Does Lighting Chanukah Candles Make You Religious?

You know, many [music] people light candles every year. Maybe sometimes they eat sukanote. Maybe sometimes they just focus on the chocolate. [music] Maybe sometimes they eat lotkas. The question is, [music] does lighting the candles on Kanuka make you religious? It's a trick question. Answer is no. Why? Because the vast majority of Jewish people today do not keep Shabbat, but many of them light the candles for Kanuka. I was one of them for many, many years, most of my life. I don't remember any year in my entire life that I didn't light candles. But I do remember many many years hopefully that I didn't keep Shabbat and I didn't keep mitzvot and I didn't learn to and I wasn't unique. In fact, the vast majority of our brothers and sisters are the same way. They like the uh holiday of Kanuka much more than most holidays if not the most out of all the holidays. It almost has become the symbol of Judaism in today's world. Now the question is why do most Jews love Kanuka so much? You cannot say it's a sufanote because technically you can go and make donuts all year. You cannot say it's the candles because we have Shabbat candles. Latkas. We eat fried stuff all year round. Someone asked once, "What's the uh connection between Kanuka and Sufanot?" Now, say the connection between Kanuka and Sufanote is the commemoration of the oil. Jokesters like to say that there's a different connection. Different connection. Jokesters say there's the best connection. What's the best connection? The Ariza, the love of Al Shalom, or even the Aliza says that um says that the power of Kanuka is more powerful than any other holiday that we have throughout the year where even though gets closer to the nation throughout all of the holidays and Kanuka, it's a special time. It's a special time of special time of nim of of miracles, special time of different things to happen in a person's life. If you're praying for something, whether it's to have a kid or it's to uh overcome a major obstacle, get married, illnesses, shalom, money issues, this is the time to overcome all of those obstacles. And uh the Shabbat is the uh place where we actually learn about and that's why some make the connection that one of the is to have extra and extraord during the time of if anyone ever violated Shabbat. Now question is what's the connection between this powerful holiday? So says this gulot and the power of kanuka if you do it right if you have kavana every time you light the candles if you don't stingy out on the uh on the lamp you get something with oil. Not that it's that expensive anyway, but uh you get oil instead of getting these wax candles you get at the 99 cent store sometimes. You know, if you light it in a bit, things like that, no problem. But in your own house, you spend a half a million dollar in the house, spend a couple of dollars on the uh on oil. That's the way it's supposed to be. If you do it right, the blessings of kanuka can come all year round. If you eat right, the extra fat you're going to gain is also going to stay all year round. >> So says that you have to start sometimes start uh a shield with a with a joke. I think this is the second time in history. So the question is though on a serious note uh what are we celebrating now? Who wants to volunteer some ideas? Sutton usually has ideas. No, Sutton, give me something. >> Okay, so Sutton started the idea. The rest of you are still asleep. If it wasn't Sutton, I think I would cancel the lectures because he's the only one awake here. But anyway, son told us gave us a nice nice he says the Greeks imam came desecrated the beta mikdash theashim after miraculously beating them destroying them starting with a dozen people 13 people destroyed an army of millions you go tell that to Donald Trump he'll tell you listen there's a many mental inst institutions in every state in the country. I built some of them if you want. Yeah. 13 people going to beat millions. No, come on. How much can you believe? People don't want to believe stuff like this. There's a as a side note. There's a very famous story in the Tanakh. In the Tanakh, it's not even the oral Torah, it's the written Torah, which means that whether you're a Jew, Christian, or Arab, Muslim, you have to believe this. Yet the vast majority of people either don't know it or don't believe it. What's the story? Story is was one of the righteous kings of Israel. At his time there was the Assyrians. The Assyrians were the most powerful people that lived in their generation. They literally were a war machine that was demolishing anything in their sight. One day they decided there's a place called Yahushaline when all these Jews are there. Uh they don't want to comply with our rules. Let's just destroy them. Let's destroy them. Why not on the way? You know, it's like on the way. What's uh Jerusalem in size in comparison to Syria? Just compare let's say for example America versus let's say Tahiti. Most of you maybe you don't even know what Tahiti is. There is like six people. They're the rest of them are tourists. That's how you compare the Assyrians to Jewish as far as people, manpower, as far as weapons and so on. But the Assyrian king says, "Let's go destroy." So the Tanakh the Tanakh says he brought 185,000 soldiers. Some say much more. It was 185,000 leaders which each one of them had thousands of soldiers. Needless to say, it was a lot of people. A lot of people. They come to the outskirts of Yusham. Yamam wasn't as big as it is today. It's tiny. Meaning if these people, whether it's 185,000 or millions, doesn't make a difference. If they just spit, the land drowns. Forget the swords and the the everything else. just just spit saliva that the whole place drowns. The Tanakh says says to I did what you wanted me to do. I'm going to sleep now. You take care of the war. You wanted me to teach Torah. Every single child from the age of six and up knows the entire Torah by heart. No other generation in history had something like this. to such an extent the Torah says wanted to make it's the only person in the entire Torah that actually says wanted to make no one else made such kiru no one six-year-old knows the entire Torah by heart today six-year-olds don't know al bet unless my wife is your teacher and Mik then you know about six years older than that you don't got much hope in this generation six years old they know the entire Torah so now says toem I'm going to sleep meaning he's not even fighting he's not like hey guys let's get it together we'll pray we'll bring some swords maybe some bombs we got it we got this guys we got this nothing I'm going to sleep he goes to sleep They wake up in the morning. They see hundreds of thousands of bodies dead corpses all over the ground everywhere of not the Jews shalom. The entire army the entire Assyrian army demolished to nothing. Only thing that's left is son and his sons. That's it. Everyone else is dead. Torah says how did this happen? [snorts] Killed everybody. Two seconds. Malik doesn't need uh too much uh weapons. Killed everybody. One second. There's no LIKE SWORD FIGHT. AH. OH. AH. OH, HE GOT ME. NO. NONE OF THAT STUFF. There's no movie scene. There's no movie scene. If they made a movie out of this, it would be the worst seller in history. Why? The movie would end in half a second. Everybody dies. That's it. Finished. So now this is in the Torah. The Jews obviously supposed to believe this. The Christians say they believe in a Torah. They call it Old Testament, but nonetheless, they don't say it's fake testament. Say it's Old Testament, meaning they believe it. The Arabs also say also they they call it Torah. That's their beginning. But yet, the vast majority of people do not believe it. You know what they believe? Do you know what they because everyone knows this is a historical account, meaning they definitely died. No one is saying these people didn't die. Everybody believes they died, but they're having trouble with the angel part. They're saying maybe they died. Historians even today in Yale University, in different books that were written say maybe it was a plague. A plague killed everybody overnight. How come it didn't hit and his sons? How come it didn't hit? How come nobody else heard about it? How come the history books don't write any of this stuff? But I'll give you the best one. Plague wasn't in it. Famous historian, scholar scholar says, "No, no, it wasn't a plague. It wasn't a plague. The entire army of the most powerful army in the world was destroyed by desert mice. Desert mice attacked them and killed everybody. This is what this is the most common opinion today. Mice mice killed the most powerful army. It's like saying, "Oh, yeah, you know the uh China China just lost the war. So who who beat them?" Oh, it was the uh you know the all the mice they eat. The mice went fight fought back. The the the mice fought back. Said, "No, we're not taking us anymore. Stop eating us." This is what people believe. What does this show us about today's generation? It shows us that it's easier for us to believe in mice than it is to believe in a kadosh. So now we go back to Satan. Satan said we are celebrating that we found oil after the Greeks desecrated the beta mikdash. We came in there and we saw that there was oil but the oil wasn't kosher if you will wasn't kosher if you will only one ken of oil was kosher which was enough to light the manora for one day which by the way just so you know the term kanukia which is what most people refer to to the manora that you have in your house is a modern term the Torah calls the kanukia manora That's really what you're supposed to call. You're not supposed to call it kanukia. You could call kanukia. It's not a sin, but it's actually called a manora. It's not called kanuk. Kanukia is more of a modern day term. But anyway, so go back and forth about why he just use the other oil. Why? Since when does oil have to be stamped by the co? Since when does oil have kosher not kosher? and they go back and forth about this whole thing, but we're not going to go into all of that. We're still focused on Okay, so he found the oil. Now, I'm going to ask you guys a second question. I'm going ask Sen a second question. Maybe you guys could help him this time because he helped you the first time. Give him back something. Now, let's say that's the reason we found the oil. What's more amazing? Finding oil in a place that's supposed to be full of oil. I mean mdash is huge. Manura was not it wasn't the first time they ever lit it. They lit it many times. So you happen to find oil that wasn't touched. It's not like the uh Greeks had some special uh uh obsession with oil or something. I don't know that from any of the books. So one canister wasn't touched. The other ones you could have used anyway, by the way. But let's say one of them wasn't touched. Okay, big deal. Is that more amazing than 13 people destroying millions? >> No. >> Even in a video game. Even in a video game, it'd be more amazing if you beat the entire army by yourself than if you found one canister of oil somewhere under some uh thing that you have, right? I mean, you beat the whole team by yourself. What's the millions of people? So, why do we celebrate the oil and not the war? No. Who attended last week's shield? You sleepy people. I gave you the answer last week. Why were you celebrating the oil and not the war? We just 13 people beat millions. You take one elephant, he could step on all 13 people. You know how big elephants are? That's how they they fought wars in those days. You go on an elephant, it's like a tank. You could shoot spears until you turn blue in your face. doesn't do anything. Why is 13 people beating millions most powerful army in the world? Why is that not not celebrated? Why are we celebrating? We found some oil. was a spiritual battle. >> Explain explain to us. >> The war was physical because we have to go and fight. >> The war is physical and the the war is spiritual. >> It was a spiritual battle. was to >> wait. So the war was spiritual, not physical. >> The war was physical. >> Okay. >> Right. >> Okay. So let me let me reword what Netanel just told us in a way that all of us could understand. In so many words, Netanel said that really the only reason why we won the physical war is because of our spiritual connection to and therefore we celebrate the spiritual aspect of the which is the connection to the oil. Now that answers one part of the question that answers why we celebrate the spirituality. We celebrate Kanuka the oil because of the connection to the spirituality. That's the reason why why 13 obviously there's no logical human reason that we could explain how 13 people could beat millions. It's only Yadashem just like the angel killed 185,000 in in less than a second. Same thing 13 people are beating millions. It's the same miracles. No, it's no different for Hashem. So, that gives us the reason of why we're celebrating the oil, but it still doesn't give us the reason of why we're not celebrating the war. So, you gave us half an answer. Thank you very much. >> The war is half the battle. >> War is half the battle. It still doesn't give me the Why are we not celebrating it? How come we're not all walking around dressed like with some swords? You know, maybe like, you know, they have Star Wars. Why have start hitting each OTHER WITH SWORDS? TA ta ta you know like I don't know a second poem >> or a costume. >> It was obviously a miracle that didn't do it himself. >> No, >> it was Hashem that did it. >> Hashem did it. You're just follow. You're just copying your brother. That's a just plagiarism. >> He just said it. It's your brother. You know how to steal his answer. He already said it. I was a witness. No, hold on. Let me give him the rest of the answer. I'm just busting his chops. No, >> it's uh I mean saying uh doing celebrating the war would be like okay we celebrating something that you didn't do >> okay >> for and the fact that it's uh the oil was celebrated we saw that we actually standing for something which is we standing for Hashem we're doing something in the we're not trying to just do it basically just do the bare minimum just doing it and making sure it's pure and for the sake of having make sure that it's >> so Kanan is telling us that technically what we have here is we want yes there's a physical war but we want it spiritually but it has something to do with our spirituality. The reason why we're not celebrating the physical aspect of it is because of the spiritual aspect of it. Okay. Well, just like the tanel gave us an answer, he gave us another answer. We'll reward it a little bit and see what the prehadash says. The prehadash and also the and many others tell us many times over the reason why we celebrate the spirituality aspect of it is because that's the only thing that we won. The physical war was still losing. [music] So anyone that is [music] looking for ways to uh better his situation, protect himself, protect his family from the horrific situation [music] that's around us, the terrorism and everything else, they must understand that the only way is to increase to [music] more Torah, more life.