Three Ways to Light Hanukkah—and Why We Choose the Most Beautiful One

Shalom everyone. As we are approaching Kaneka, I want to share with you an interesting thought. The Gomorrah and Masa Shabas when it discusses how we fulfill the mitzvah of Kaneka surprisingly gives us three different ways of doing it. There [music] is basic, there is mahadrin, more beautiful, and then there's mahadin minahadrin the beautiful of the beautiful. The most basic and I have to admit I've never seen anyone do this is to simply light one candle every single night. So no matter how large your family on the first night of Kanekah you light one candle and even on the eighth night of Kaneka you light one candle. That is basic. A person is actually yay their mitzvah with that. But then if you want to do mahadrin you wanted to do the mitzvah in a more beautiful way. So then there's a second option in which you light a candle for every member of your family. Now once again that's not what we do. That would mean for example if I have a family of six people including myself, night one I light six and night eight I light six. Now then there is a third level mahadrin minahadrin the most beautiful of the beautiful and that of course is based on the days of kaneka and we have a famous argument between b shami and basil where b shamai says you start with eight and you go down 876 basil says you start with one and you go up and as is normally the case in an argument between b shame and basil we follow the like basil And that is virtually the universal minug of Kali Israel. Everybody even people who are not religious but they are attracted to the Kaneka ritual always count according to the days of Kaneka. And they need to understand that not only are they yay the mitzvah but they're doing the mitzvah mahadin minahadrin the most beautiful of beautiful. [music] The obvious question is why is there such an emphasis on the concept