Before lighting the menorah and reading the megillah, we recite, “Who has performed miracles for our ancestors in their days in these times.” This language suggests that the miracles performed in the days of the Maccabees are performed in our own times. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, the Hasidic author of Kedushat Levi, expounds on the puzzling language of the blessing as well as its recitation on both Chanukah and Purim.

Most of the miracles that God performed for our ancestors, like the splitting of the sea and the ten plagues, went beyond the normal rules of time and space. God abandoned the normal laws of nature in carrying out the miracle. On the other hand, the miracles of Purim and Chanukah were acted out within the bounds of nature. The events of Purim appear on the surface as a Persian royal and political drama. The victory of the Macabees over the Greeks was manifest as a regular war, not open Divine intervention. “In their days in these times” therefore means that the miracles of Purim and Chanukah operated in the same realm of time and space as our own. Chanukah and Purim thus teach us to pay attention to the miracles within nature that take place in our days as well.