I love Chanukah,” a friend of mine remarked recently. “It’s the perfect holiday for introverts.”
I get what she means. There’s certainly a marked contrast between Chanukah’s understated celebration and the gaudy, over-hyped winter holiday season. In fact, Chanukah doesn’t even have any of the exciting trappings of the other Jewish holidays. There’s no festive meal, no foliage waving in shul, no costumes, no restrictions of everyday activity. It’s just so … simple.
The halachic requirements of where to light the menorah, however, hint at a much more profound aspect of this seemingly mundane festival. The lights we kindle each night must be lit in the doorway of our homes—either actually outdoors or in a window facing the street. Barring that possibility, we may light the menorah in the doorway of the most frequented room in our home, so that it can be seen by all who pass in and out. The traditional explanation for the location of the menorah is pirsumei nisa — to publicize the miracle for all to see. Yet perhaps there’s a deeper message here as well.
A doorway is a threshold, a space that isn’t a space. It’s neither in nor out, neither public nor private. It exists in the tension between inside and outside, while actually inhabiting neither (or both). There’s a kind of transcendent vibration of possibility in a doorway—a potential that isn’t found in the more clearly defined areas of “indoors” or “outdoors.”
Yet, we are told to place the menorah precisely in the doorway so that its gentle light can be carried over from the Jewish home to the gloom outside.
The mezuzah, the classic symbol of a Jewish home, is placed on the doorway—right on the threshold where public meets private. In fact, it could be argued that the Jewish people themselves exist precisely at this point of tension and intersection. Certain academics debate whether Judaism is a religion or a culture. Great thinkers throughout the ages have struggled with the paradox of Judaism’s perpetual endurance despite its impossible odds of survival. No matter how you look at it, we don’t fit comfortably into anyone’s box.
The ancient Greeks, the ultimate proponents of rationality, couldn’t accept this existence on the threshold. Jews and their boundary-transcending philosophy didn’t fit into the sophisticated Greek intellectual system and they resented it.
The Greek model of reality placed aesthetic beauty above all else. They claimed not only that “What you see is what you get,” but went even further: What you see is all there is. The language of Western society, which grew out of the Greek and Roman worldview, reflects this same idea. Rav Yitzchak Hutner notes that the English word “face” (which comes from Latin) is related to the words “superficial,” “surface,” and “façade.” By contrast, the Hebrew word for face, panim, means “inner” or “within.” It’s hard to imagine two more contradictory philosophies. In Judaism, true beauty is found not in external aesthetic perfection, but hidden away within a person’s deepest essence.
This is precisely the message of Chanukah. The festival is not just about externalities—although the purpose of the menorah is to bring miraculous light to the darkness of the streets. It’s not gaudy or ostentatious; in fact, it could hardly be simpler. The mitzvah of Chanukah is defined by our Sages as “ner, ish, u’beito”- literally “a candle, a person, and their home.” Yet we see that the place where we light the menorah perfectly represents the unique and enduring power of living on the threshold.
The home is a private domain. It is hidden from the prying eyes of the outside world. Yet from within that private haven, we publicize the Chanukah miracle for all to see. The primary Jewish goal is the panim, the inner world, the internal connection. Not in order to hide away or remove ourselves from the physical world, but rather to illuminate it from within to without.
We live in an increasingly Greek-modeled world, where external accomplishments are lauded and inner successes are not considered newsworthy. (Facebook is definitely more related to the Greek interpretation of “face” than the Jewish one!) Chanukah, with its understated exterior and its deep inner meaning, is the Jewish Facebook: a strong internal connection. Outsiders may see only a small flame, but that flame contains within it the passionate spiritual fire of a supernaturally persecuted people who have spent millennia fiercely committed to truth.
The Holy Temple (that the ancient Greeks defiled and destroyed) exemplified this idea. In most buildings, the windows are designed to allow as much light as possible to illuminate the indoors. The windows in the Temple, however, were designed in the opposite way. The Temple was the source of spiritual light for the entire world; its purpose was not to take in light, but to shine it outward.
The Jewish home is called a mikdash me’at – a mini Temple. On Chanukah, at the threshold of inner and outer, where the façade of our public personas gives way to the internality of our private selves, we celebrate the unique Jewish light within our homes and let it overflow to the rest of the world. This is our true victory over the Greeks.
Miriam Katz grew up in Boston, where she dreamed of becoming a marine biologist. But instead of swimming with whales, she ended up living in Jerusalem with her husband and children, which she considers a much more satisfactory outcome. She is a mother, writer, and soul-searcher who treasures raising her family, connecting deeply, and writing from the heart.