So what is Chanukah? This https://www.jewfaq.org/chanukah is a pretty good basic link.
To me, Chanukah can be best summed up in a Police song, off their 1981 album Ghost in the Machine. While the track
"Secret Journey" was not one of their chartbusters, it should have been. I love this song:
It says:Upon a secret journey
I met a holy man
His blindness was his wisdom
I'm such a lonely man
And as the world was turning
It rolled itself in pain
"This does not seem to touch you"
He pointed to the rain
(...)
"You will see light in the darkness
You will make some sense of this
You will see joy in this sadness
You will find this love you miss."
This is Chanukah, now, especially given what happened on Bondi Beach in Sydney yesterday (echoes of Tree of Life in 2018). The world is rolling in considerable pain, such that we might not even feel the rain (because we're too numb), but the Chanukah candles help us to see light in the darkness, make some sense of it all (or at least try to), see joy in the sadness and feel God's (or anyone else's) love, as challenging as that may be sometimes.
A familiar proverb says that it is far better to light a candle than curse the darkness. Well, on Chanukah we light eight candles and tell the darkness thereby to go fuck itself!
ZBM