My name is Avraham Scheinberg, and I’m assistant rabbi here in San Antonio at a congregation, Rodfei Sholom. Some interesting things that we do on Chanukah— obviously we do the regular: lighting the menorah; play dreidel; we have latkes; my wife makes amazing Sufganiyot, Chanukah donuts with jelly.
But something that’s different that we do a little bit is that I light my Chanukah menorah with oil, with olive oil actually. For my kids we use the candles, but for myself I use olive oil. The reason I do it is because we’re trying to remember what happened at the Temple with the miracle. The oil lasted for 8 days, and that was actually olive oil that they used. That’s the reason of course that we eat latkes. That’s the reason that we have fried donuts, because we’re trying to remember the miracle of the oil.
It’s really a beautiful flame.