Khannukah, the winter holiday which commemorates the miracles surrounding the rededication of the Temple (in the year 140 before the common era), suggests the themes of darkness, initiation, and education.

The word Khannukah itself may be broken down into two words, Khannu, they rested, on khof hay, twenty and five, the twenty-fifth day of Kislev. In the Hebrew calendar, the moon is full on the fifteenth of each month and then begins to wane. As the moon becomes more and more absent, the nights get very dark. The twenty-fifth of Kislev occurs in the time of both the waning of the moon and the winter solstice.

The Latin word "solstice" means that the sun has come to a stop. At this time, the daylight is at the extreme mmimum, the darkness of the nlght at its maxirnum, and it

appears as if no change is happening. What with the sun stopped and the moon absent, it is the darkest time of the year, the moment when it is easiest to believe that the light will never return, the moment it is easiest to feel despair.

On Khannukah we celebrate inltiation, the miracle of the light returning to bring us new hope. We are unashamed to set up our menorahs right in the window or the doorframe of the house, open for all to see. May such Iniracles happen this year which would move us to show our excitement publicly.

A personal Khannukah is an initiation into a new way of seeing things. Reb Zalman suggests that Hassidic inltiation takes place when we are shown approaches to Torah which inspire us to move past the darkness and find a new anchor for our lives.

The dedication of a new building is called a Khanukat Habayit. During such a
celebration we 'initiate' the energy field of the new structure by expressing our devotion and purpose. God is said to have dedicated the creation of the heaven and the earth, the Khanukat Shamayim Va'aretz, on the fourth day of creation by starting up the sun and the moon which functioned as the first Khannukah candles (Pesikta Rabba, sec. 2).

Khannukah is rooted in the word Khinukh, meaning education, training, and guidance. The second person named Khanokh (Enoch) mentioned in the Torah, was considered to he the prototypical educator, the first person to take a moral stance against the acts which led up to the flood. He was asked to rule over the people. He suggested different diets and lifestyles for various geographic locations.

The final two letters of Khannukah make up the word, koh, like so. The priestly family known as the Maccabees who rescued the Temple rested when the moon was like so. The preamble to the priestly blessing begins, "Koh tivarakhu," like so shall you bless the people. Koh also appears in the word Kohen, priest.

Koh indicates the divine energy which is seen somewhat opaquely, as if through a screen, and is contrasted with Zeh, exactly so. In the Kabbalah, Zeh refers to the divine quality of balance, Tiferet, which conveys a sense of exactness, while Koh refers to the more intangible divine quality of guidance, Malkhut, which is more spacious. The guide must leave room for the response of the guided one. When guiding someone, we can say, "Khannu-kah" rest when you have it like so. Suggesting that something should be like this, leaves more room for our creativity and imagination than saying it must be exactly so.