Chanukah is the good-looking student who gets all the attention even though other classmates perform better academically. Chanukah is not mentioned in the Torah-which is logical, since it happened after the Torah was given-nor is it a festival like Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot, making it more a historical than religious holiday. But Chanukah falls near Christmas, and people give each other presents, so it grabs the headlines. God bless America and the consumer market.
That's not to say that Chanukah isn't important. After all, the eight-day holiday celebrates the Jewish military victory against the Syrians, reflected in the story of the temple menorah, in which a lone bottle of oil miraculously lasted for eight days when it should have lasted one.
Underlying Chanukah is a theme just as central today as it was 2,000 years ago, the fight against assimilation. Today, just as then, Jews are well accepted; the Maccabees revolted not only against the ruling Syrians, but against the prevailing Jewish practice of hellenization.
The lighting of the menorah is done as a public mitzvah, and must be done so that others can see the menorah through a window or in the hallway. The custom of eating fried potato latkes (patties), however, is best done privately after crossing over that line from three or four latkes to seven or eight, when your eyes begin glazing over. In Israel, the custom is to eat sufganiyot, jelly donuts. Both are oily foods, symbolizing the miracle with the oil in holy temple.
