Eight Candles, Eight Insights: What Can We Learn from the Chanukah Candles?

1. Lighting the First Candle is done in the dark, at nightfall, during moments of small flashes of light when darkness still prevails, and the little candle barely manages to shine its light.

But it is precisely the lighting of the first candle that is the most significant because it symbolizes the triumph of spirit over matter. It gives tangible expression to the idea that from darkness emerges light. It teaches us to understand that darkness hides behind it a light that needs to be revealed, and all we have to do is find it.

It helps us not to be afraid of the darkness, not to flee from it. It confronts us with those painful points, with the clear knowledge that they contain a great light that will eventually reveal itself from the direct encounter with them.

To embrace the idea that every dark reality conceals light behind it is not simple to perceive. Therefore, the first lighting is so unique because it opens the way for all the other lightings to come. It begins to establish the understanding to act accordingly.

2. After lighting the candles, we say: 'These candles are sacred... to thank and praise Your great name.'

Precisely during the darkness, when there may be small lights from little sources, when we might still be in an unlit state, we are nonetheless asked and commanded to 'thank and praise.'

To say thank you for the 'darkness,' for the moments of crisis and distress, for being in the 'unknown' place.

And to thank for that darkness, it requires us to encounter it, to feel it. It demands that we agree to experience the reality of crisis as it is, before even trying to change it.

For what comes to our doorstep – comes to open us.

And if we thank for that, the light that this reality carried will eventually be revealed and will take me out of exile.

Moreover, gratitude for the painful reality allows finding 'a jar of oil' within a destroyed temple later, based on the knowledge that good and evil are mixed together, and out of the darkness, the light will appear. If this darkness brings with it light (hiddenly), then it too is a partner in the good, and therefore it should also be acknowledged.

3. At the moment we agree to light a candle in the dark, we stop lamenting the darkness and mourning it. The Maccabees do not lament; they act in the darkness without turning themselves into its victim. The moment of lighting the light in the dark reality is when we transition from a passive state to an active state. It is the moment we stop being victims of our life's circumstances and choose to take responsibility for our response. It is the moment we bring choice back into our hands; it is the moment we allow ourselves to return to the House of Choice and light a candle there, even when all around is still destroyed.

4. The Fifth Candle – is the candle that created a bigger gap between light and darkness toward the light. It broke the balance that the fourth candle represented. While the fourth symbolized four days of light versus four days of darkness, the fifth already signifies five days of light. It is the candle where our insistence on lighting another candle, our insistence on continuing, searching, and even finding and extracting light from the darkness, now looks rewarding in hindsight.

5. When lighting seven candles, we mark the connection to nature, the small illuminations, but when lighting the eighth candle, we are already in a supernatural place that was formed because we allowed ourselves and trained ourselves to seek moments of light in the darkness. It is a continuous process, but if we persevere in it—we will reach the eighth candle, to the understanding that there is a world beyond nature, to the understanding that it is all a complete unity, and there is no darkness at all, because darkness, by its nature, is nothing. We can really climb high to a spiritual peak, and from it, we can see and understand that there is guidance above nature, beyond what our limited intellect can grasp with its physical senses.

6. The Maccabees were from the House of Hasmonean, a house where the educational perception was that of an "eight," of understanding that there is beyond reality, that the external reality draws from a higher place than itself, an understanding that everything draws from a high and spiritual place. This created the miraculous drive to act within reality without being impressed by it at all, even when the intellect didn't give any chance for victory. The Hasmoneans felt the eight; they understood that the darkness is temporary and obscures a great light behind it, and therefore they succeeded in lighting a candle in the darkness and from within it.

7. The candle, the wick, and the oil are the three main elements that enable lighting. Their combination creates the spirit. In Chanukah, the animalistic spirit goes through purification and refining, allowing the divine soul to be revealed. The animalistic spirit, as it were, comes out of exile (darkness), goes through its stage of revelation (illumination), and ends in the stage of redemption (the great light that shines forth from all eight candles).

8. Eight – the letters of soul, when there is proper work with the spirit, there is a place where the spirit also finds expression, and when that happens, we are already at the level of 'soul.' The eighth candle is reached with small, measured steps, which together add up to great illuminations, bringing the spirit to its correction and helping it rise high to the more spiritual part of it, which is the soul.

When all the candles in the menorah are lit, it is time to remember that the reality visible to the eye is only part of the story, and it is essentially a reality that conceals and obscures the true reality. Lighting all 8 candles is the result of a cognitive educational process that our soul underwent, it is the result of changing fixed thought patterns that caused us to cling to the darkness and not even try to find light within it.

The story of Chanukah is essentially the lighting, because lighting is a mitzvah. Chanukah allows us to know how to bring spiritual and illuminated reality into our lives.

Inbal Elhayani, M.A, is a certified practitioner of NLP, mindfulness, and guided imagery, writer, and lecturer in the field.