Cruse of oil
The small jar of pure oil in the Talmud’s Hanukkah story. Sealed by the High Priest and holding enough for one day, it kept the Temple lamp burning for eight. The books of Maccabees do not tell this story.
Meaning
The cruse (pakh in Hebrew, a small juglet) is the miracle most people know Hanukkah by. The Babylonian Talmud, in tractate Shabbat 21b, tells it: when the Greeks entered the Temple they defiled all its oil, and when the Hasmoneans defeated them they searched and found one cruse “which lay with the seal of the High Priest”, with enough for a single day. “Yet a miracle was wrought therein and they lit [the lamp] therewith for eight days.” The next year, the passage continues, the eight days were made a festival with Hallel and thanksgiving. The lamp in the story is the Temple menorah. The lamp Jews light at home, adding a light each night until eight burn, is the hanukkiah; its page covers the rules for lighting it. The oil is also why the Hanukkah foods, Latkes and Sufganiyot, are fried.
Origin and history
The oldest accounts of the rededication mention lamps but not the oil. 1 Maccabees says that Judas and his brothers made new holy vessels, brought the lampstand back into the Temple “and lit the lamps on the lampstand, and these gave light in the temple”, then dedicated the altar on the twenty-fifth of Chislev and celebrated for eight days. 2 Maccabees says they “lighted lamps” and kept the eight days “in the manner of the Festival of Booths”. Isaac Slater, writing on TheTorah.com in 2025, notes that the oil is also absent from the ancient liturgy, including the Al Hanissim prayer, and from Josephus. It first appears in the Babylonian Talmud, around the 6th century CE.
The Talmud gives three lines to the events of Hanukkah and three pages to when, where and how the lights are lit, My Jewish Learning notes. It suggests that the sages may have been retelling an old oral legend, to give the festival a supernatural miracle.
Why eight days?
The Talmud’s answer is the oil. Many scholars, My Jewish Learning writes, find the answer in Sukkot instead. 2 Maccabees says the Maccabees kept the eight days like the Festival of Booths, remembering that they had spent that festival “wandering in the mountains and caves like wild animals”; once the Temple was theirs, they kept the festival they had missed.
Doubting the miracle
Maimonides (1138–1204) retells the story in his Mishneh Torah almost word for word, Slater points out, but leaves out “a miracle occurred”: the priests lit from the jug for eight days “until they could crush olives and extract pure oil”. In 1891 Chaim Zelig Slonimski, an observant, science-minded Jew in Poland, argued in his Hebrew newspaper Ha-Tsfirah that the omission showed Maimonides did not believe the oil had lasted by a miracle. Ultra-Orthodox groups put up posters across Warsaw attacking him and calling for a boycott of the paper. Secular Zionist writers took the other side and praised the Maccabees’ victory instead: a poem by Aharon Ze’ev, written in 1936, has the line “no miracle happened to us, we found no cruse of oil”.
Read next
- Next in Hanukkah symbolsGeltMoney given at Hanukkah, mostly to children, and the foil-wrapped chocolate coins that stand in for it. Gelt is Yiddish for money.
- The Temple lamp the oil lit in the Talmud’s storyMenorahThe seven-branched lampstand of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, one of the oldest symbols of the Jewish faith.
See also
Hanukkiah, Latkes, Sufganiyot, Dreidel.
Sources
- Babylonian Talmud, Shabbath 21b (Soncino translation), Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shabbath, folio 21b, English translation ed. Isidore Epstein (London: Soncino Press, 1935–1948), halakhah.com, folio 21b
- Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 21b: The Significance of Hanukkah, Center for Online Judaic Studies, translation of Shabbat 21b with notes, Center for Online Judaic Studies, translation of Shabbat 21b
- The Chanukah Oil Miracle Never Happened—A 19th Century Heresy (Isaac Slater, 2025), Dr. Isaac (Tsachi) Slater, TheTorah.com, 15 December 2025, TheTorah.com, opening section
- 1 Maccabees 4 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition), 1 Maccabees 4:36–59, Bible Gateway, 1 Maccabees 4:49–59
- 2 Maccabees 10 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition), 2 Maccabees 10:1–8, Bible Gateway, 2 Maccabees 10:3–6
- The History of Hanukkah, My Jewish Learning, article
- 9 Things You Didn’t Know About Hanukkah, My Jewish Learning, items 2 and 3
- What Do the Letters On the Dreidel Stand For?, My Jewish Learning, article
- Why All the Oil and Cheese (and Potatoes)? (Chabad.org), Chabad.org, Chanukah section; archived October 2023, Chabad.org (Internet Archive copy), article
- The Hanukkiah (Hanukkah Menorah), My Jewish Learning, article
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
Added .