Hanukka celebrates miracles. The Talmud asks that we light candles in our windows, not deep within our homes, l'farsomei nisa, "to publicize the miracle." Lest anyone mistakenly think the candles are lit for practical ends, we are forbidden to benefit from them: We may not read, knit, or do anything else by their light. They exist solely to let the world know that "a great miracle happened there." Against all odds, once upon a time, we won our freedom.

A great miracle, mind you, not (presumably) an ordinary one. But can any miracle be just ordinary? Can we even imagine the following conversation occurring over dinner:

"How was your day, dear?"

"Oh, the usual: I saw a few miracles, that's all."

Ridiculous, isn't it? Yet Judaism does rank miracles, beginning with the everyday variety (nisim sheb'hol yom) that occur "morning, noon, and night" (to quote our most important prayer, the Amida): rainbows, mountains, flowers, and such, or just opening our eyes each morning to a brand-new day. These really are miracles — no human being can pull off the mystery of life, the grandeur of a thunderstorm, a flower's gentle opening under insistent springtime sunshine. We recognize them with blessings: "Blessed is God, ‘we say,' for having a world like this."

How amazing that nature's miracles are ranked as only "ordinary" compared to the "great" miracle of Hanukka. The Hanukka flames must be seen by passersby; blessings over nature do not need witnesses. Why is Hanukka the only miracle requiring public demonstration?

It must be the holiday's celebration of freedom. People who are not free do not have the luxury of enjoying the miracles of nature; they are unlikely to spend their days enjoying rainbows and flowers.

It should pain us Jews at Hanukka time to see the extent to which our country and culture take freedom for granted. We get mere nods to freedom — the ritualistic singing of the national anthem before baseball games, for example. How many fans even notice the last line's celebration of "the land of the free," before drowning it out with mass whistling and cheering for the game to begin? The Mississippi freedom riders and Martin Luther King Jr.'s ringing shout, "Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, I'm free at last," have become the stuff of history, and nostalgic history at that, hardly a conscientious voice from the past making claims on us today.

How, really, is the cause of freedom doing? It's supposed to grow like the light of our candles: one the first night, then two, and finally a blaze of eight. Is freedom spreading round the world? What about here at home?

An honest evaluation would reveal that we are doing poorly on all counts. Abroad, we make common cause with nations that torture their own citizens — and then hire them to ply their torture trade for us as well. Russian freedom looks more like a nightmare than a dream come true. Slavery is commonplace in parts of Africa, and the Darfur genocide goes unchecked.

At home, meanwhile, we confuse freedom with commercialism. Neither the founding fathers nor our Jewish ancestors thought freedom meant the liberty to run up credit-card debt to capitalize on pre-Christmas sales. Jewish wisdom links the Hebrew word herut ("freedom") and harut ("engraved"), knowing that true freedom is engraved deep upon our soul, not just lightly scratched across the surface of our public personae.

I get worried when the government whittles away at civil rights in the name of homeland security, when photographers may not film the body bags and paraplegics returning from Iraq, when right-wing talk shows dominate the airwaves and then have the chutzpa to accuse the media of being liberal.

We can count on nature to reproduce "ordinary" miracles, like sunsets, flowers, and rainbows, with predictable regularity. But the "great" miracle of freedom doesn't happen every day. When it comes to freedom, the rabbis warn, ein somhin ba'nes, "Don't depend on miracles." Freedom is hard to get, easy to lose, and, once lost, harder still to regain.

We need candles in every Jewish window this year, an especially zealous announcement of Hanukka freedom, with more people than ever stopping to notice. Yes, "a great miracle happened there," but a great miracle happens everywhere that God-given freedom wins the day. A great miracle happened here once, too. If we squander it away, ein somhin banes — I wouldn't count on it happening again any day soon.