Light

We don't have to take on an army in order to experience miracles.

Motherhood is a new territory, and every child—no matter how many you have—is its own, beautiful, new light. You enter new stages all the time. What worked for one child doesn’t for another.

Darkness fades and disappears with time, but the light that shines from a mitzvah can only increase.

Your goal isn’t just to make a big flash of light and then walk away all burnt out. Your goal is to make yourself a shining light and your world an enlightened place.

The miracle of Chanukah, is about shining light outward, and to the outside. The original requirements for the Chanukah menorah stipulate that it be lit only once it is dark. And where? “At the door of your house, on the outside.” Why? As the Talmud states, “to publicize the miracle.”

The most beautiful of the beautiful way is for every member of each household to light one more candle each night, until there are eight candles for every one of them.

Go out into the dark and make it shine. Let it shine even to those who aren’t looking for it. To those who don’t know they’re missing it.

In order to shatter the darkness, you need a tremendous amount of light.

How does it feel to be a tzadik?

Hillel and Shammai’s debate applies to every area of growth in life. When you want to change a bad habit or a harmful addiction, when you want to break out of a rut or get out of a harmful relationship, there are always two tasks. One is to lessen the harmful behaviour, the other is to grow the positive behaviour.

Imagine a world where the reason you created light was for everyone else?

My mind wanders back to recent events in Paris. Forces of darkness under a blackened banner extinguished manifold lives.

I want to change. Should I stop engaging in destructive behaviors abruptly, or should I focus my effort on gradually introducing positive behaviors into my life?

A standard box of Chanukah candles contains 44 candles. That’s exactly what you need when you include the shamash, the helper candle with which we light the other candles every night. But if you only count the actual Chanukah candles without the shamash, you will discover that there are 36 candles.

Nothing could be more bleak than the future the Maccabees faced.

Feminine spiritual energy is focused internally, while masculine energy tends to be external.

We can sit and gaze at it for hours. What is it about a burning flame that captures our imagination?

When you use something physical, it gets “used up” and diminished. With spiritual things, the very opposite is the case

Is the light of the Chanukah menorah so faint that it can only illuminate its immediate vicinity? And as such must be lit after dark, and in direct proximity to the darkness it wishes to counteract?

Turn any mitzvah inside out and you’ll see a light—an active and energetic light that looks to shine in every black corner. Turn any mitzvah inside out and you’d see . . . a menorah.

By defining themselves in perfect contradistinction to one another, "light" and "darkness" enter into a symmetrical bond which attests to an underlying unity forming their common source

Why do we call Chanukah the Festival of "Lights"? Why not "Commemoration of Oil" or "Miracle of 8 Days"?

If you recorded every word in your day you would find hundreds of references to light

What does light give? The details. The color and texture. The fullness and the goodness.

"One must listen to the Chanukah candles." As it turns out, the candles are master educators. Four messages the candles impart to the educator.

His pulling and pleading become more insistent and I ignored him. I knew his cries were a result of being tired and cranky and I had thought that he could wait...

On the essence of shamash, the "servant candle" of the Chanukah menorah

Two mitzvot are connected with the doorway: the mezuzah and the Chanukah lights. The mezuzah points inward, while the Chanukah lights are oriented outward

In the first few days the menorah always seems very empty and incomplete. Wouldn't it be more logical to kindle these flames in single candlesticks, adding one each night

The three significant differences between the menorah in the Holy Temple and the Chanukah menorah: Day and night, inside and out, seven and eight

We are creatures of the actual. We judge people by their conduct; reality, to us, is what is

Each day has a purpose, so each of the menorah's lights must have a distinct lesson. Let us explore eight lessons we can learn from these little lights...

The Mitzvah of the Chanukah lights is similar in two respects to that of the mezuzah

The mitzvah of Chanukah entails lighting one candle each night for a person and his household

The teacher has locked his door, the mentor has disappeared, and one's own soul has turned dark and cold. When no solution for the darkness is in sight, this can only mean one thing: the darkness itself is the solution

The flame represents Torah study (knowledge) and the wick stands for mitzvot (action). The knowledge of morality and spirituality becomes the shining light that guides and illuminates our existence...

Darkness doesn’t necessarily mean evil; it means the absence of light. When life’s meaning seems inscrutable, when I’m running from task to task oblivious to the need for meaning, that’s called darkness.

Why did Judaism, alone among the civilizations of the ancient world, survive? Because it valued the home more than the battlefield.

As the Chassidim say, a little light drives out much darkness.

When I use the flame of my faith to light someone else’s candle, mine is not diminished.

Good teachers inspire us to grow. By expecting the best from us, they make us better.