I often find myself walking around my house, turning off lights in empty rooms. Why waste electricity if there is no one there to benefit from it? Interestingly, a similar question arose thousands of years ago, in the Temple itself! In...
When God instructs the Children of Israel to make the menorah, He tells them to gather oil "for kindling lamps regularly"Â (Exodus 27:20). Rashi explains that the light was to be lit all night, every night, though not necessarily during...
The portion of Tetzaveh begins by telling the Children of Israel to bring pure olive oil for use in the Menorah in the Tabernacle (Exodus 27:20). For normal use, oil is extracted from olives by pressing, but the Torah specifies that in...
After commanding Israel to make the Tabernacle, rather than begin with the structure itself, God tells the Children of Israel to make the utensils that go into the tent, beginning with the Ark of the Covenant, the table, and then...
When God commanded the Children of Israel to build a Tabernacle for him to dwell among them, he also commanded them to build furnishings. Perhaps the most intricate piece was the golden table, or shulchan, that held the 12 showbreads, and...
Everyone knows that Hanukkah is the Festival of Lights celebrated by the lighting of candles. But there is so much more to the holiday that makes it an eight-day family event. Lighting the Menorah Lighting the nine-branched menorah is not...
The Arch of Titus, constructed in 81 CE by Emperor Domitian to commemorate the victory over the Jewish rebellion in Judaea, stands on the Via Sacra in Rome to this day, bearing witness to the fact that the Romans carried away the golden...
The holiday of Hanukkah is most famously identified with the story of the miracle of the single cruse of pure olive oil that burned for eight days. The story of Hanukkah does not appear in the Bible but it is told in the Talmud (Shabbat...
Hanukkah is the eight-day holiday celebrating the recovery of Jerusalem and subsequent rededication of the Second Temple at the beginning of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd century BCE. The holiday begins on...
The first time the olive tree is mentioned in the Bible is when Noah checked to see if the flood waters had receded. After the rain stopped falling, Noah waited until after the tops of the mountains became visible, and then sent a dove...
