Hanukkah: A Spiritual Rest Stop on the Journey to an Ever-Strengthening Connection

The spiritual meaning of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, is that it represents a crucial pause in the inner battle for becoming as loving, giving, and united to one another through such qualities as the laws of nature themselves — a “rest stop” (Hanukkah from “Hanu-Koh,” meaning “park here”) where we gather strength to continue the spiritual journey to become “as one man with one heart.”

This period is not about final perfection but about achieving a significant milestone in the correction process of inverting our inner egoistic qualities to their altruistic opposites. Hanukkah is the time to focus on attaining vessels of bestowal, which are the foundation and an intermediary stage toward the attainment of the vessels of the purpose of creation: vessels of reception in order to bestow.

Hanukkah is also a time of miracles, signifying the help we receive from above when we strive to unite with each other “as one man with one heart” in mutual care and support. The tradition of lighting candles symbolizes the spiritual light that grows brighter as we pass it from one to another, without diminishing the source. This reflects the principle that the exalted qualities of love and bestowal only expand when we aim to add more and more of these qualities in our connections to each other.

Hanukkah is thus a significant pause or rest stop on our spiritual path where we reorganize and prepare for the next stage of our inner battle — to gain strength from the quality of bestowal in order to prepare for further correction our desires to receive with an intention to bestow in our next major inner battle. We can thus use lighting the Hanukkah candles as a reminder that our motions to unite to each other with ever-strengthening threads of love, bestowal, care, support, and encouragement can illuminate the path forward, not just for ourselves but for humanity as a whole.