Chanukah Day Six

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Day Six: Defeating the Greeks through Gratitude

We say in Haneirot Hallalu that we light our Chaunkah candles not in order to use them, but in order to look at them, so that we can offer thanks and praise to Hashem. In other words, we light our Chanukah candles, so that we can thank Hashem. The avodah of this holiday is gratitude.

What makes gratitude so central to Chanukah? On the simplest level, gratitude is a strong statement against Greek ideology. The Greeks, who claimed that the world was eternal, denied that there was anyone who had ever given us the world. There was, therefore, no one to thank. Even a simple thanks to Hashem is a denial of everything the Greeks stand for.

But there is something deeper going on. As we mentioned in an earlier essay, Alexander the Great was turned away from the gates of Gan Eden. The pasuk that was used to turn him away (one which is very familiar from Hallel) is “This is the gate of Hashem, the righteous enter it (Tehillim 118:20).” The pasuk immediately before tells us what we have to do to enter: “Open up for me the gates of the righteous, I will enter them and thank Hashem. (118:19)” Chazal tell us that in the World to Come, there will be no more prayer as we generally understand it, because there will be nothing we need, but prayers of thanks will always remain.  The ability to thank is literally the entrance into Olam Habah.

Each chag has a unique spiritual composition which defines it, and which we relive each year. On Chanukah we get in touch with the essence of who we are. Our deepest sense of self is the awareness of our own existence, which is independent of any of our senses, or anything eternal. If we think for a moment, we realize that we exist as chelek Elokah mima’al, a portion of the Divine Above (Iyov 31:2), a single minute revelation of true existence, which is the Oneness and Unity of Hashem. If true existence is Hashem’s Oneness, then what am I? I am the one who recognizes it. I am the one who concedes to it. Our true self is our power to thank. This is what we have which is truly, completely, our own.

To truly express thanks is to come to a place where we recognize who we really are, and this is where we find unbridled joy. As Rav Shapiro puts it, “awareness of essence is the essence of joy.” Wherever our true self radiates, there is joy. The Greeks tried to cut us off from the recognition of our essence, and therefore our ability to live in joyous thanks to our Creator.

Being able to give thanks to Hashem is an amazing bracha. In fact, at the end of the modim d’rabbanan, in the repetition of the silent Amidah, we thank Hashem for the ability to give thanks. The triumph of Chanukah was the reinstatement of our ability as a world to reply to our own creation with a thank you to Hashem. The final victory over the Greeks happens when we perceive our thank you to Hashem as the depth of true existence.

Every day of the year we thank Hashem. But on Chanukah, a door is opened for reclaiming our ability to say thank you to Hashem in a deeper way. “These are days of thanks,” these are the days when we have the power to become thankful people, children of a thankful nation, descendants of Yehudah, whose name means to thank. On Chanukah we can reclaim our own identity, our own essence, as the people who express thanks.

To put this into practice, just after candlelighting, while everyone is together, we ask everyone in the room to name one thing they are particularly thankful for at the moment. We’ve found this to be a very meaningful addition to our candlelighting.

I first heard this idea in an amazing shiur by Mrs. Shira Smiles, Chanuka: Acknowledging and Acclaiming, which you can find on YU Torah. She quotes Rav Shapiro’s sefer. To explore the idea more in depth see pages 124-128, 135-136, 168-170, 184-187, 200-203, 207-209, and 213.

Chanukah Day Five

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Day Five: Menorah on the Left, Mezuzah on the Right

The tremendous power of the menorah to shine its light into the world comes from its connection to our inner space. For this reason, Chazal tell us that the best place for the menorah is at our door, on the left side, opposite the mezuzah. In this way, the two mitzvot work together. The mezuzah, on our right when we enter our home, is a message for us as we go into our home. The menorah, on our right when we leave our house, is a message for us as we go out into the world.

The mezuzah is a wake-up call, a message to be alert when we enter our home. Crossing from the public domain of the street to the private domain over our home is not simply a matter of walking through the door. It is a complete change of state. In our home, we are connected to higher worlds. The power of our private domain comes from our ability within our home to connect to the private space of our soul. When we see the mezuzah on our doorway, we encounter both Hashem’s Unity and His love for us. It’s a reminder that we are at one with that reality. When we enter the doorway to our home, but we are also entering our own higher reality, the part of us that is connected to shamayim. Because of that connection, the words of Yaacov (Bereisheit 28:17) apply to every Jewish home “It is nothing but only the House of the Lord and this is the gateway to heaven.”

Public space has an entirely different spiritual reality. It is useful, purposeful space, where humanity can come together. It is the realm of science, natural law and Greek wisdom, but it is also the realm of the lowest common denominator. Halachically, the space of our private domain reaches up to the sky. The public domain does not rise higher than 10 tefachim, beyond that the air is just considered empty space.

Today, the private and public is often blurred. We walk into our homes, and we bring the outside world with us. This is the opposite of what it says about the Navi Shmuel (Berachos 10b; Shmuel I 7:17), that wherever he would go, his home was with him. His “dalet amot” kept him connected constantly to a higher reality.

We were created to be individuals, and our true individuality lies in our connection to the highest part of ourselves, the place we reach alone, the place where no one can join us. The mezuzah is a wake-up call, reminding us to nourish this part of ourselves, to illuminate our private world. The menorah reflects the light that we nurture within and allows it to shine outward into the world. The message from the Menorah, when we leave our home, is to take our personal light with us.  This is our triumph over the Greeks. It is the triumph of the private light over the public domain.  

To explore this idea further in the sefer, see pages 71-74.

Chanukah Day Four

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Day Four: Light vs. Hidden Light

Over the eight days of Chanukah we light 36 lights. The Rokeach (Hilchot Chanukah 225) tells us that these lights are not regular lights. The 36 lights correspond to the 36 hours, from the first Friday morning until after the first Shabbat, that the original, hidden light of creation was in use in this world. The Chanukah lights are a reflection of the original light of creation, and we light it in order to see the world in a different way.

Think for a moment about the amazing miracle of light. Light was the first thing Hashem created, it revealed the first moments of existence, and continues to reveal to us the world outside ourselves. For this reason, it is an almost universally used metaphor for knowledge. The light of this world, together with the miracle of our thinking mind, was given to us so that we could comprehend and perceive truth.

However, light has a limitation. It can only reveal to us the external structure of the world around us, but it can’t reveal to us essence. And so, I can look at my friend, and  I can see a warm smile, and wavy hair. I can even see kindness in the smile and intelligence in the eyes. But I cannot directly perceive her essence.

Our knowledge of our own existence is unique to ourselves and is inherent within us. We can’t get to it through any of our senses. Close your eyes. You know that you exist, but not through your senses or your mind. You can’t quantify it, but this knowledge is the entire basis of our life. Nothing can be more meaningful than the awareness of being; it is existence itself. Our deepest sense of self is the awareness that we are chelek Elokah mima’al, a portion of the Divine Above (Iyov 31:2) – a single minute revelation of true existence.

Chazal tell us that the Torah is light, and the Greeks are darkness. The great darkness of the Greeks was that they refused to accept the limitations of human senses and the human mind. Anything not grasped by our logic or our senses was not worthy of attention. This unfortunately included our connection to our deepest selves. This is the tragedy of the Greek exile.

The real difference between darkness and light is the difference between being trapped within ourselves and being able to see beyond ourselves. If we define reality only as what our limited mind can comprehend, then we remain trapped within ourselves. In darkness, the only thing you can see is yourself. On the other hand, if we use the light of the candles to connect to the inner essence of ourselves, we gift ourselves with the ability to reach beyond ourselves, and into the infinite expanse of a spiritual world. Joy is what follows naturally from being connected to our deeper selves.

The joy of Chaunukah, and our triumph over the Greeks, comes through our Chanukah candles. We look at the lights, but we aren’t allowed to use them to perceive the external world. They are a reflection of the original, hidden light of creation. They help us see the reality, that we are a spark of Godly revelation. We illuminate our world when we take the time to sit, to gaze at the lights, and reconnect to the essence of who we are.

To explore this idea further in the sefer, see pages 46, 115-117, 158-159, 222-223 and 236-237.

Chanukah Day Three

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Day Three: The Tragedy of the Tamei Oil

Chazal tells us that the miracle of Chanukah was born from a tragedy. The Greeks made all the oil in the Beit HaMikdash tamei, impure, except for one small container. This physical destruction reflected a much greater spiritual destruction.  Oil is connected by Chazal to the light of wisdom. Being tamei is the state of being closed off or darkened. From a spiritual perspective the Greeks brought tremendous darkness to the world. Greek philosophy closed our minds and constricted our ability to perceive our world correctly.

The contention of the Greek philosophers was that we can understand the source of the world examining the world as it appears now. The Rambam in Moreh Nevuchim 2:17 goes to great lengths to negate this idea, bringing as a mashal the fact that a human being, as he is being formed, spends nine months in an environment that would kill him in five minutes if he returned to it after his birth. Just as it is impossible to understand the conditions in the womb by looking at a grown person, it is impossible to understand the origins of our world, or the point of origin of the self, by looking at the way it exists today.  

Nevertheless, the Greeks were convinced that the world is eternal, and that all we need to know about our world can be understood and determined using the logic of our intellect and the evidence of our five senses. While this might seem like an abstract philosophical debate, the reality is that it cuts to the very nature of who we are. Greek philosophy denies that that point of origin of the world is Hashem. In doing so, they also deny our connection to our own personal point of origin, the essence of who we are, our soul.  

Through the stories of Alexander the Great in the Talmud, our chachamim gave us insight into the true appearance of a person who does not grasp his point of origin. In Tamid 32a Alexander finds the spring that emanates from Gan Eden, and follows it all the way to the entrance of Gan Eden. Once there, however, he finds the gates locked. Explains the Maharal, this is the story of Alexander’s life. He wanted to conquer everything, understand everything, and get to the root life. He succeeds tremendously. But there is a point at which he can get no further. He can smell the sweet smell of Gan Eden, but he can’t get in, because he has no connection there.

The Gemara continues that Alexander, not realizing this, raises his voice and demands, “Open the gate for me.” From inside the locked gate, a voice responded, “This is the gate of G-d; the righteous shall enter it.” (Tehillim 118:20). Frustrated, Alexander exclaims, “I too am a king; I am eminently important. Give me something.” He was asking for was some insight, some understanding about the point of origin of a person. And so, from inside the gate, they threw him a human skull with eyes of flesh and blood.

Wanting to know it’s worth, Alexander uses the tools at his disposal. He tries to measure it by  weighing it against all his gold and all his silver. The skull was heavier than it all. Needing answers, he goes to the Rabbis and asks, “What is this?” They answer, “A skull with an eye of flesh and blood, can never be satisfied.” What they meant was, since the human eye is insatiable, it outweighs all the gold and silver in the world. He says, “How do you know this?” They answer, “Take some dust and cover the eyes.” He does, and the skull is immediately outweighed.

The skull was meant to give Alexander insight into the nature of his own soul. He had searched the entire world, looking for the source of all things, and when he arrives there, what does he find? He finds a distorted mirror image of himself. Even though he has basically the entire world at his disposal, his eyes want and want and can never be satisfied. This is because he has done nothing to satisfy his point of origin.  The point of origin of a person is not of this world. It cannot be satisfied with gold and silver. Nothing outweighs what his eyes seek, because his eyes seek something different entirely. A person’s soul is from a higher realm, and can not be satisfied with the things of this world. The only way to satisfy it is to arrive back at our source, Gan Eden. Unfortunately, with no connection to his source, Alexander is left outside the gates.

The darkness of the Greeks is that they deny our connection to our point of origin, to our essence. Our response is the Chanukah lights. The lights of true wisdom are lit with shemen, oil. Shemen is connected to the number shmoneh, eight, the number that moves us out of the natural order of seven days a week. Just as when oil is mixed with other liquids, it always floats above them, so oil allows us to surpass our natural limitations and rise beyond them to perceive something higher.

Our soul comes from an eternal source, and it seeks eternality. The Kohen Gadol’s essential function was to connect our world to the higher, spiritual world above. When we light our chanukiot, we continue the task of the Kohen Gadol. Looking at the light of the menorah gives us the chance to connect to our point of origin and strengthen our connection to our higher selves.

To explore this idea further in the sefer, see pages 106-117 and 144-146.

Chanukah Day Two

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Day Two: The Burning Tower

Imagine a burning tower. The Midrash (Bereisheit Rabbah 39:1) tells us that this is the image that brought Avraham to his perception of Hashem. What is the deeper meaning of this image?

When something burns, it itself is the cause of its own destruction. Since it sustains the fire, it serves as the very energy that consumes it. For Avraham, the burning tower was a mashal for the entire world. Avraham saw the world as if it were on fire. Everything in the world, from the moment it is born or created, begins the process of its own demise. We burn our own resources in order to stay alive. The world, to Avraham, appeared to exist, and yet at the same time be in the process of consuming itself and transforming itself into nonexistence.

Faced with this contradiction, of a world that pursues its own destruction, Avraham came to a conclusion. There must be more to existence that what we can see. It’s true that the fire of life is constantly burning resources. But the purpose of that fire is not just to burn. The purpose of this fire is to burn resources in order to produce light. Existence does not end with our presence on this planet. We transform the world as we proceed toward a destiny beyond this world. 

Avraham’s vision was of a world unconstrained by the natural system of cause and effect. He understood that there is a system above nature which pushes the world to its destiny, and which uses the physical resources of this world to create spiritual light. Rav Shapiro tells us that the fundamental aspiration of everything in this world is to depart from itself and illuminate, to transform into light and revelation.

This is the driving force within each of us. Our nefesh, our soul, the life force of our body, is an acronym for Ner, lamp, Petilah, wick, and Shemen, oil. The function of our soul, which connects to the body, and exists together with it, is to draw upon the powers of the body and transform them into light, much like the wick draws the oil and transforms it into fire. When we look at the flames of the candles, we can think about how every physical aspect of our bodies and our world, is another resource we can use to create our beautiful, illuminating flame.

To explore this idea further in the sefer, see pages 40-41, 45, 134 and 224-225.