What is the spiritual root of Hannukah? Why do we light candles, and who were the Maccabim, anyway?

Hannukah candles symbolize the Light of Mercy one attains when one has reached the spiritual world. The light gradually increases during the holiday, hence the lighting of an extra candle each day.

The festivities we celebrate stem from a complex relationship between varying situations in our soul.

The Greeks are the desires that oppose the person’s spiritual development. They tell the person that it is unreasonable to go beyond the law of nature, to commune with the upper world. They claim it has no rationality. The Greeks weaken Israel’s strength using logical arguments that originate in one’s accumulating experience in this world.

The Israel in the person must recruit the struggle of the power of faith against the Greeks’ arguments. Israel tell the Greeks that it is correct from a logical point of view, but Israel believes that it is possible to go beyond the barriers of reason, to the world of the causes. The stronger the Greeks grow, the more powerful Israel’s faith becomes. This war goes on and on until it takes a miracle for Israel to win. But then the miracle occurs and a beautiful, enchanted world appears, far more wonderful than one can imagine. Then one realizes just how true Israel’s road had been and why it is good to stick by it from now on.

The victory over the Greeks is the foundation of any person’s path in the spiritual realm. It allows one to perform corrections that will lead to the final frontier, that of Purim, the fight in which one succeeds in attaining the endless, eternal bounty that the Creator has prepared for all.

Read More in The Spiritual Meaning of the Jewish Holidays App for iPhone, iPad & Android »