Why We (still) Light the Menorah Indoors

December, 2023

On Chanukah, unlike all other Yamim Tovim, there are no specific obligations throughout the day, such as matanos la’evyonim on Purim or a seudah on the Shalosh Regalim. There’s also no constant

mitzvah like dwelling in the sukkah or refraining from chametz and no issur melachah like on Shavuos.1

To this point, Rav Moshe Feinstein remarkably writes that outside the moment of lighting, one may not recite the berachah of Shehecheyanu during Chanukah because “these days of Chanukah have no greater kedushah than any day of the year…this, as opposed to, say, Yom Kippur, when we can say this berachah unconnected to a specific act because the day itself has special kedushah.”2It is therefore all the more peculiar that the one and only act unique to Chanukah—the lighting of the menorah—does not seem to be per- formed in the way initially designed. Let’s start at the beginning. The Gemara teaches:

The Chanukah menorah is to be positioned by one’s doorway from the outside. If one lives on an upper floor, he should place it in a window that is adjacent to the public domain. In times of danger, it should be placed on his table and that is enough.3

This is also precisely how the Shulchan Aruch records the halachah,4 indicating that when not in times of danger, like in, arguably, today’s America, one must light outside. However, later the Rama makes it clear that already in his days the standard practice was still to light indoors.5 This is largely the accepted practice, at least among Ashkenazim living outside of Eretz Yisrael.6

Most Gedolim and their adherents still follow or followed this practice of lighting indoors. Is this still due to danger? And if so, would someone living in, say, Lakewood, with only frum neighbors, still have this same allowance? I cannot think of many other clear halachos found in Chazal for which our practice seems to veer from its basic structure.

Even more confounding is that in every other element of this mitzvah, we perform it mehadrin min ha’mehadrin, adding one extra candle for each night instead of the basic one per night and having others in the house light in addition to the father.7 Moreover, Chanukah was always set apart with this precise unique quality in that its pirsumei nisa was to be done outside and in public, as opposed to the “inside” pirsum ha’neis of Purim done in shul.8 Why, then, would we agree to take this distinctivenessaway? The Brisker Rav, for example, was very careful to light outside, considering that to be an essential part of the mitzvah.9 In fact, if ever he had to light inside due to a concern, he would relight outside if that risk went away; in this, he saw the din comparable to mitzvas sukkah.

Rav Elyashiv, too, strongly opposed the idea that nowadays, in locations where it is safe, we must still light indoors. For, if this is no longer the halachah, “for whom was that clear law in the Shulchan Aruch written? Even the Rama does not comment at that place.”10 Nevertheless, most poskim do not seem to take this strict approach, with Rav Moshe Feinstein even stating that today “it is not possible to light outdoors.”11

Why should this still hold true? Some early Rishonim mention this minhag of not lighting outdoors, yet they often also urge one to at least light inside the doorframe of their home, facing the street.12 Nevertheless, the basic halachah allows one to simply light anywhere visible in their home—on a dining room table, for instance. Many approaches have been offered throughout the centuries to this question.

Already in the twelfth century, the minhag among many was to light indoors, causing the Ohr Zarua to wonder, being that there are no longer any dangers, why should we not light outside?13 And this was nine hundred years ago. While he does not provide an answer, a few decades later, the Sefer Ha’itur does, writing, “U’meiachar she’nahagu al hasakanah, nahagu.”14 Meaning, seemingly, that although there may no longer be a danger, once we accepted this practice of lighting indoors, we retained it.15

The words of the holy Baal Ha’itur are difficult to fathom. To give an extreme example to make the point, would we say that someone who worked at a truck stop as a teenager when he received an allowance not to wear his yarmulke due to safety concerns, still need not wear one twenty years later as a doctor on Madison Ave? Chalilah! Rav Yerucham Olshin offers a way to understand this Sefer Ha’itur based on how Rav Meir Soloveitchik would quote his father, the Brisker Rav: “Once our leaders were mesaken a new din of lighting indoors due to danger, this new takanah stands even when its reason ceases to exist!”16

The Rama’s statement was based on the view of Rabbeinu Yerucham, who explained that the reason we light indoors is not just due to a physical sakanah but a monetary one as well, as thieves may steal one’s menorah.17 This concern would certainly still stand today. However, this reasoning would lead to an obvious question: Who said one must light with an expensive menorah? If indeed this is the reason for our present-day minhag, why not then light with Coke bottles (cleaned and stripped) so as to perform this mitzvah in its proper location?

One may be tempted to suggest that the Rama in Darkei Moshe was concerned for the view of the Raavad who posits that hiddur mitzvah (i.e., using a silver menorah) is a Torah law,18 which would then, indeed, require one to light indoors with a nice menorah instead of outside with a makeshift menorah. This is because the Torah law of beautification eclipses the Rabbinic placement of the menorah. However, this would be a stretch, for the very mitzvah one is beautifying is a Rabbinic one, so how could the commandment to beautify it be Biblical?19

Many others give a more technical approach to our still lighting indoors. While a sakanah may no longer exist, most Jews moved to northern countries where the weather during Chanukah is cold, windy, and wet. The Ritva quotes his rebbi as telling him that if it is windyoutside, one should light indoors;20 and the Ritva extends this to many other weather-based concerns.

Rav Amram Gaon states the same. This would explain why many of those outside Israel, who indeed light outdoors, purchase special glass containers to protect their lights from the elements. The reader should, however, note that not all poskim allow for such encasements.21

The Shu”t Imrei Noam22 finds an answer to our question from Chanukah’s original source: Megillas Taanis, a sefer written by the Tanna Rabbi Chananyah ben Chizkiyah, delineating more than thirty special dates and events we are to celebrate.23

Amazingly, it states there: “Should one fear from leitzim [ridiculers], then one may light by the door inside one’s home.” Meaning, aside from the issue of sakanah, wind, and robbers, there is another concern: scoffers.

From the B’nei Yissaschar,24 it would seem that these leitzim were cynical Jews who would challenge the propriety of either a public display of love for Hashem and for His Torah or, perhaps, our very fight against the Hellenistic forces. And so we light indoors. This is quite different from a concern for other nations.25

Rav Moshe Sternbuch offers another powerful approach: The fact that there have been times, like today, when we live in relative peace does not mean that we should abandon the protections needed by others today (e.g., Iran) or that we may need at some future time, lo alenu.26 He cites a number of proofs to such halachic thinking, and also reminds the reader of Rav Yisrael Salanter who, during a cholera outbreak on Yom Kippur, urged everyone to eat so that those sick would then certainly eat some- thing. We see from here that sometimes we all must sacrifice halachah’s

“best practices” so that it can be preserved for everyone’s future.
For example, the Chanukah following the pogrom of Simchas Torah 5784, I was asked by many people if they may light on their kitchen table instead of by the window. In galus, we should never act with certainty.

A final approach is one that I have often suggested. In preparation for this chapter, I was delighted to discover that Rav Yeruchum Olshin suggests something similar.27, 28

This approach requires some brief context. Rashi gives an example of what Chazal mean by a sakanah that allows or forces our lighting indoors: when the Persians did not allow anyone to light candles outside the Persian batei avodah zarah. The Bach expresses amazement at this example. That decree applied equally to non-Jews, so it could not have been describing a time of shmad (when Jews must risk their lives for any mitzvah or social value). How, then, can this be Rashi’s paradigm case? For such a severe situation, we would be halachically dissuaded from even lighting indoors.

This Rashi also seems redundant. Do we even need an example of “a danger”? Why does Rashi feel he needs to share an example for some-

thing that we can all sense? I would therefore suggest that this Rashi is seeking to provide us with something far deeper than a simple example. Chazal share that following the Churban Bayis Sheini, we nullified the celebratory days found in Megillas Taanis, as we can’t be celebrating every other week while mourning our exile.

To this, the Gemara asks a stunning question: Why, then, do we still celebrate Chanukah? After all, Chanukah’s origin is found in this same text. The Gemara offers only one reason for keeping only Chanukah out of all the holidays in Megillas Taanis: the people have accepted Chanukah and its mitzvos.29

Perhaps what the Gemara is suggesting is that along with remembering the neis of Chanukah during these days, we also recall the affection and sacrifice that Klal Yisrael had for this mitzvah. And, for this same reason, we light even when in danger, albeit indoors. Rav Olshin takes this idea even further: Because the menorah represents the light of Torah (which is perhaps why the klal did not wish to forgo these days), we are obligatedto risk our lives for it. All of this would explain why Rashi chose Persian times as the example of sakanah rather than examples from the times of the Gemara or in his own lifetime, for example, the Crusades of 1096 that he composed Selichos for. Our still lighting the menorah indoors today is a surreptitious memorial of such “indoor lighting sacrifice” in times of historic danger. We are also commemorating lighting the Chanukah candles indoors in times of danger, even though that original sakanah allows us to forfeit lighting completely.

Our present lighting indoors represents not a leniency but a great act of stringency. Thus, our retaining the minhag of lighting indoors is not simply to avoid a danger that no longer exists; on the contrary, it is to recall such mesirus nefesh for this mitzvah in times of danger, when we lit inside even though we didn’t have to light at all.

The Gemara states that because Jews have always risked their lives for milah, it will always be observed.30 Indeed, even today, the not-yet-frum, as well as the frum, largely perform brissim. Perhaps the similar sacrifice for our past Chanukah lighting in times of danger (even if indoors) is why Chanukah, too, is kept by so many of the non-observant today.31 According to Pew Research, while 56 percent of all American Jews own a Seder plate, 81 percent own a menorah!32

The Minchas Elazar mentions that the B’nei Yissaschar had a glass encase- ment ready for when Mashiach will come and he can again light outside.33

May we see that day soon.

NOTES

1. Note that even on Purim, in addition to its many other obligations, they initially wished to restrict all melachah; see Megillah 5b.
2. Igros Moshe, Orach Chaim 5:43:2, confirmed firsthand with the original handwritten letter to Rav Levovitz, with whom I spoke. We should note that with this p’sak, Rav Moshe acknowledges that he disagrees with the Chafetz Chaim as recorded in Shaar Hatzion, siman 676:3. We should also point out that the Meiri to Shabbos 23b would seem to support the Chafetz Chaim. Meiri there records a view that if someone is without the ability to light a menorah, he may still make the She’asah Nissim and Shehecheyanu berachos during the days of Chanukah. Some readers may assume that having a Rishon say this would mean that Rav Moshe, had he been aware, would have acquiesced in his position. However, this is not so simple to suggest. For one, Meiri is simply recording what others have said, and perhaps even he disagreed. Second, just because one Rishon takes a view does not mean that other Rishonim would have consented. But number three is most crucial: Rav Moshe, in a separate teshuvah (coincidentally, also about something found in a newly discovered Meiri), makes clear that newly published Rishonim must be carefully considered before utilizing them for actual p’sak halachah. This is not due to these specific Rishonim themselves, of course, but rather to the lack of critical study of these manuscripts over generations, as well as uncertainty as to who the many copyists were for all these years.
3. Shabbos 21b.
4. Siman 671:5.
5. Siman 672:2. On the oddity of the Rama waiting until here to make this comment and his initial silence, see Rav Elyashiv, below.
6. Cf. Rav Ovadia Yosef in Chazon Ovadia, Chanukah, p. 37.
7. See Shabbos 21b.
8. See D’rashos Chasam Sofer, 5592, Chanukah; see also Rav Soloveitchik, as brought in V’Dibarta Bam, Chanukah, p. 113; Inside Chanukah, pp. 190–91.
9. See Kuntres Chanukah U’Purim 3:3; Yerech L’Moadim p. 107; see, however, his views as brought by others below.
10. Shu”t Kovetz Teshuvos 1:67, pp. 98–101.
11. Igros Moshe, Orach Chaim, 4:125.
12. The significance of a doorframe will be discussed below, in the chapter titled “Are Our Mezuzahs Kosher?,” page 134.
13. Ohr Zaruah 133:2.
14. Sefer Ha’itur, Aseres Hadibros, Chanukah 114:2.
15. See also Shu”t Minchas Yitzchak 6:67.
16. Kovetz Shulchan Melachim, Kislev, 5766; see Yerech L’Moadim, p. 112.
17. See Darkei Moshe, siman 671:9.
18. See Chidushei Anshei Shem to Berachos 38a.
19. See, however, Orech L’Neir to the first Mishnah in Makkos; see also Shabbos 23a that lighting neir Chanukah is a fulfillment of the verse “lo sassur,” which may mean that while the lighting is Rabbinic in nature, its beautification can still be a Biblical fulfillment.
20. Shabbos 21b.
21. See, e.g., Aruch Hashulchan 671:24 as well as Moadim U’Zemanim, vol. 2, siman 140, n. 1; Cf. Shu”t Yaavetz 149, who allows, although does not urge, such encasements.
22. Shu”t Imrei Noam 2:22.
23. This sefer will be discussed at length in the chapters that begin on pages 50, 82, and 106.
24. As brought in a footnote to Piskei Teshuvos, siman 671.
25. This is not a concern of the past. Indeed, one of the most celebrated public intellectuals of the twentieth century, Christopher Hitchens (who was a Jew who found out about his Jewish background at the age of forty, when his mother was lying on her deathbed), once horribly wrote against, of all holidays, Chanukah, based on this very cynical outlook of fighting the Hellenists: Jewish orthodoxy possesses the interesting feature of naming and combating the idea of the apikoros or “Epicurean”—the intellectual renegade who prefers Athens to Jerusalem and the schools of philosophy to the grim old routines of the Torah…the Greek or Epicurean style had begun to gain immense ground among the Jews of Syria and Palestine. The Seleucid Empire, an inheritance of Alexander the Great—Alexander still being a popular name among Jews—had weaned many people away from the sacrifices, the circumcisions, the belief in a special relation- ship with G-d…I quote (from a contemporary rabbi), “Along with Greek science and military prowess came a whole culture that celebrated beauty both in art and in the human body, presented the world with the triumph of rational thought in the works of Plato and Aristotle, and rejoiced in the complexities of life presented in the theater of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Aristophanes.” But away with all that. Let us instead celebrate the Maccabean peasants who wanted to destroy Hellenism and restore what they actually call “old-time religion.” Thus, to celebrate Hanukkah is to celebrate the triumph of tribal Jewish backwardness. A celebrated atheist, Mr. Hitchens would often debate faith and challenge his interlocutors, asking what possible virtue would be lost without religion or what could be gained with it that would not already be obvious to him. Aside from the false premise of this question—as his present morals were so obviously relying on the remnants of religious culture from whose crumbs America and the Magna Carta were formed—the above paragraph regarding Chanukah best displays the nakedness of his challenge. I refer to the bias of seeing inherent honor in the “new” versus the old, of allowing the nebulous winds of time and the capriciousness behind how “the vogue” takes hold and the arbitrary nature of who is given the power to introduce it, and the mysterious sociological quirks behind which fashions capture a time or place. Absent the safety net of a moral identity, to be untethered to a constitution, is precisely what leads to his article—of judging virtue on modern dress rather than thoughtful design, believing righteousness is found in the avant-garde rather than antiquity, and in the assumption that the peasantry must be as poor on the inside as they are on the outside. All this is anathema to Yiddishkeit. Yet, its pull becomes alluring to those unmoored from it. Truth is neither “old time” or “new”; it is unaffected by “tribal” acceptance or “tribal” neglect. Virtue is unbothered by new styles or last year’s fashion. Rather, truth is and will always remain simply that: truth. Judged not by time, unchanged by those who fail to embrace its legitimacy, it endures unperturbed by physical phenomena and social cues. Emes is emes.
26. Moadim U’Zemanim, vol. 2, siman 140, p. 79.
27. Ibid., p. 543.
28. We will quote his words below.
29. As explained by Rashi ad loc.
30. Shabbos 130a.
31. See chapter below, “Why Is There No Yom Tov Sheni on Chanukah Outside of Israel,” where the Pri Chadash draws an additional milah-Chanukah connection.
32. Pew Research Center, “Jewish Americans in 2020,” May 11, 2021, https://www.pewresearch. org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/.
33. Nemukei Orach Chaim.