December 2020 - A Very Oily Hanukkah

Today is the last evening of Hanukkah. Christmas is less than a week away, and the Christian areas of Jerusalem are already decorated with shining Christmas lights. My family is out today, like many others, to see festive lights of a different kind. Religious Jews are obliged at the evenings of Hanukkah to light a Menorah - a vessel of 9 candles - at their windowsill. More observant Jews do not use wax candles for this purpose, but instead opt for wicks soaked in olive oil, reminiscent of the original Hanukkah miracle, twenty two centuries ago, when the last remaining flask of olive oil was sufficient to light the temple for eight wh*** days.

Like many others, I take my family on a stroll through some of the older Jewish neighbourhoods of Jerusalem to see the many windowsills glistening with yellow-orange flames. This Hannukah, however, is unlike others before it. This Hanukkah, we re-live the old miracle thanks to some very significant advances at a number of fields.

The sky has been cloudy for the last few weeks, and the output of solar farms is next to nil. With fossil fuel priced much too dearly to be a viable alternative, the Ministry of Energy decided to test its new experimental project. Over the past year, as part of an agreement on regional cooperation, thousands of genetically-modified Mangrove trees have been planted along the coastlines of the Sinai peninsula at the Israeli-Egyptian border. The trees, which can naturally subsist on sea water, have been adapted to non-tropical climates, and modified to produce leaves and fruit with high content of thick and flammable oily substance, which can be pressed at low costs and stored for long periods of time.

Thus, instead of drilling for limited supply of oil, we managed to grow an anually renewable supply on desert coasts and next to canals. This solution is far from perfect: much like fossil fuel, the burning of vegetable oil generates greenhouse gases, and the stench of burning oil has given the power station at Ashkelon the unflattering nickname "the frying pan". Still, it's a reliable source of energy, and the amount produced so far, contrary to all predictions, managed to keep the regional power grid going for the entirety of the cloudy period without causing a single blackout.

A Hanukkah miracle, indeed.