Channukah

At the beginning of time, God created a special light that stretched from one end of the world to the other. Under that light, nothing died and nothing rotted. It was a beautiful, healing, infinite light, lasting only 36 hours because God saw that the light wasn’t fitting for this world where we need some darkness in order to have free will. But once a year, on Chanukah, God gives us access to this hidden light that resides in the deepest recesses of our souls.

The lack of a physical side to Chanukah is unusual but appropriate. For the Maccabees' war against the Hellenists was ultimately a war against a worldview that elevated the physical above all, that venerated beauty, not holiness; the body, not the soul. The Jews fought to preserve a different view of the world -- one with God, not man, at its center.