Chanuka

The Rabbis learned: When Adam saw the days getting shorter and shorter, he said, ‘woe is me, perhaps it is because I sinned that the world is becoming dark, and will return to chaos and disorder, and this is the death sentence that was decreed upon me from heaven’. He went and sat and fasted and prayed for eight days. When he saw the winter solstice arrive, and the days began getting longer and longer, he said, ‘it is just the way of the world’. He went and made an eight-day holiday. (Avoda Zara 8a)

The Rabbis learned: The Mitzva of Chanuka is the light, the person, and his home.
Rav Kahana said: Rav Natan bar Minyumi taught in the name of Rabbi Tanchum: The Chanuka light which was placed higher than twenty cubits is unacceptable… (Shabbat 22a-b)

‘…Is Unacceptable’ - Because the eye can not see it. (see Rashi’s explanation there)

The above halacha, about the permissible height of the Chanuka lights, is only one of many laws pertaining to the visibility of the Chanuka Menora. Strangely, and famously, this one is followed in the Talmud by another lesson, about the pit into which Joseph’s brothers threw him, taught by the same exact Sages: “And Rav Kahana said: Rav Natan bar Minyumi taught in the name of Rabbi Tanchum: What is meant by the verse [from this week's parsha, Vayeshev] ‘and the pit was empty, there was no water in it’? From the fact that it says ‘and the pit was empty’ , don’t I already know that ‘there was no water in it’? But, rather, what does it come to tell us? Water wasn’t in it, but snakes and scorpions were in it.” This is so famous because of the obvious question: what is this cute little drasha (well, not so cute for Joseph) about Joseph’s pit doing in the middle of a discussion of the laws of the Chanuka lights?

The most obvious answer is that, in fact, it has nothing to do with the topic, and is only put here because it is material taught by the same Rabbis who taught us the twenty-cubits-high law; the editors of the Talmud just couldn’t think of a better place to put it. The other well-known answer is that since we read the parsha of Vayeshev, which contains the Joseph story, every year on or around Chanuka, while talking about Chanuka the Rabbis of the Talmud thought of this little drasha from the parsha they were reading in synagogue that week. One problem with this answer is that in the time of the Talmud they had a different system of reading the Torah - in which it took three years rather than one year to finish it - and so this may well not have been their portion of the week around Chanuka time. So, we are left with this rather strange piece about the pit stuck in the middle of our Gemara about Chanukah.

What to do? What to do? Well, let’s take a closer look at the case of the empty pit. The point of the Midrash would seem to be that the very emptiness of the pit, which might be seen as a good thing - with no water there, Joseph won’t drown in it - is, in fact, a dangerous thing; the empty pit is the home of deadly, venomous animals. The story seems to be a warning against the apparent neutrality of emptiness: an empty pit looks harmless, but that lack of content (in this case, water) invites danger, and death. By extension, we are, perhaps, being told that nothing is really empty, neutral, null. The apparent emptiness, in fact, is fraught with danger. Emptiness, actually, is an illusion; it is really a full-ness of destructive energy.

It seems to me that we can now postulate a connection between the empty/not empty pit and the lights of Chanuka. Adam’s eight day winter solstice holiday, which clearly prefigures Chanuka, is about his response to the diminishing of the light, the darkening of his days. In both that and the Joseph story, the enemy is emptiness, lack, nothingness, which, rather than being neutral is, in fact, threatening; fraught with danger and intimations of oblivion. Adam feared the emptiness implied by the shrinking days, the possibility that the universe would return to a dark nothingness. Joseph’s empty pit illustrates the dangers of that very emptiness; nothingness is dangerous, frightening, a place which is in reality full of “snakes and scorpions”. The eight day holiday created by Adam celebrates a commitment against the dark, a commitment to life, and content, as opposed to an acceptance of nihilistic emptiness, which is not empty at all, but is, rather, full of negative tendencies. When, during the darkest days of the year, we light the Chanuka candles, and fill our homes with light, and at the same time remember the dark days of the Hellenistic attempt to wipe out Judaism, we are, in effect, making a claim about our commitment to life, to meaning, to content.

The natural world has a thanatotic pull, a tendency to death, darkness, chaos and meaninglessness. Certain political and philosophical systems are similar: their insistence on the lack of ultimate meaning, the lack of a moral center, their very celebration of emptiness, is not neutral at all but, like the pit into which Joseph was thrown, is actually crawling with the snakes and scorpions of moral and ethical nihilism, which would excuse, allow, and even encourage the basest of crimes, and the most reprehensible of behaviors.

By lighting the Menora we fight the darkness, which is, of course, simply an absence; the absence of light. We show that we are on the side of meaning, and content. We affirm our commitment to a life of light, of values, and of Maccabi-like dedication to those values. We want our Chanuka light to be seen by others, so that we may communicate to the world that our homes, and the people in them, have a message, and a belief system, and are not simply dark, empty shells. We know that an empty pit - a life without a moral center - is not empty at all. In reality, it harbors the snakes and scorpions of nihilistic, value-free, death-embracing behavior. It is that emptiness, that darkness, which we dispel when we light the Chanuka candles.

My dear Reb Shlomo Carlebach, tz’l, once taught us that the first time Hashem spoke He said “Let there be light”. We all need light. It is possible that right next to me is the greatest treasure, or the thing I want the most, but there is no light and so I cannot see it. Chanuka is the only holiday that takes place only at night. We all have to go through a lot of darkness before we get to the real light. Night is the time for secrets; it is the time for whispers. It is the time of dreams. In the month of Kislev, nine out of the ten dreams mentioned in the Torah (all in Sefer Breishit) are read in the parshiot of Vayetse, Vayeshev and Meketz. So Kislev is the month of dreams. We were learning that according to the Holy Reb Rizner, the month of Cheshvan is the month of whispering. Well, perhaps it is the month of whispering while awake and Kislev is the month of the whispering in our dreams.

In order to sleep a person must feel safe, you must feel surrounded. The letter of the month of Kislev is a “Samech” – a perfect circle. In order to embrace someone I create a “Samech” around them – I am really telling them that I am ready to hold them up. I will not let them fall. A woman walks around the chuppa 7 times building the walls of her home around her husband, telling him she will surround him in their life together, she will hold him up and the man replies by giving her a ring – a samech – to tell her that he too will hold her up, he will surround her with his love and caring.

We light the Chanuka lights by our door to shine our light out to everyone in the street – all those lonely people who have not yet found their own soul, their own home. Chanuka in the Gemara is “eish oobeito” – a man and his house. You have to be together to light your candles. You cannot do it on your own. We need to come together, to make peace between husband and wife, parents and children, us and the world to really light our Chanuka lights.

Rav Kook once asked a deep question – why is the blessing for the Chanuka lights actually in the singular – ner chanuka – the candle of Chanuka and not the candles of Chanuka? He answers that the lights of Chanuka represent all the blessings of enlightenment that Am Yisrael has given to the world. He says that all of our potential spiritual gifts are included in the dedication of the Holy Temple on Chanuka – Torah, prophecy, wisdom, justice and so on. In certain situations it may seem that the lights each need their own emphasis in order to do its work. Sometimes these divisions can lead to distances between people and even strife. Ultimately we will see that all lights, the light of each and every one of our souls all have a commonality – they are really a single light. So we make a blessing on the candle of Chanuka because we understand that someday soon we will actually see that all our lights are all one.

Reb Avraham Eiger says there are two ways of seeing in this world. One way is with your eyes open and one way is with your eyes closed. Now, really seeing with your eyes open is not a simple thing. Many of us are easily deluded by what we think we see and cannot easily grasp what there is to be seen. The Holy Ishbitzer says that Yitzchak Avinu could not see but he was in Eretz Yisrael and Moshe Rabbeinu was given the gift to see Eretz Yisrael but he could not go in. So what does it mean to see with your eyes closed? We close our eyes to see that which is not yet here, that which we are longing for the most. Reb Shlomo added that on Chanuka Hashem gives us a gift that when we sit by our Chanuka lights and watch them we can see in their light that which we are longing for the most. When we sit and look into the eyes of our soul mate, Hashem allows us a glimpse to see reflected back in their eyes that which we are longing for.

I bless all of us we should merit to really see what is in front of us – who we are, who our spouses are and who our children are and what Hashem wants of us. And I bless us all to tune into what are the things we are longing for the most. May Hashem answer all our prayers and help us bring about the complete Redemption!

Happy Chanuka