As we light the menorah, we sing: Throughout the eight days of Chanukah, these lights are sacred, and we are not permitted to make use of them, but only to look at them, in order to offer thanks and praise to Your great Name for Your miracles, for Your wonders and for Your salvations.
If we can’t benefit from them, than what do we do with them?
Says the Ray’atz, you sit and stare and listen closely to what the candles are telling us.
The candles are silent and they don’t make a sound yet that’s exactly what we are listening to. The Ray’atz says that the candles share a deep message, the deepest that there is- but that message is in silence and is only heard through the listening of the heart.
The Roman orator and philosopher, Marcus Cicero, on the nature of the gods said that if you ask me what is the nature of god, he would follow the example of Semonides, who was asked by the Tyrant of Syracuse, what is God?
Semonides asked and was granted a day to think. Then he asked for 2 then 4 and so forth. The tyrant became impatient and demanded to know the reason? Semonides answered that the more he thinks of God, the more dark and unknown He appears and the more he meditates on God, the more obscure He appears.
So in the coming events of Chanukah, listen to what the candles are telling you. They are absolutely silence yet are telling us the deepest message there is.