As many of you know, I hate Hannukah

[xiphias]

So I've been looking for things I could like about Hannukah -- ways to redefine it, make it something OTHER than a simple "yay our repressive theocracy killed their repressive theocracy."

As usual, I discovered that the Rabbis got there first.

When Adam [the first human] noticed that the days were getting shorter, he said: "Is the world becoming darker because of my sins? Will it soon return to chaos? And this is what God meant when He punished me with mortality?" He prayed and fasted for eight days. When the period prior to the winter solstice arrived, he saw that the days were now growing longer. He realized: This is the way of the world. Adam then made eight days of celebration. (Talmud Avodah Zarah 8a)

That's something I can get behind much more easily.

Comments

Nice with a caveat

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

Contrary to "popular" belief the "small" vessel of oil (as immortalized in the children's song Kad Kattan and others), was NOT small at all. It was about 4 liters (~1 gallon) big. This was the amount of oil required to light the Menorah for one single day.

So the "dove" that Noah sent out, would have needed to be big as a Roc, to have carried a "branch" to make that much oil. ;-)

Re: Nice with a caveat

[rebmommy.livejournal.com]

A gallon of oil! Wow - hadn't heard that, but it makes sense since the menorah was so big. Now I have a funny cartoonish picture in my head of Noah's dove dragging an olive tree over the waters back to the ark. "Boy, what I have to do for posterity!" he says. Maybe the oil had many miracles attached to it, and it increased over the generations, like Elisha increasing the poor widow's oil (2 Kings 4:1-7).