(Special thanks to R' Erez Gazit, R' Bravender, R' Natan, R' Raz, and Jerry Mander)
Happy Shabbat Chanukah!
The final, eternal night of "Zot Chanukah" is upon us, and I'm still wondering what the real miracle is. The military victory of a small few against the powerful Hellenists was impressive, but it's not mentioned in the Gemara. If this were the real miracle wouldn't Chazal talk about it? What we do find in the Gemara and the books of halakhah (regulations) is the touching story of the little bit of oil that could. The role of Chazal is not to tell us what physically happened, but to point out the deeper aspect of things, to reveal what this festival is all about. Now if that's all there is to the miracle of Chanukah, we're gonna have a hard time explaining our "miracles" to the non-Jews who ask about the lights in our windows. If we add some context to our struggle against the Greeks, the oil story will shine a lot brighter. I think that with the focus on this miracle of the oil, the sages are alluding to a very deep thing that happened in the end of the Maccabee's war. The secret behind the miracle of the oil is the one that ultimately destroyed the Greeks attack on our light.
The Greeks were not out to destroy the physical existence of Am Yisrael. This is why the sage's miracle is not about physical victory. We could have won the war and still lost the War. The part of the Jews that the Hellenists wanted to take and couldn't was our understanding of how holiness resides in the particular.
The central Jewish tenet that God took all that Ein Sof (Endless) holiness and embedded it within physical existence implies that physicality does not end with "top physical condition," rather physicality transcends into Divine levels of unseen existence. The Divine world and physical world meet. The forms are for accessing and affecting. The Greeks couldn't destroy the Jewish man at his Shabbat table testifying to the creation of the world as the will of God, and couldn't eliminate Am Yisrael's witnessing to this truth through modifying physical forms to God's will, for example, in brit mila (circumcision).
Celebration of each individual's connection to the infinite ONE is everywhere in our tradition. We see this in the halakhot of lighting candles. To simply fulfill the mitzvah, all you really need to do is to light one light each night-one candle on the first night, one on the second, one on the third, all the way through. But the better-more beautiful and exacting-way to fulfill the mitzvah is to go an extra step and show the particular night it is when you're lighting-lighting one on the first night, two on the second, three on the third, and so on. Chanukah and the story about the oil are about pushing ourselves to be even more, about this eight-candles, beyond-the-minimum level of thinking. We chose to take on the Greeks, even though we were small in number; we chose to use only pure oil when we retook the Temple, even though halakhah permitted us to use impure; and we can choose to spend time each night watching the lights.
The Greeks tried to get us to put down that intensity of religion, that choice to push beyond. The Jewish way upset their sense that the Divine is separate and their sense that this world is finite. Greece falls when you and I take each moment as an opportunity for more. If I light my candles and run off, I might as well have used the impure oil and not seen the miracle. Rebbe Nachman (Torah 60) writes about how awareness of Hashem leads endless moments. Our Torah, the crown and heart of our people, directs us toward this approach to finding Hashem in our lives.
The Greeks were happy to have our god on their pantheon and our people in their empire-as long as we didn't stick out in any way, or think ourselves different. On Chanukah, each of us must strive to bring out the holiness that can only shine through their particular version of God's Jew. It really is "this little light of mine…" If I don't see the true light within me and within our tradition, I'll always be willing to change for others. The challenging, beautiful (Tiferet), and empowering spiritual path of a Jew is to be the one on the block who takes the personal light outside into the public domain. For me to do this, it needs to be uniquely mine-deeply alive and integrated into my personal expression of Hashem's creation. For you, it needs to be uniquely yours. That personal connection is what brings out conviction and the holy chutzpa that the world so needs now.
This is a dangerous place--individualizing the national light. It's easier to say that it was a miracle of military victory, but the oil story begs my personal explanation. Halakhah understands the spiritual sensitivity of this venture. In times of danger, as per custom outside of Israel, we don't light the Chanukah menorah outside. In addition, the light of the Chanukah menorah is prohibited for use, rather we solely look at it. If we are bringing down that highest light, it has to remain holy and not be subject to being "used."
So back to the miracle, I think the deepest depth of this Chag (holiday) lies in the reason why Hashem made a miracle when there was NO need for it. It's permissible to use impure oil at a time when no pure oil is found, but the Jews who defeated the Greeks were obstinate about what's really important. Imagine we come out of a war and our first thought is to return to the service of Hashem, to bringing in the light from the darkness. The insistence on acting with that little bit of pure, rather than just "getting the job done" with the impure, turns a view of creation as "resources" into an opportunity to access the Source. This miracle was a kiss from God to His children for having become rededicated and true expressions of His will through thick and thin…May we too continue to shine…
Shaul David Judelman
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Shaul David Judelman currently resides in Jerusalem. After growing up amongst the Douglas Firs of Seattle, Washington, he came to Israel on a quest for Judaism alive in its land. He spent six years in the Bat Ayin Yeshiva Rabbinical program and now teaches at Yeshivat Simchat Shlomo while working on several different environmental initiatives in Jerusalem. He is the founder and coordinator of Simchat Shlomo’s Eco-Activist Beit Midrash, a program offering holistic in-depth Torah study around issues of ecology. |