We pasken like Beis Hillel and we increase the candles as Chanukah progresses indicating an increase in accessing the power of the holiday.
R’ Yaakov Astor discusses this in Reality and Potential
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Most people can experience the initial joy that comes along with lighting the menorah. By the second day, for many of us, the flush of the experience is not as intense. By the third day, it is even less so, and keeps on diminishing with each ensuing day.
But for others whose spiritual sensitivity is deep and internal, they experience the joy of the festival in an ever increasing fashion, with the last day being the climax.
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Beit Shammai say we structure the law according to the average Jew who uses only his nefesh. Therefore, it is logical to start off with eight candles the first day when the novelty of the mitzvah and the flash of inspiration elevate the act for even the average Jew. Since each ensuing day becomes less intense and more routine, we naturally decrease as we go.
Beit Hillel may in fact agree that the majority of Jews experience Chanukah on a lower, nefesh level. However, they say that the law in this case must be groomed according to the minority of individuals who strive for the deepest experience and the greatest spiritual heights. Accordingly, we start off with one candle on the first day and increase each ensuing day. The law reflects the experience of the elevated Jew, whose experience increases with intensity as Chanukah wears on.
From another perspective, Beit Hillel are saying that the law must accommodate human potential — what a person can ideally become, while Beit Shammai reason that law must accommodate reality — the present level on which we actually find ourselves.
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Read the whole article here.
Rabbi Noson Weisz explains the spiritual battle mankind faces and our role in it in Chanukah and The Importance of Being Jewish :
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The current spiritual era of human history can be characterized as one of knowledge/belief. One can no longer detect God’s Presence in the world through the use of his ordinary senses, as God no longer makes Himself so available. It is no longer possible to reach God through the channel of direct communication. Human dealings with God must be based on the more subtle basis of deductive knowledge or belief. This spiritual era began with the construction of the Second Temple by the Members of the Great Assembly. Its two seminal markers were the development of the Oral law and the Mishna on the one hand, and the rise and spread of Greek philosophy and science on the other.
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It isn’t by coincidence that the Miracle of the Lights associated with the Menorah is the symbol of the Jewish victory over the Syrian Greeks. The Menorah symbolizes knowledge. In spiritual terms, light and oil symbolize the ability of Divine Wisdom [the light] to be expressed in terms of human knowledge [the oil]. The word for oil in Hebrew is shemen, which is a compression of the word shemona, the number eight, symbolizing the heavenly Sphere of Bina, or understanding. All human knowledge is an expression of the spark of Divine knowledge contained within it.
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To understand the spiritual essence of the world, we must realize that knowledge can cast darkness as well as light. Before the advent of Greek science and culture, it was impossible to look at the world and not see God. Nothing about the world could be explained other than in divine terms. Before the world could pass into a spiritual historic era where God was not universally manifest, man had to develop a system of knowledge that could explain the major phenomena of existence without the need of constantly referring to God [or gods].
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We have hit upon the problem of Jewish ‘mityavnim.’ Being Jewish is important only because of the special knowledge that we Jews have to offer the world. Inasmuch as our spiritual era concerns the struggle between the two systems of knowledge, the system represented by the Oral law, versus the system represented by Greek culture, and whereas we Jews are the sole repositories of the system of knowledge represented by the Oral law, we are very important indeed. The track that leads back to Sinai can only be followed through the Torah. But Jews who embrace the other knowledge are as necessary to the world as the Italians in our example. They merely add color.
And that precisely is the tragedy of the Jewish ‘mityavnim.’ The nations never accept the Jewish abandonment of Judaism. Whether Jews prefer the foreign culture to their own or not, in the eyes of the world they remain members of the Jewish people who are truly unique in terms of embodying the very system of knowledge to which the ‘mityavnim’ no longer subscribe.
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Read the whole article here.
