A Fire That Can Never Be Extinguished

Questioning and debating on different matters, especially religious ones, is part of what it means to be Jewish. Debates and discussions are truly important in the way we interpret the world. Jews simply love asking questions, and Zev Brenner has firsthand experience with this. In the past 30 years, this famous Jewish radio host and founder of Talkline Communications has held countless discussions, interviewing some of the most important newsmakers in the Jewish and political world. He has devoted his entire career as an outspoken advocate of the Jewish Community, and expanding the mental view of this community.


On his show, Talkline with Zev Brenner, Jewish daily life and practice is a common topic. The fact that Judaism is based on the “Written Torah,” the Five Books of Moses, and the “Oral Torah,” or Talmud, a series of discussions and arguments about the laws of Torah which provides all kinds of long answers to short questions, shows just how much debate is important to Jews. In one of his recent broadcasts, Zev Brenner and his guests discussed question posed by the Bais Yosef as to why we celebrate Hanukkah, and why it rarely begins on the same date.

Like most Jewish holidays, Hanukkah doesn’t have a fixed start date. Because of the lunar calendar, based on the moon’s cycles, Hanukkah can be as early as Thanksgiving, or it can fall in January into the New Year. There are eight nights of Hanukkah, and Jews celebrate them by lighting a menorah for each night. The candles or the menorah, which is a type of candelabra with nine candleholders, eight for each night and one candle used to light the others, are lit each night of Hanukkah after sundown.

The reason why Jews light candles and call Hanukkah the holiday of light is because in the Second Century, a Jewish rebel army, the Maccabees, revolted against the Syrian-Greek Empire and in order to rededicate the temple, they had to light a menorah that would burn within the temple at all times. However, they only had oil to last for one day, but miraculously, the oil burned for eight days, leaving time to find a fresh supply of oil. As Zev Brenner at Talkline Communications concluded in his talk show, the light of Chanukah which lives on beyond the holiday represents the Jewish spirit can never be dimmed or extinguished.

Listen more from Zev Brenner at his audio podcast.