One of the fundamental parts of the mitzvah of hadlokas ner Chanukah is pirsumei nisa. Chazal wanted us to make the miracle of Chanukah known to anyone and everyone. But it’s a little strange. If the goal is pirsumei nisa, why choose a flame? Wouldn’t a more effective way of publicizing the miracle be to write out the whole story of Chanukah on a board and put it outside your house? Or maybe there should be a halacha to stand in the street and say the story out loud. Why is lighting a flame the best way to publicize the miracle?
On a simple level, since the miracle occurred with the oil, it is logical to use oil to create the flame as part of the way we publicize the miracle. But there’s something deeper in the fact that Chazal wanted the story of Chanukah to be told specifically through a flame.
There are a number of differences in the nature of the way a message is communicated. The most common way to communicate is through speech, but speaking fails to capture and fully communicate the essence of the speaker. Someone who teaches mathematics is not conveying his essence — he is not a math equation! Someone who teaches history is not an embodiment of history. Speaking merely allows us to transmit information to others.
Another aspect of speech is that the listener will play a role in the way the speech is communicated. In the example of a teacher, if there are many students in the room, the teacher will teach with a higher level of energy in order to capture everyone’s attention than if there were just a few students. If the students are on a higher level, the teacher will teach with more sophistication than if they are on a lower level, and so on. Such is the nature of communicating through speech.
Lighting a flame, on the other hand, is a very different experience. The light that comes out of a flame is not just something that is transmitted outward, like the way a speaker passes information to a listener. The light is not an “aspect” or a piece of information that comes out of a candle — it is the essential nature of the flame itself. A flame authentically gives itself to its surroundings through the light it shines.
A teacher might not know something, or may forget something he knows, or may decide to stop teaching, but a flame (for as long as it’s lit) will never pause or fail to communicate its message, because its light is its very self.
The light being transmitted does not change based on the number of people in the room or the level of sophistication of the people who see it. The flame will automatically illuminate any place that it goes and will always give over the same amount of light in a consistent way, regardless of what is going on around it.
A flame is overflowing with itself, and therefore what it conveys is its very essence; it cannot turn off or on, and who is in the room plays no factor in the light it shines. Ner le’echad, ner le’meah, as the Gemara says, “a light for one person is a light for one hundred.”
By Chazal instituting that the pirsumei nisa of Chanukah takes place with a flame, they were teaching us about the essential role of the Jewish people in the world. Obviously, there are words that we speak that are part of our mission, and on Chanukah we say Hallel as well. But what cannot be overlooked, and what the Chanukah candle is highlighting, is that the most fundamental function of hashpa’ah (positive influence) that the Jewish people have to offer is for us to simply overflow with ourselves.
Our role is to be so true to ourselves, so authentic, and such G-d-fearing Torah Jews, that this light illuminates the world around us. Regardless of how many people are watching, or whether people are watching at all, it’s not something we can turn off — it’s just simply overflowing with our innermost essence as Yidden.
In the context of our role, we certainly need to speak words and convey ideas, but this is all done under the backdrop of hashpa’ah in the way of a flame, which is to simply overflow with your essential Divine light. Within that, words are just “filling in the blanks” and giving context for that light which is engulfing all of its surroundings.
This is one of the messages we should take out of Chanukah and the way Chazal instituted the mitzvah of pirsumei nisa. We should see our connection to Yiddishkeit as being so relevant to us and so vibrant that we see it as the essence of who we are, and it automatically spills over in every circumstance and environment that we may find ourselves in.
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Rebbi Shimon bar Yochai.
