The Modern Day Miracle

This Shabbat, Midreshet Lindenbaum (where I work as a dorm counselor) took the girls to Safed. From what I understand, Shabbat in Tzfat (Safed) is a particularly interesting “chavaya” (experience) and is considered a must for those here on their gap year. To add fuel to the fire, this wasn’t just Shabbat, it was Shabbat chanukka (pun intended).
I never really connected to the type of people who lived in Tzfat, the artsy, Carlebach or Breslov type. In my mind, a lot of them are a bit, well, crazy. Take our Friday tour guide, for example. He was 20 years old (younger than me), had been married since he was 18 and a father of a four month old girl. He had his guitar on him the whole tour and would be strumming different Chassidic melodies as we went from synagogue to synagogue. The people who live in Tzfat are the type who very much involved in kabbalistic teachings; spirituality and who knows what else. Not really my cup of tea.
As we got ready to light the channuka candles before shabbat, we all crowded around and one of the teachers got up to speak. “Girls, we are about to light the candles. We must keep in mind that we are now advertising the miracle of channuka, we want people to see that there was a miracle”. We all lit and sang together and then left to the synagogue for the Friday night service.
As we were walking to where we would be praying, a weird thought entered my mind. I understood why we lit channuka candles by the windows outside of Israel. By doing so there, we really were advertising the miracle of channuka to the non-Jews who we live among. However, to whom are we going to advertise the miracle? Everyone in Israel knows about channuka and the miracle that we are commemorating, at least on the most basic level. So why do we have to light near a window? Who is this message for?
We got to the square in the middle of Tzfat’s old city. Some men had set up a mechitza and had begun a Carlebach style minyan. At one end of the mechitza, a large Menorah had been lit. As we began the prayers welcoming in the Shabbat, everything else lay forgotten, all we cared about was the singing and the dancing. It started raining in the middle of the service, but no matter, we went right on dancing.
Truth be told, I had forgotten about my earlier question about lighting a Menorah by the window until today. As our Shabbat had been packed and very high, spiritually, I didn’t really have time to think of answer. After getting back to the seminary, I finally understood. We don’t light the channuka candles to only advertise the miracle to non-Jews who may be unaware. We advertise the miracle for ourselves, to remind ourselves that there is more to life than just the materialistic concerns of our day-to-day lives. Spiritualism versus Hellenism- isn’t that what the miracle of Channuka is all about?