Skip to main content

Thought for the Day: Olive Oil Is Best, Wax Candles Is Good; What About Little Sticks for Chanuka Licht?

Here's a cool thing to show your kids.  Blow out a candle, then hold a lit match just above -- but not touching -- the wick.  The candle will (re)burst into flame!  Cool, eh?  The trick works and is fun because we think that wax burns.  It doesn't.  Neither does oil, for that matter.  What happens with was candles is that the heat used to light the candle first melts the was into a little pool of liquid.  (With oil, of course, you skip this step.)  The liquid is then further heated and evaporates into a flammable cloud, which immediately (more or less) catches fire.  That's how the trick works.  When you blow out the flame, the pool of liquid is still hot enough for a short time to still be producing flammable gas.  Of course, we are not here to talk about cute bar tricks; well... we not only here for that.

The mitzvah of lighting chanuka licht is to fulfill the requirement of "pirsuma nisa"/publicize the miracle.  The main components of that mitzvah are: the kind/source of light, how long the light must be prepared to last, and placement.

Placement
The lights have to be placed in such a manner so that it is obvious they are for pirsuma nisa only and not for some other use.  That's why we need them higher than three t'fachim (so they don't look like they were just left there on the floor) and less than 20 amos (so people will see them without having to crane their necks.  The best is to put them less than 10 t'fachim so that it doesn't look like you put them there for some other use.  We generally also put them near a window that faces the r'shus harabim (Rema/Mishna Brura).

Duration
The lights must be prepared in such a way that b'derech ha'teva, they will last approximately 30 minutes.  That is, there needs to be enough fuel and the area where you light needs to be protected enough from wind and squirrels that the lights can be expected to burn that long.  Note that this one of the problems with using electricity, you can't prepare a "shiur" of electricity; electricity is always only generated on demand.  Even a battery doesn't really store electricity -- it generates it on the fly via a chemical reaction; though Halichos Shlomo paskens that a battery can -- in case of need -- be considered to have a store of electricity.

Source of Light
It has to be single flame, not a torch; again so it is obvious that it is only for publicizing the miracle.  The M'chaber says that olive oil is best.  The Rema favors candles because the flame is so clear.  Suppose you use thin sticks of wood that will burn the requisite half or so hour with a single clear flame; would that be good?  On the one hand, it seems to satisfy all the requirements.  On the other hand, it is a completely different process than oil/wax, which has fuel drawn by a wick.  Even though Chazal did not require olive oil, maybe they wanted something that works similarly.

Halochos Shlomo paskens that he is not sure.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thought for the Day: Love in the Time of Corona Virus/Anxiously Awaiting the Mashiach

Two scenarios: Scenario I: A young boy awakened in the middle of the night, placed in the back of vehicle, told not to make any noise, and the vehicle speeds off down the highway. Scenario II: Young boy playing in park goes to see firetruck, turns around to see scary man in angry pursuit, poised to attack. I experienced and lived through both of those scenarios. Terrifying, no? Actually, no; and my picture was never on a milk carton. Here's the context: Scenario I: We addressed both set of our grandparents as "grandma" and "grandpa". How did we distinguish? One set lived less than a half hour's drive; those were there "close grandma and grandpa". The other set lived five hour drive away; they were the "way far away grandma and grandpa". To make the trip the most pleasant for all of us, Dad would wake up my brother and I at 4:00AM, we'd groggily -- but with excitement! -- wander out and down to the garage where we'd crawl
Post a Comment
Read more

Thought for the Day: אוושא מילתא Debases Yours Shabbos

My granddaughter came home with a list the girls and phone numbers in her first grade class.  It was cute because they had made it an arts and crafts project by pasting the list to piece of construction paper cut out to look like an old desk phone and a receiver attached by a pipe cleaner.  I realized, though, that the cuteness was entirely lost on her.  She, of course, has never seen a desk phone with a receiver.  When they pretend to talk on the phone, it is on any relatively flat, rectangular object they find.  (In fact, her 18 month old brother turns every  relatively flat, rectangular object into a phone and walks around babbling into it.  Not much different than the rest of us, except his train of thought is not interrupted by someone else babbling into his ear.) I was reminded of that when my chavrusa (who has children my grandchildrens age) and I were learning about אוושא מילתא.  It came up because of a quote from the Shulchan Aruch HaRav that referred to the noise of תקתוק
Post a Comment
Read more

Thought for the Day: David HaMelech's Five Stages of Finding HaShem In the World

Many of us "sing" (once you have heard what I call carrying a tune, you'll question how I can, in good conscience, use that verb, even with the quotation marks) Eishes Chayil before the Friday night Shabbos meal.  We feel like we are singing the praises of our wives.  In fact, I have also been to chasunas where the chasson proudly (sometimes even tearfully) sings Eishes Chayil to his new eishes chayil.  Beautiful.  Also wrong.  (The sentiments, of course, are not wrong; just a misunderstanding of the intent of the author of these exalted words.) Chazal (TB Brachos, 10a) tell us that when Sholmo HaMelech wrote the words "She opens her mouth Mwith wisdom; the torah of kindness is on her tongue", that he was referring to his father, Dovid HaMelech, who (I am continuing to quote Chazal here) lived in five worlds and sang a song of praise [to each].  It seems to me that "world" here means a perception of reality.  Four times Dovid had to readjust his perc
Post a Comment
Read more