Today’s (well a couple of months ago!) question is,
Do you think that burning candles at Hanukkah is a metaphor for burning fat
Ah now, that is a question that arrives with a bit of sparkle in the eye and a mischievous grin, like someone standing in the kitchen watching the Hanukkah candles flicker and wondering if Heaven is secretly running a fitness programme on the side. Let me gently say this to you as plainly as I can, the burning of candles at Hanukkah is not a message about shrinking the body, but about enlarging the light within it, and the Holy One, blessed be He, is far more interested in the brightness of a soul than the size of a waist.
When the children of Israel stood in the days of old and the Temple was restored, there was found a small vessel of oil, just enough for a single day, yet it burned beyond its natural measure. As Midrash whispers to us, this was not a story of scarcity becoming enough, but of divine presence overflowing the limits of what human eyes expected. The miracle was not that something got smaller, but that something humble became radiant and enduring. So when we light the Hanukkah candles, we are stepping into that same rhythm of wonder, where a small flame becomes a testimony that light is never governed by ordinary calculations.
It is very human, of course, to look at flame and think in terms of consumption, what is being used up, what is being burned away. But in the language of holiness, burning is not destruction, it is revelation. The flame does not punish the oil, it reveals its purpose. The wick does not suffer in shame, it becomes the path of illumination. As the teachings of Kabbalah hint in their gentle way, physical things in this world are vessels, and the light that passes through them is what gives them meaning. So the question is never about how much of the vessel is diminished, but how much divine light is drawn into the world through it.
Now, I must speak plainly to the idea you raised about bodies and worth. There is a danger in imagining that holiness is measured in physical form, as though the Holy One, blessed be He, looks upon His creation and values thinness as righteousness. That is not the language of Torah. In Bereshit it is written that humanity is created in the image of God, and that image is not altered by shape or measure. It is carried in kindness, in truth, in humility, in the quiet courage to bring light where there is darkness. Even the prophet Eliyahu, mighty and trembling in his journey, was not praised for his body but for his devotion.
If anything, the candles of Hanukkah teach the opposite of shrinking. They teach expansion. Each night we add another flame, not because we are trying to become less, but because we are learning to hold more light without fear. There is a beautiful irony here, a man plans and Heaven has a wee chuckle, because we often think discipline is about reduction, when in truth holiness is often about addition, about welcoming more presence, more gratitude, more awareness into the world.
And so when you stand before those candles, do not imagine them as counting anything down in you. Imagine them as calling something up within you. A reminder that your life is not a vessel to be diminished but a lamp waiting to be tended. The oil in the story did not become a lesson in restriction, it became a song of abundance that refused to behave according to expectation.
Even the flames themselves seem to lean towards one another, as though they are in quiet conversation, sharing warmth without losing their own shape. That is the wisdom hidden in plain sight. We are not asked to become less of who we are, but more attuned to the light that can pass through us.
So let the candles burn as they will, steady and bright in their little row of glow. And let your thoughts rest from measuring yourself against their light, as though they were some kind of divine mirror for physical form. They are not that at all. They are reminders that even a small flame can outlast the night, and that within every person there is a light the world cannot measure, only receive.
