For many, the message of Hanukkah is that miracles really do happen and that they can happen for us. This story, found in the Babylonian Talmud, recounts how upon entering the newly liberated Temple in Jerusalem, the Hasmonean soldiers found only a tiny vase containing enough oil to light the Menorah for a single day. Miraculously, that small amount of oil lasted for eight days, enough time to obtain more and keep the Temple lights on as required by Biblical law.
This story, told hundreds of years after the events of the war described in the First and Second Maccabees, promises that miracles really do happen, that they happened for our ancestors in times past, and that they can happen for us as well. It doesn't matter what odds we face, or what condition we are in, if we are willing to light the light, the miracles will follow.
We may have no idea how they happen or why they happen, but at the darkest and most hopeless of times, this story told by sages living largely in exile and largely in poverty, reminds us that no situation is without hope and that we should dare to imagine that we too can receive miracles in our own lives.
What miracle are you hoping for this Hanukkah?
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Author, radio and TV talk show host, and President of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Brad Hirschfield is the author of 
actually for myself I hope that I sell my house at the exact time a nice place to live for seniors opens up near my children and that the money I get covers all my financial needs at that time including that I am able to buy my late husband his headstone!
For the world I really would like peace. I know it sounds corny but if people could just stop killing one another and maybe even stop talking and saying the wrong things but let things cool down awhile maybe we could actually get things accomplished when everyone calms down!
hugs
Laura
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