This is the parsha of dreams and also the parsha of harsh reality. Yosef dreams of being king, but instead he is stripped of everything, and thrown into a pit by his own brothers. This pit, the Torah tells us, is “empty with no water in it.” Surprisingly, we hear more about this pit in the Gemara, amidst its discussion of Chanukah. On Shabbat 22a, we learn from R’ Nosson bar Manyumi that if we light our chanukiya too high, if it is outside our field of vision, then it is invalid. The Gemara then brings another insight in the name of R’ Nosson. Why must the Torah tell us that the pit Yosef was thrown into had no water in it? Surely, we can discern this from the fact that the pit was empty? The Torah is hinting to us, teaches R’ Nosson, that although there was no water in the pit, there were snakes and scorpions in abundance.

The mention of this pit in the midst of the discussion of Chanukah seems almost random. But of course, there is nothing random in the Gemara. There is much more to this pit than is apparent at first glance. The Zohar (3:279a) teaches that this pit is the pit into which the ox, Yosef, fell (see Shemot 21:33 and Devarim 33:17). The description of Yosef in the pit is a description of us and our situation in the fourth exile. This spiritual pit we are in is filled with two types of evil forces: snakes and scorpions. The snake, the primordial deceiver, is called nachash in Hebrew. Nachash relates to the word chush, sensation. This is the voice that tells us to follow our physical desires and act in whatever way feels most pleasing in the moment. The Hebrew name for scorpion, akrav, can be read as a contraction of the two words aker rav, meaning uproot the Rabbis. This is an attack on the essentials of everything we believe in.

In Berachot 33a we learn that if we are in the middle of prayer and discover that there is a snake coiled at our heel, we should continue praying. But if we discover a scorpion at our heels, we must stop. Rav Shapiro explains that inappropriate thoughts and desires do not need to separate us from Hashem. But if we are plagued by scorpions, by heresy and doubt about whether Hashem exists, we need to stop, and address that. “One can stand before the Creator completely exposed but one cannot stand before Him and not stand before Him. (p.333)”

Our exile is an exile filled with snakes and scorpions, because our exile is a continuation of the third exile, the Greek Exile. When Alexander the Great conquered the known world, he not only conquered it physically, but he also spread the ideology of his tutor, Aristotle, to every place he went. If our exile is compared to a pit, the exile under Greece was compared to a flood. Greek wisdom and ideology flooded the world. As a result of this the true shape of the world was destroyed, just as it was at the time of the original flood.

Aristotle taught that only what we can perceive with our senses and our intellect is real. Human intellect is the bottom line, the determiner of everything real. If we can not feel it, or understand it, it does not exist. If we accept what he teaches, we wipe out the spiritual reality of our world. Our higher selves, our soul, and the soul of the world, are all erased. Greece, Rome and the Western Culture they brought into existence bring with them a spiritual flood as real and devastating as the flood in the time of Noach.

In response to the original flood, the generation of the Tower of Bavel went in search of a valley, which like a pit reflects the diminished status of man, and that is what they found (Bereisheit 11:2). Avraham, on the other hand, went looking for a mountain and that is what he found (Bereisheit 22:2). To be standing in a pit means to be standing in a place where we feel low. The flood of Greek wisdom, continued though the rulership of Rome, has pushed us into a pit where we often only see a limited version of ourselves and our world.  When our point of origin is a sense of lack, a feeling of lowliness, a pit of emptiness, our lives will fill up quickly with snakes and scorpions.

If we want to attain something more, our point of origin has to be higher. Noach’s flood only ended when the dove came back with the olive branch in his mouth. The Gemara tells us that at the time of the Greek Empire, we were like the dove (Berachot 53b) The dove, the yonah, has all the letters of Yavan, Greece, in its name, with the addition of the letter hey, which is a sign of Hashem’s presence. During the Greek Empire, we too were saved through the olive, in this case the oil of the Chanukah lights.

From the perspective of Western Culture, there was no sense in anything the Chashmonaim did. They had only enough oil for only a single day. What sense was there in lighting a continual light for only a single day? What sense is there at all in lighting a light that is hidden within the Bet HaMikdash, where no one can see it? Chanukah only makes sense when we see our reality as expanded, and ourselves as expanded. If we are standing in the pit that Rav Nosson tells us is filled with snakes and scorpions, our lifeline out is to light our Chanukah candles the way Rav Nosson tells us to, so that the light of the Chanukiah is in our field of vision and informs our perception of our world. The only way out of the pit is to reach for transcendence, and to illuminate our world with the otherworldly.

Western culture diminishes us. It is a pit that limits our existence to our bodies and minds and erases our soul. The Chanukah lights are a reminder that we can choose not to be diminished. Yosef, as we know, did not stay in the pit for very long. We are not required to stay there either. We can light our Chanukah candles and open ourselves up to experiencing the true beauty and transcendence of our world.