Transcript
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[music]
Shalom everyone. As we are approaching
Kaneka, I want to share with you an
interesting thought. The Gomorrah and
Masaka Shabas when it discusses how we
fulfill the mitzvah of Kaneka
surprisingly gives us three different
ways of doing it.
>> [music]
>> There is basic, there is mahadrin, more
beautiful, and then there's mahadrin,
minahadrin, the beautiful of the
beautiful. The most basic, and I have to
admit I've never seen anyone do this, is
to simply light one candle every single
night. So no matter how large your
family, on the first night of Kaneka,
you light one candle and even on the
eighth night of Kaneka, you light one
candle. That is basic. A person is
actually yay their mitzvah with that.
[music]
But then if you want to do mahadrin, you
wanted to do the mitzvah in a more
beautiful way. So then there's a second
option in which you light a candle for
every member of your family. Now once
again that's not what we do. That would
mean for example if I have a family of
six people including myself, night one I
light six and night eight I light six.
Now then there is a third level mahadrin
minahadrin the most beautiful of the
beautiful and that of course is based on
the days of kaneka and we have a famous
argument between b shami and basil where
b shami says you start with eight and
you go down 876 basil says you start
with one and you go up [music] and as is
normally the case in an argument between
b shame and basil we follow the like
basil parallel and that is virtually the
universal min of Kali Israel. Everybody
even people who are not religious but
they are attracted to the Kaneka ritual
always count according to the days of
Khaneka and they need to understand that
not only are they yay the mitzvah but
they're doing the mitzvah mahadin
minahadrin the most beautiful of
beautiful the obvious question is why is
there such an emphasis on the concept of
beauty in connection with the holiday of
Kaneka it is indeed the case that every
single mitzvah There is something called
hedra mitzvah. We try to do a mitzvah in
the most beautiful way possible. Okay,
that's true. That's true with lul love
sitist fillin. That's called hed
mitzvah. But khaneka is way way beyond
that. We have multiple levels. We have
mahadrin in which you have one candle
for every member of your family. Then we
have mahadran mahadrin according to the
days. And indeed if you could be O with
one candle and you're lighting so many
more candles that is way beyond the
halos of Peter mitzvah which normally
never entail going beyond a certain
percentage. There are a number of
answers to this question. Uh in the time
we have I just want to share one brief
answer. If you remember after the flood
when Noah got drunk [music] and Noak's
nakedness was exposed and his son Kam
did shameful things to his father. So
the two other brothers, Shame and Ye,
they walked backwards with a blanket
over their shoulders and they covered
their father's nakedness.
And because of this, Noah gave them a
braha. And the particular braha that was
given to ye
is
God should show beauty to [snorts]
the and he will dwell in the tents of
shame. In English that sounds bad but
shame refers to the son of Nelsh
offers a beautiful explanation
regarding what this braha is. Humanity
has primarily two distinct missions.
The mission of shame from whom the
Jewish people come is to spread
godliness and kaduca throughout the
world. They bear the mission of bringing
hakadesh boru into our lives.
There is a secondary mission of creating
beauty, aesthetics, philosophy,
literature, music, poetry, art.
Essentially, what Noah envisioned was a
certain division of labor in which shame
would be given the godly mission of
spirituality.
And Yees, who of course was the father
of Greek [music] of Yavan, was given the
mission of aesthetics and beauty and
culture. And what Noah is saying is
aesthetics, beauty and culture are
legitimate and proper and appropriate,
but only when they are subordinate
to the tense of Shem. Meaning to say
when the Kak [snorts] of Yavan Yees
dwells in the tent of Shem and
acknowledges that all of its beauty must
be harnessed towards the enhancement of
God's greatness in God's name, then that
beauty becomes legitimate and has a
place. God has given beauty to Ephesus
which is Yavan. [music] When it dwells
in the tense of monotheistic
service of God when it remains separate
from that it then becomes oppressive,
destructive and egotistical. [music]
The story of Kanekah is precisely the
confrontation
between the mission of Shem, godliness,
as reflected in the lives of the Mcabes
and the Jewish people versus Yavan which
indeed had in the ancient world the
highest level of culture, aesthetics,
art, poetry, music, philosophy, science
and Antiocos and the Ivanim of the time
totally disassociated ated their culture
and their aesthetics from any submission
to a kadesh boru. It then became
destructive, divisive,
it became evil
because the beauty of Yavan is only when
it dwells in the tents of Shim. So if
Kaneka celebrates victory over Yavan,
victory over Yavan does not mean taking
the beauty of Yavan and smashing it like
the Taliban smashed all of the artifacts
from the Middle Ages.
Conquering Yavan means taking the
positivities of Yavan, the beauty, and
harnessing them to avodas Hashem. And
thus it is precisely the holiday of
Kaneka
which is a commemoration of the victory
of light over darkness of holiness over
tuma in which we don't disparage [music]
beauty we embrace it we celebrate it we
appropriate it [music] for a vote hashem
and that is why precisely the holiday of
kaneka there is such an emphasis on the
ex what might be regarded as the
external alities [music]
of hedor. Take the beauty, use it,
benefit from it, enjoy it, and then
elevate it [music] into the service of
God.
May we be zoka to take these lessons to
heart.
[music]
