Tonight is the last night of Chanukah, one of two festivals of freedom that the Jewish people celebrate every year. The first one, Pesach (Passover) is a "religious" holiday, meaning that its observance is commanded in the Torah and Jews are to abstain from any kind of work on the first and last days. Chanukah, which celebrates our successful revolution against the tyranny of the Syrian Greeks (165 B.C.E.), has its origin in the Book of Maccabees (which is found in a collection of post-Biblical scripture known as the Apocrypha). It's not a "religious" holiday, but it has a religious aspect. Tradition tells us that "a great miracle happened there." A single small jar of oil was sufficient to keep the Eternal Light burning in the cleansed and reconsecrated Temple in Jerusalem for eight full days until a new supply could be obtained.
Tonight, observant Jews will light the Chanukah candles early, before sunset, because lighting candles on Shabbat is forbidden. But those of us who hate these short short days that winter brings have another reason to celebrate tonight. In most places, this will be the earliest Shabbat of the year. By the end of next week, sunset will be just the slightest bit later than it will be tonight. And it only gets better from there. (Sunrise, however, will continue to get later until the beginning of January, so early risers have a few weeks to go before things turn around.)
Hey, even though we've got several inches of snow on the ground, I can almost smell spring in the air.
Shabbat Shalom.
Happy Chanukah.
