Hanukkah Discussion Time: What’s Your Miracle?

A boy watches intently as a candle on a menorah is lit

“There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
- Albert Einstein

What is the miracle of Hanukkah? Is it when the victorious Maccabees restored the Temple in Jerusalem and lit the ritual menorah with oil that should have lasted only one night but lasted eight? Or is the miracle really, as contemporary scholars have suggested, that the Maccabees tried to light the menorah at all, considering how little oil they had?

The 13th-century Spanish rabbi and Torah commentator Nachmanides said, “There are miracles we can see and miracles we can’t see.” The seven days represent the miracles we can’t see, but the first day of Hanukkah represents the miracles we can see — what’s around us all the time, but that we take for granted (beginning with the fact that a candle burns at all!).

Taking the Hanukkah story as inspiration, spend some time as a family exploring the idea of miracles with these discussion questions, activities, and stories:

Discuss

Read

What is an everyday miracle that you take for granted?
What is something you feel grateful for?

Do

Light the Hanukkah candles
Sing a festive Hanukkah song like “Spin, Dreidel” or “Al Hanisim” (“For the Miracles”)
Play dreidel
- Fun fact: The Hebrew letters nun, gimel, hey, and shin on dreidels stand for “nes gadol haya sham,” which is Hebrew for “a great miracle happened there” — “there” meaning ancient Israel.