Chanukah is less an orphan holiday than Shavuos but it still received little attention in ancient rabbinic literature. Lacking classical texts — the books of Maccabees are outside the Jewish canon and the Talmud discusses the holiday only briefly — contemporary rabbis have to be creative in crafting discussion material for the holiday. Sermons and lectures generally focus on the limited topics of the “Al Ha-Nissim” prayer, the Rambam’s description of the holiday and minutia of candle lighting. One issue that has captured rabbinic imagination is what has become known as “the Beis Yosef’s question.”

R. Yosef Karo, in his Beis Yosef (Orach Chaim 670), asks why we celebrate Chanukah for eight days. According to the Talmudic explanation of the holiday (Shabbos 21b), when the Jews reconquered the Temple they found a single, sealed bottle of pure oil that would last for only a day but miraculously lasted for eight days until more pure oil could be manufactured and delivered. R. Karo asks why we celebrate Chanukah for eight days, since no miracle occurred on the first — only on the subsequent seven days.

R. Karo offers three answers to this question but subsequent thinkers have challenged them and offered alternatives. His is the question that launched a thousand sermons. In 1962, R. Yerachmiel Zelcer published his Ner Le-Me’ah, a collection of 100 answers to the Beis Yosef’s question. Many of the answers are similar and some do not withstand scrutiny, which R. Zelcer is quick to point out. They occasionally enter esoteric topics such as the purity of utensils and sacrificial rites, and frequently offer unsupported historical speculations. Yet the true joy of the book is the thrust and parry of proofs and counterproofs, the debates spanning centuries into which R. Zelcer takes readers, frequently offering his own critiques and insights. I would have written the book differently, focusing less on Chasidic texts and organizing the chapters more topically. Additionally, the 100 chapters do not directly correspond to 100 answers — some have more than one and some have none. However, these are less criticisms than a statement of personal preferences.

What follows are extremely brief summaries of 25 answers from R. Zelcer’s enjoyable book. The first three are offered by the Beis Yosef and the rest by others. I include the chapter number in the book for reference:

