Chanukah

Dear friends,

Who likes being number two?

Candle number one was heroic. The Maccabees found the pure oil in the balagan of pagan idols and sacred stones.

The second night was potentially anti-climactic.

It’s not. There’s something about the endurance of the light that has its own message. I was thinking about this tonight. It’s the second night of Chanukah. The light of the two small flames on the menorah is something special – not quite stuck in Now, but not quite of the great expanse called Then. My husband has a video of the Bostoner Rebbe’s father, who was his original Rebbe, lighting his menorah. The songs are ancient, not the kind of music you hear this century, but not in the Neverland of history either. 

The darkness also isn’t really just Then, it’s also Now. The problem with the Greeks was not that they were savage and aggressive. They didn’t even really hate us as people. Their issue was the irrelevance of religion. A kind of darkness that, if anything, is spreading – from the UN and the NY times to the college campuses to subtle entrance into our hearts.

Irrelevance?

Irrelevance is the big enemy. Try to interest some young students – they are not so much resistant as they are bored by the very idea of hearing religious ideas. To someone living in today’s erase society, religion is somewhere between ‘Out’ and ‘A Threat’. It belongs to the reactionaries and the racists. It has nothing to say to someone who thinks. Or at least thinks whatever the progressives are selling today. What disturbed the Greeks (as is recorded in al hanissim, the prayer added on Chanukah in all three prayers and in benching) is that they wanted us to forget Hashem’s Torah and to move us past observing His statutes. The specific mitzvos were not the issue. The issue was living in the presence of Hashem.
The tricky part is that somewhere inside virtually everyone is a deep and abiding need for meaning, and something, inexplicable, called conscience. You find yourself attracted to people who are caring, courageous, morally strong, honest, transcendent, loyal, and dedicated. These traits are all spiritual – they don’t get you anywhere materially, but they are what you value the most in the people you love.

And in yourself.

Because you and the people you love (and those you don’t) are in the Divine image. When you look at the two tablets upon which the Ten Commandments were written, you will notice that one side concerns your relationship to Hashem, and the other to the people you will encounter in life. When you match them up (as the Abarbanel did) you will find interesting parallels. “I am Hashem your G-d” is the first commandment. The sixth one, which is the first one on the other side, is “Don’t murder.” What this tells you is that the natural abhorrence you feel towards murder has a root. It is that humans have souls. When society puts G-d underground by making His presence so unPC that it isn’t really okay to mention Him, murder goes up. The reason isn’t that people aren’t afraid of hell. It’s because human life loses its value when you can look at a person with a heart and soul and see neither. Murder is momentarily empowering. When that means everything to you, you can forget that there is more to you than stress, frustration, anger, fear, and vulnerability. You forget your life has meaning that has eternal reverberations, and that you are happiest when you love, care, and give. Seeking harmony and inner peace doesn’t work without something more than You with a capital Y in the picture. The Greeks were threatened by the idea of God because it would rob them of the empowerment that comes from being the winner and all-time champion of the contest that matters the most.

Shabbos puts Hashem in time.
Bris milah puts Him in the human body.
Rosh chodesh gives you a calendar in which you celebrate His presence in the world by having holidays that commemorate His involvement in our lives.

The two candles are there.  In you.

The flames have outlived their half-hour lifespan. The light and the gratitude for being part of this stays with you. You get up to this kind of light when you say modeh ani, and go to sleep with it when you say shema. When you see old people who have lived lives of faith it comes to you, and when you see little gan kids you see it in their eyes. The seminary girls have it when they head out for chessed afternoons and when they study the texts that only speak to their minds and hearts. The guy in the pizza store who has a picture of Rav Ovadia right over his cash register has it. The folks in the supermarket who look for the kashrus endorsements that make their already kosher food cost at least a third more than their non-kosher buddies have it.

It’s all the light of the second candle.

A word from EY:               Over the years I hear women wishing they could go back to seminary. My daughter Devora is organizing a trip for women, which is not seminary in the ordinary sense, but a spiritual vacation in the Land. The information is below, and the flyer can be found here. 

Those of you who can’t go can just be jealous.

Love,
Tziporah

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