Shalom and thank you for your question! You ask for the source of the Mitzvah to light Chanukah candles. The Gemara (Talmud,) in Tractate Shabbat (23:71), states in the name of Rabbi Chiyah son of Ashi, that he learned that one who lights Chanukah candles should make a blessing. Rabbi Yirmiya says that even one who sees a Chanukah candle should make a blessing. Later on in this discussion, the question is asked, what should the blessing be? It should be: “Blessed be You the L-rd our G-d, who has sanctified us with his Mitzvot (commandments,) and commanded us to light the Chanukah light.” Where are we commanded thus?
One of the great commentaries says that the Torah refers to Chanukah (by a code,) because if you count twenty-five words from the first word in the Torah, (Bereishit – In the beginning,) the twenty-fifth word is Ohr, (light,) and Chanukah occurs on the twenty-fifth of the Hebrew month of Kislev. Another sage in the Talmud states that we learn about Chanukah from the sentence in Deuteronomy 17:11: “According to the Torah (teaching) that they shall instruct you and according to the statute that they will tell you shall you do, you shall not turn away from the path that they tell you neither right nor left.”
What the above means basically, is that, as is the case with many other Mitzvot, the Mitzvah of lighting Chanukah candles is a rabbinical one. How can Rabbis command us to do things which are not directly mentioned in the Torah? The above-mentioned source in Deuteronomy explains where ‘the Rabbis’ (I will explain who I mean,) get their authority from directly in the Torah. The Torah commands us explicitly to tread in the path that ‘the Rabbis’ show us.
Before I explain who these Rabbis are, I must mention that the lighting of Sabbath candles is also only hinted at in the Torah, not explicitly stated, as is the Mitzvah of putting on Tefillin, (phylacteries.) There are other Mitzvot that are only hinted at.
When Moses ascended Mt. Sinai and received the Torah from G-d, he received not only the five books of Moses,( known as the Written law) but the Oral law as well. He was communing with G-d for forty days and nights, during which time he received both the Written and the Oral law. In the Tractate of the Talmud called ‘Ethics of the Fathers’ 1:1, it says: “Moses received the Torah from Sinai. He passed it on to Joshua, who passed it on to the Elders, and the Elders passed it on the Prophets. The Prophets passed it on to the men of the Great Assembly.” What this means is that there has been a direct line of passing down the Oral law throughout the generations. Moses did not keep it secret when he received it either. Jethro, his father-in-law, saw Moses sitting and ‘judging’ the people all day and recommended a system of delegation which Moses humbly accepted. Moses spent the years of his life as the Jewish leader, teaching and guiding the nation. When G-d told him that his time was coming to leave the world, he requested that a suitable leader who understands the people should be appointed, and accepted G-d’s decision that it should be his faithful disciple Joshua, who ‘did not depart from his (Moses’) tent.’ The Oral law includes 13 principles for its interpretation. Why does it need interpretation? Without the Oral law, we might think that if a person inadvertently poked out someone else’s eye, he must forfeit his own eye! The Written Torah states explicitly ‘An eye for an eye’! The Oral law teaches us that the Torah here refers to monetary renumeration. The ‘Rabbis’ of the Rabbinical laws, are the great and pious scholars who recorded the Talmud, and practiced what they preached. There are many stories of their greatness. Only someone who was truly learned and used the above-mentioned 13 principles was considered a Sage who could teach us what constitutes Jewish law, (Halacha,) and what doesn’t. In every generation since the time of the Talmud, more books on Jewish law have been written, not in order to create new laws, but in order to explain how to apply the existing laws to the new situations that come up in every generation.
