The miracle of Chanukah is not limited to a past event
I have been waiting an entire year to share an insight from Rabbi Immanuel Bernstein’s Chanukah: Capturing the Light (Mosaica Press). The time has finally arrived.
The Ramban famously quotes at the beginning of parshas B’haalosecha the midrash that all the sacrifices of the Beis Hamikdash were only performed so long as the Temple stood. But the lights of the Menorah will illuminate forever.
On its face, the statement is puzzling, for the lighting of the Menorah is no more performed today than the sacrifice of any of the korbanos.
The Ramban explains that the lights of the Menorah refers to the Chanukah lights. But that explanation only raises other questions. For one thing, the Menorah in the Temple involved a daily miracle: The oil of the middle lamp burned for an entire 24-hour period, while that in the other lamps did not. That miracle testified to the entire world, in the words of the Gemara (Shabbos 22a), “that the Divine Presence rests among Israel.”
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