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.

Chanukah Day One

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Day One: Each Moment is a New Moment

If we would take a moment to look at the beautiful flames of our Chanukiah with a child’s eyes, then that single flame of the first night will appear to be one, continuous entity. The reality, however, is that a flame does not exist in the way a table does. Instead of being a continuous entity, a flame is a continuous burn. At any given moment, the flame we see is not the flame that was there a moment before. The fire of a moment ago, and the oil that sustained it, is now gone. And the fire we see now will burn out in a moment, making way for the fire of the next moment, which has not yet arrived. A single flame is actually a continuous series of flames. Its endurance is an illusion.

This flame is a visual lesson about the nature of our world. Like a flame, our world gives the impression of existing and enduring. That, in fact, is exactly how the Greeks perceived our world: as a circular, never-ending series of cause and effect. They believed fully in the idea that “There is nothing new under the sun (Kohelet 1:9),” and if we could fully know and understand all the natural causes in the world, there would be no surprises. There was no room for a Creator or his miracles in their eternal, ever revolving world.

We do not view life this way. Life is like a wellspring, which the Torah calls “living waters.” Living waters are constantly welling forth, without rest and without oldness. To be alive in a Torah sense is to be in a state of constant renewal. In contrast, the Torah compares life lived in a state of habit to sleeping.  Sleeping, as we know, is 1/60 of death. Rav Shapiro goes so far as to compare a person sleeping through life to an animal convulsing in the throes of death. It is moving, but the question of whether it is really alive or dead is very much on the table.

On Chanukah we emphatically reject the Greek vision of life as a never-ending continuous cycle, with each moment just more of the same. The Chanukah lights teach us that each moment is a moment of recreation. The life that Hashem gave us is a life of living waters. It is newness, and it wells forth constantly. We are invited to be awake to the infinite possibilities of every moment. Each moment is a new, separate, gift from Hashem. And each breath we take is a statement that Hashem wants us to be here, right now.

To explore this idea further in the sefer, see pages 36-37, 44-45, 70-71, and 129-130.

Parshat Vayishlach

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Standing Alone and Connected

The stage is set for the greatest battle of Yaacov’s life with three simple words. “And Yaacov was left alone.” In his comments to this week’s parsha, Rav Schorr reveals some of the tremendous depth that exists in these three words. On one level, these are the words that always begin any major spiritual test. As we mentioned in connection with parshat Lech Lecha, the nature of a test is that Hashem removes some level of His constant help and closeness, which leaves room for us to stand on our own and develop our own strength. This means that each of us faces our spiritual tests in a state of aloneness.

We are not always comfortable with being alone. The Gemara (Ta’anit 23a) expresses the general feeling on the topic with the phrase, “Either companionship or death.” Without companionship, we feel lost. Many of us, constantly under assault from social media and streaming content don’t even know the meaning of being alone. Alone just seems sad and lonely. But there is another, spiritual way of being alone.  

Yaacov Aveinu mastered the spiritual level of standing alone, and he paved the way for us to learn it, too.  To stand alone as Yaacov stood alone is to stand in reflection of the middah of Hashem. Bereisheit Rabbah 77 notes that just as it says about Hashem, “And Hashem will stand alone on that day (Yishayahu 2:17), it says about Yaacov, “And Yaacov was left alone.” What does it mean, the Hashem stands alone? Hashem exists, in all His Unfathomable, Inexpressible Greatness, completely independent of anything else. To reflect this means to connect to that aspect of ourselves which remains unchanging, and is independent of our circumstances. To stand alone is to stand in connection to the deepest part of ourselves, the part that never changes, the soul which keeps us constantly connected to Hashem.

Yaacov’s middah was Emet, the middah of connecting to truth, which does not change. Yaacov was able to retain his connection to the awareness of the Oneness of Hashem, completely  independent of any situation in which he found himself. The fight against Eisav’s angel was a fight over whether Yaacov could maintain this level, “alone,” even when faced with the concentrated essence of everything Eisav stood for. When Yaacov emerged victorious, it was not only that his essence was changed. We gained as well. The spiritual victories of the Avot are our spiritual inheritance.  We now carry within us the ability to tap into this spiritual level of “alone.” Balaam says of us (Bamidbar 23:9), “it is a nation that will dwell in solitude.” And Moshe blesses us (Devarim 33:28), “Thus Israel will dwell secure, solitary, in the likeness of Yaacov.”

The test of this middah on a national level came during the time of Chanukah. The battle with the Greeks was a battle over the essence of who we are. We can gain insight into its nature by looking at its roots in the Torah: the narrative of Shem, ancestor of the Jews, and Yafet, ancestor of the Greeks.  In Parshat Noach (Bereisheit 9:18-27) Shem and Yafet are informed by their brother Ham that their father Noach is intoxicated and uncovered in his tent. They both take a garment, and carefully cover their father. But Rashi (9:23) says that their reward is very different. Shem is rewarded with tzitzit, while Yafet is rewarded with burial for his sons during the wars before Moshiach. Why is there a different reward for the same action?

The answer is, it was not the same action at all, even though it looked the same. And this is essence of the difference between Bnei Yisrael and Yavan, Greece. Chazal call the wisdom of Yavan “external wisdom.” Yavan had wise men who were experts in all manner of logic and science, math and athletics. Everything that could be quantified and rationalized was important in their world. They defined reality by what they could perceive and quantify. But they did not believe that there was a spiritual reality that existed above the natural order of logic and reason. We, clearly, disagree. Hashem creates reality as a form within a form, and there is always a spiritual core inside the physical husk, even if we can’t immediately see it.

The difference in the actions of Shem and Yafet lays in the area that could not be seen. It was a difference of intent. Yafet was concerned with the external nature of the event, the impropriety of seeing his father in such a drunken state. He was rewarded with burial, which is a covering for the physical body. Shem covered his father because of kivud Av, and out of a concern for kavod habriot. He was rewarded with tzitzit, which is a covering for the soul within the body. This is the root of the two paths of these two nations.  The Greek path is one natural physical and intellectual accomplishment, which negates that which lies outside the realm of what the mind can comprehend. The Jewish path is the path of connection to the pnemiut, the inner essence of life.

              Looking at this a little more deeply, Rav Schorr introduces the idea in chazal that each of the four Kingdoms of our exile relates to a different one of the four most serious sins, and Greece relates to the sin of murder. At first glance it seems odd to connect the Greek culture of beauty and wisdom with murder. But there is great depth that is hidden here.  In Hebrew, the term used for murder is shefichat damim, which literally means spilling blood.  As we know, the blood is the life of the person. Murder is the separation of the soul, the inner essence of the person, from their body. But there is more than one way to murder someone. The Greeks denied the reality of the soul, the inner life of the person. Through the denial of the reality of the soul, Greek culture created the greatest separation that could exist between body and soul while the person was still alive in this world.  No less than murder, this was a drawing out of the lifeblood of the person, our inner essence. A person who remains detached from his inner essence is not really alive.

              What the Greeks were attempting at the time of Chanukah was murder on a national level. In every instance, they wanted to maintain the outer hull of Jewish life, but bleed it dry of its inner essence. The Greeks translated the Written Torah into Greek, and accorded it honor, but denied its inner life, the Oral Torah. They were happy to join us in the Temple, but they defiled the holiness of all the oil. They were “michallel” the Beit Hamikdah, they defiled it by removing it’s inner kedusha, and turning it into something like a “chalal,” a corpse, void and empty within.   

              The polar opposite of this is Yaacov, the father about whom we say, “Yaacov Avinu didn’t die.” Yaacov is called “Mekor Hachayim,” the source of life.  This is connected to his  middah of emet. For something to be true, it means that the external reality reflects and is completely aligned with the internal reality. Falsehood occurs when there is disparity between the outward appearance and the internal reality. Yaacov’s middah was the ability to connect completely all the external aspects of this world to their internal truth. This was how Yaacov did battle with Eisav.  “And Yaacov was left alone.” He was alone, but very much with himself, connected to his soul and connected to Hashem.

We can walk in Yaacov’s footsteps. The essence of Greek culture is still very much alive today. Chanukah is an excellent time, spiritually, to revitalize ourselves. It’s a great time to reacquaint ourselves with the joy and power that comes from being alone in its truest sense. This means being alone with the deep and unlimited self we carry within us, which is our constant and intimate connection to Hashem.