects and builders of Greece.
In a sense, these values could actually be found in the most traditional corners of Jewish society as well. But with one major difference: Judaism saw such expressions as a means to an end, tools employed to understand and draw close to an infinite G-d, by definition beyond the limits of human comprehension. The accomplishments of human beings were valued not in of themselves, but as means drawing more of G-d’s infinite perfection into our midst.
In Greece, gods could be shrunk down to finitude, to the degree that they were eminently understandable to humans, their superpowers and god-sized egos notwithstanding. In Judaism, we concede that the realm of G-d is ultimately unknowable, beyond human reason or logic. G-d is infinite, we are finite, and a chasm will forever exist between us.
Bowing our head in deference to halacha and tradition is ever present in Judaism. Yet on Chanukah, that simple act of humility takes on additional meaning. It is an act uniquely Chanukah-dik. Because when we submit to that which lies beyond our own understanding, when we admit to the shortcomings of our own logic, when we recognize the presumed wisdom in that which may not make sense to us, we are emphasizing the very message of Chanukah itself.
A Chanukah dinner with all the branches of the family under one roof sounds delightful. Singing Maoz Tzur as a family while the kids play dreidel with their cousins and the aroma of frying latkes fills the room would be a real treat. But it would mean arriving back at home far later than when people in ancient times would have been on their nightly commute home, and lighting after the traditional time. And the Rema suggests that we’d be best served following the practice of old.
Why? I’m not too sure.
Exactly.
Chanukah Brunch it is.