I. The Threshold: Connections
תנו רבנן נר חנוכה מצוה להניחה על פתח ביתו מבחוץ אם היה דר בעלייה מניחה בחלון הסמוכה לרשות הרבים ובשעת הסכנה מניחה על שלחנו ודיו
וּלְקַחְתֶּ֞ם אֲגֻדַּ֣ת אֵז֗וֹב וּטְבַלְתֶּם֮ בַּדָּ֣ם אֲשֶׁר־בַּסַּף֒ וְהִגַּעְתֶּ֤ם אֶל־הַמַּשְׁקוֹף֙ וְאֶל־שְׁתֵּ֣י הַמְּזוּזֹ֔ת מִן־הַדָּ֖ם אֲשֶׁ֣ר בַּסָּ֑ף וְאַתֶּ֗ם לֹ֥א תֵצְא֛וּ אִ֥ישׁ מִפֶּֽתַח־בֵּית֖וֹ עַד־בֹּֽקֶר׃
Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and apply some of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and to the two doorposts. None of you shall go outside the door of his house until morning.
II. Which public are we addressing with our publicizing of the miracle?
Michael Warner, "Publics and Counterpublics," Public Culture 14:1 (Winter 2002)
A public organizes itself independently of state institutions, law, formal frameworks of citizenship, or preexisting institutions such as the church. If it were not possible to think of the public as organized independently of the state or other frameworks, the public could not be sovereign with respect to the state. So the modern sense of the public as the social totality in fact derives much of its character from the way we understand the partial publics of discourse, like the public of this essay, as self-organized. The way the public functions in the public sphere—as the people—is only possible because it is really a public of discourse. It is self-creating and self-organized, and herein lies its power as well as its elusive strangeness.
III. The Family, the Public, and the Threshold
How many lamps should one light on Chanukah? It is a commandment that one light be kindled in each and every house whether it be a household with many people or a house with a single person. One who enhances the commandment should light lamps according to the number of people of the house - a lamp for each and every person, whether they are men or women. One who enhances [it] further than this and performs the commandment in the choicest manner lights a lamp for each person on the first night and continues to add one lamp on each and every night.
Alex Pomson & Randal Schnoor, Jewish Family: Identity and Self-Formation at Home. Indiana University Press (2018): 149, 155
Ritual is the special site in which the work of forging "who families are" is carried out... If the family home is where the Jewish self is most fully formed, then home-based ritual is its sacred center...
At a historical moment when, in most Western democracies, public and parochial religious institutions struggle to draw together communities of like-minded individuals, family is one of very few social institutions in which people do continue to find meaning and purpose for non-transactional reasons... The home is a site where people continue to come together without extrinsic purposes; just because.