Making It Better and Better

Successive generations of Jews have created different ways of enhancing the observance of the Hanukkah lights.

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The first Rabbi Yossi's opinion explains that Bet Shammai counted the number of days left (including the current day), so that at the beginning of the third night of Hanukkah, there would be six full days left, while Bet Hillel counted the days that had passed, again including the current day.

The second Rabbi Yossi, however, adds a second set of reasons. Bet Shammai applied the precedent of the number of bulls that were offered in the Temple on each successive day of the holiday of Sukkot, which decreased from thirteen on the first day to seven on the last day. Bet Hillel applied a much broader principle, namely that holiness should only increase and not decrease, even symbolically.

If two approaches exist in the Talmud, the anonymous editor of the Talmud usually asks, "How do they differ in practice?" In this instance, however, there is no effort made to indicate how the two different Rabbi Yossis might apply Bet Shammai’s and Bet Hillel's approaches differently.

So why is there a second set of reasons? Perhaps the second Rabbi Yossi was engaging in a third kind of enhancement that does not increase the number of people performing the mitzvah nor how it is performed, but rather, how it is understood. By associating Hanukkah with Sukkot and the candles with the burnt offerings of the latter festival, and by expressing the idea of increasing holiness as the candles increase, the act of lighting candles and Hanukkah as a whole are enhanced.

Really Enhancing or Enhancing the Enhancement

It is not clear what exactly is meant by the term mehadrin min hamehadrin. Are the approaches of Bet Hillel and Bet Shammai just a different way of doing the lighting, or are they an extension of the first enhancement of extending who was to light the candles? The Tosafot, the Ashkenazic commentators on the Talmud, and specifically Rabbenu Isaac of Dampierre (near Troyes, France), a 12th-century commentator, maintained the former approach.

Tosafot Shabbat 21b s.v. Vehamehadrin min hamehadrin

"It appears to Rabbenu Isaac that Bet Shammai and Bet Hillel only apply

to [the case of] 'a candle for a man and his household', for that way there is more enhancement because there is visual recognition (hekera) when one continues to add on or subtract according to the days that are left or which have passed.  But if one does 'a candle for each person,' even if one increases from then on, there is no visual recognition because people would think that that is [due to] how many people there are in the house."

According to Rabbenu Isaac, the crucial element is the concept of visual recognition; someone walking by the window should see the candles and associate the number of flames with the day of the holiday. If each individual were to light candles corresponding to the number of the day, the viewer might become confused. In this way, the Tosafot have again added a different cognitive element to the observance—visual recognition—and have more thoroughly integrated the concept of pirsum ha-nes (publicizing the miracle) into the observance of candle lighting.


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