Open Your Hand: The Eighth Day of Hanukkah

“Mine is the silver, and Mine is the gold, says Hashem, Master of all the hosts.” Opening “On the eighth day, the leader of the tribe of Manasseh.” Today is the eighth day of Hanukkah. All eight candles are burning. The light is complete. You stand and look at the flames, and something in your heart feels that this moment is different. Then you go to the synagogue and hear the Torah reading. It tells how the leaders of the tribes brought gifts of silver and gold, animals and offerings. Here we need to stop and ask a question. The prophet says: “Mine is the silver, and Mine is the gold, says Hashem, Master of all the hosts.” Hashem does not need your money. So what did He want from those leaders? And what does He want from you, on this day, right now? What Money Stands For Let’s be honest. Money is not just paper. Money is security. Money is the future. Money means you can feed your children, pay the rent and sleep quietly at night. For a young married man, for a working family man, money is the most real, touchable form of what the Torah calls “my strength and the might of my hand.” Holding on to it is not greed. It is instinct. It is completely human. That is exactly what makes giving it away so meaningful. When you give money to a holy cause, you are not just moving ownership from one person to another. You are doing something much deeper. You take the part of yourself that is most “yours,” the physical grip of your “I,” and you let it go. In that very act, you turn the material world, this thick and heavy stuff, into a vessel that can hold light from above. The Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, explains in one of its letters that giving creates a vessel that draws Hashem’s infinite light down into this world. A Note on the Number Eight Seven is the number of nature. There are the seven days of creation and the seven basic character traits. Seven also stands for the whole ordered chain through which Hashem’s light flows down into the world. Eight is what lies beyond that order. Think of circumcision on the eighth day of a baby boy’s life. On that day the natural body itself enters a covenant that is above nature. This is why the Maharal of Prague, a great sixteenth-century sage, wrote that the number eight points to what is above nature. Likutei Torah, a classic book of Hasidic teaching, also explains that eight stands above that entire chain. Today is the eighth day of Hanukkah. All eight candles are burning. This is the peak of the light, and with it the peak of what is “above nature.” On this day you have the power to act in a way that ordinary logic does not control. Ordinary logic says: “I’ll hold on to what I have.” Logic that is above nature says: “Open your hand.” How It Works: Open, and It Opens The Torah says: “Open, you shall open your hand to him.” Look at how this is built. The word “open” comes twice. The opening down here is what causes the opening above. This is not just a spiritual good-luck charm. It is not “try it, maybe it will work.” It is how things work. When you open your hand down here, you create the vessel, and at that very moment the channel opens from above. A simple physical act of a Jew, a real gift of real money, sets off an opening in the higher worlds. This is one of the foundations of the teaching of the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement. When a Jew does a physical act for the sake of Heaven, it does not stay down here. It reaches above. “Darkness is turned into light.” The darkest, most material thing is exactly what turns into light. That is why today we read in the Torah about the leaders who brought silver and gold, of all things. Not in spite of “Mine is the silver, and Mine is the gold,” but because of it. Hashem does not need your money. He gives you the chance to make it into a vessel. To turn the material into a channel for holiness. To live the eighth day, the day above nature, down here too.