Hanukkah is about happiness. The holiday’s customs promote delight in the form of sweet chocolate and oily latkes,while the Hanukkah legend points to a spiritual element of human satisfaction—freedom.
Through subtle wordplay, the Torah portion commonly read during the holiday focuses our attention along similar lines. Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams by explaining that the seven fat cows and seven healthy sheaves represented years of plenty, and satiation,while the seven lean cows and seven ill-looking sheaves represented years of famine.The roots of the Hebrew words for “seven” (שעה) and “satiation (שׂוֹבַע) are nearly identical, and they are written identically in the Torahs un-vocalized text. The two words appear next to each other several times, and suggesting a relationship between the notion of satisfaction and the number seven.
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