Hanukkah Candles Serve as Metaphor for Religious Life : Holiday: They commemorate the miracle of the oil in the temple lasting eight days. Their lighting also is about the slow unfolding of spiritual insight.

For Hasidic Jews, lighting Hanukkah candles is not enough. One should also strain to hear the flickering of the flames, for it is said they tell the stories of a people.

“Our custom,” explained Shlomo Schwartz, a Lubavitch Hasid from Los Angeles, “is for 30 minutes after the candles are lit, the entire family stays in the room with the candles. We bend close to the light and concentrate.”

Children crowd around the menorah, the eight-branched candelabrum that holds the Hanukkah candles, as adults are moved to recall the teachings of renowned rabbis and the heroism and faith of Jews subjected to religious persecution over the ages.

“The family may eat latkes (fried potato pancakes) and the children may even get a little gift,” Schwartz said. “But no one does any kind of work. The point is to be together and just hang out with the light.”

For American Jews, lighting Hanukkah candles is among the most celebrated of religious rituals, second only to attending a Passover Seder. The eight-day holiday begins Sunday evening, when the first Hanukkah candle is lighted after sunset.

Originally, Hanukkah celebrated a military victory--the 2nd-Century triumph of the forces of Judas Maccabaeus over the Syrian Greeks who were seeking to force the cultural assimilation of the Jews of Palestine.

Only later did Judaism’s Rabbinic authorities append to the celebration the story of the miracle of the oil. They did so, religion historians say, to impart a spiritual tone to the holiday’s nationalistic theme.

The miracle, according to tradition, is that beyond all rational explanation, a small stock of oil managed to burn for eight days in the central menorah of the newly restored Jerusalem Temple.

There was, at one time, a Rabbinic debate over the order in which Hanukkah candles should be lighted.

Followers of the Talmudic sage Hillel said one candle should be lighted on Hanukkah’s first night, with one candle being added each subsequent night. Followers of the sage Shammai said all eight candles should be lighted the first night, decreasing by one on each subsequent night.

Hillel’s followers eventually won out. Their argument that holiness should only be increased carried the day and became set in tradition.

“It’s a metaphor for religious life,” said Rabbi David Cooper, who runs a spiritual retreat center in Jamestown, Colo. “Do we plunge into it all at once, or do we gradually build our level of observance and understanding? This is one experience of building up from day to day to higher levels of insight.”

In religious iconography, light represents the many faces of the divine--wisdom, eternity, consciousness, hope and the possibility of transformation. The light of the Hanukkah candles is, in short, a powerful symbol made more so because Hanukkah falls at the time of year when the days are getting shorter.

For writer Blu Greenberg, the Rabbinic addition of the candles was a stroke of religious genius.

“Everyone yearns for the light,” said Greenberg, who lives in New York. “It represents the triumph of goodness over the forces of darkness. . . . Lighting candles is something very tangible that has stirred the hearts of millions of Jewish children and adults over the centuries.”

New York Rabbi Marc Angel turns to the Zohar, the 13th-Century book that is the major text of Jewish mysticism, to better understand the spiritual lesson of the Hanukkah candles.

The Zohar, Angel pointed out, sees candlelight as a metaphor for the human condition. The solid candle represents the earth and our connection to it. The blue flame close to the wick represents a transitional space between the material and spirit worlds.

Above that rests the orange flame that becomes transparent as it ascends, and the point at which the flame is no longer visible is said to represent the pure soul.

Lighting the Hanukkah candles connects the Jew of today with the miracle of the oil and, beyond that, to the very mystery of miracles. “The menorah reminds us of the miracle that no matter how dark life may be, there remains a source of light deep within us,” writes Rabbi Michael Strassfeld in his book “The Jewish Holidays: A Guide and Commentary.”

The opening lines of the Book of Genesis speak of how God said “let there be light” and how the light was then pronounced to be good. Focusing on the light of the Hanukkah candles, and recalling Genesis, is a religious act that recalls creation.

And that, noted Massachusetts Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, is especially true if one thinks of organized religion “as the things you do to remind you that there is a primordial brightness greater than the brightness of everyday life today.”