What It Means to Have a Soul

We've just finished the annual Jewish celebration of Hanukkah!

I'm not Jewish (I'm Catholic) but I've recently run across a discussion of the meaning of Hanukkah that I think Christians like myself ought to take note of. It's "Hanukkah and the Soul," by Avi Shafran, director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America, an author and a columnist for Hamodia.

Jews and Christians share the idea that each human possesses a God-given eternal soul. This soul can never be extinguished. The story of Hanukkah, the "Festival of Lights," speaks to this non-extinguishability by telling of how Jews called Maccabees drove pagan Greek-Syrians from the (Second) Temple in Jerusalem during the second century prior to the Common Era. The Maccabees then re-dedicated the Temple but found, according to Wikipedia,

... that almost all of the ritual olive oil had been profaned. They found only a single container that was still sealed by the High Priest, with enough oil to keep the menorah in the Temple lit for a single day. They used this, yet it burned for eight days (the time it took to have new oil pressed and made ready).

Today's version of the menorah is, of course, the eight-branched candelabrum illustrated above. (That used in the ancient Temple had just six branches.) The central or ninth candle of the modern menorah is kept burning during the Festival and is simply used to light one more of the other eight candles on each of the nights of Hanukkah.

Mr. Shafran indicates in his column that the number eight is "the number associated in Jewish texts with that which is beyond perceptible nature." It accordingly betokens our immaterial, inextinguishable soul.

The ancient Greeks did not believe in an immaterial, inextinguishable soul. And, as Mr. Shafran points out, neither do today's nonbelievers. They are instead "materialists" who contend everything that exists "can be reduced to the physical."

An awful lot rides on the question of whether or not this is so. Mr. Shafran continues:

If we humans are nothing more than our physical cells, and the innate human awareness of our souls and sense of free will are mere illusions, we have no ultimate value beyond that of any insect. And no compulsion, beyond an ultimately meaningless utilitarian social contract, to bind ourselves to any ethical or moral system.

This is something we all ought to ponder with the utmost seriousness, in this time when the American president is daily accused of not being committed to any ethical or moral system!