Mindflex- Judaism Light- Chanukah HO HO HO!- Rabbi Simcha Barnett

hi my name's rabbi simco barnett very happy to be um giving a class for project inspire i happened to be the educational director of project inspire and usually i let other people give the classes but i was very connected to the holiday of hanukkah so i wanted to share some of my insights about it because i think they might be a little bit unique so the title of the mini-series um is hanukkah did we really win the war now that might seem like a bit of a ridiculous question to ask did we really win the war because we're celebrating hanukkah we've been celebrating hanukkah for the last couple of thousand years and everyone knows the story even on a very simple level is that the greeks and the jews went to war it was a war of religious persecution uh they wanted us to stop practicing our tradition we fought over it and it was kind of a suicide mission imagine that the jews very weak scholarly not really you know assembled in an army but having a lot of experience with it and they overcame one of the greatest superpowers of the world i mean it's a stunning it's like the vietnamese times you know a hundred thousand and yet that was you know when they beat american award it was staggering and it's significant and if america taking the gloves off everyone knows they wouldn't have won the war so the greeks did take the gloves off and they came to absolutely decimate us yet we prevailed so the high point of the story is we went into the temple we were able to fight to jerusalem we cleared the greeks from the temple and we were able to re-dedicate the temple and the miracle occurred when we actually lit the monarch for the first time story goes that there were thousands of jugs of oil but they were all defiled all cracked open it was one jug of pure oil let that menorah that was supposed to last for eight days so either it was supposed to last for a day which was normal a normal supply of oil and it lasted eight days and we celebrate hanukkah based on that miracle ever since now it's very interesting to note that the war between the greeks and the jews really lasted about 25 years most people don't even know that because the miracle of the oil the rededication of the temple happened in year two year two three pretty much the beginning of the war so you might really ask the question why was hanukkah celebrated then shouldn't you know wouldn't you think that the the holiday which would declare our final victory over the greeks would take place at the at the end of the 25 years whenever that was and whatever that date was you know imagine america you know not celebrating the end of world war ii it celebrated like the adult bulge i mean that wouldn't make any sense if that's what we celebrate because to the jewish people it wasn't about winning the war militarily it wasn't about driving the greeks out um it was really just about being able to be a committed jew who was able to serve as god that we were able to do from year two onward so that was what we celebrate because to the jew being forced into diaspora in the bullets as we call it in hebrew means there's a there's a disconnection from god now most of the times in the history of the jewish people exiles that we faced were actually sent out of the land of israel the first exile was bubble babylonia and it morphed into persia the last exile the fourth was rome but in between babylon and persia and rome there exists the greek exile now it's fascinating because you would say where was the exile we were still in the land of israel and we even still had a temple in jerusalem and the answer is a very deep point that exile doesn't just mean we're off of our land we don't have a building called the temple it means that we're disconnected from our god on different a variety of levels so if we're living in the land of israel yet we're disconnected from god we are in exile and you might even say it's the deeper exile than if we're off the land because when you're off the land you know you're off the land and you've got to get back you want to get back you're yearning to get back but what about being on the land and living as a as if you were gentile off the land that's a very very deep exile now this is really gives you the opening to how maybe we won the battle against the greeks 2 000 years ago but in reality maybe the greeks are winning the war because that war that battle those battles raged on to this very day so i grew up a secular jew uh in long island new york and went to hebrew school i reform hebrew school i had friends went to reform went to conservative it kind of divided what was most convenient for for most of us it was i remember one of my friends hopped from the conservative they went to the reform it wasn't typically a choice a choice having to do with ideology as much as social grouping social setting and i remember being being jewish on hanukkah the hanukkah season the christmas season was a very difficult thing to be i mean you had great kind of cultural um songs and movies and cartoons all about christmas you know all the things on television which sort of captivating to a young kid ruled the red nose reindeer frosty the snowman it's a wonderful life and as you got closer and closer to eczema's got more and more depressed and hanukkah actually became somewhat significant for quote-unquote secular jews like now i why i say secular jews because even though i went to the temple i was bar mitzvahed maybe i went to temple two or three times a year that's typically unless you're very religious within the context of reform or conservative or reconstructionist you really most jews go to synagogue a couple times a year it's not a daily or weekly occurrence so we call ourselves secular jews yet hanukkah was important why was it important so my take on it was it was only important because of xmas so the jewish kids wouldn't walk around the press they get one president we get eight presents you know presents jews can do many jews can spend i remember when i was older my 20s i guess you know non-jewish people would ask me sometimes questions about judaism about the holidays and i remember people asking me is what is hanukkah and i would tell chronic is really a very minor nothing holiday and it really is just i would give them this thesis it really is just uh so jewish kids wouldn't be depressed uh during the holiday season and then when i became religious a little bit later exposed to judaism i was in my late 20s and i saw the incredible depth of hanukkah and purim by the way two rabbinic holidays have tremendous depth in our mystical tradition a lot of hints and foundations in the torah itself and just just beautiful depth that weaves throughout our entire tradition when i came into contact with that i was very embarrassed i almost felt like i had to do you know juva like onion kipper i had to repent because um i belittled basically the incredible religious value in this holiday called hanukkah and that was kind of my what i would call judaism light you know my particular class i was judaism light ho ho ho meaning in the judaism light world which i lived in i think that the the dividing line was are you connected to god or not connected to god a secular jew in my world was like a bagels and locks bagels in a smear-type jewel in other words we did surface kind of the cultural types of things that jews might do and that was it it wasn't connected to spirituality it wasn't connected to god you know a lot of young jews that get disaffected and go to study in buddhism and going to hinduism in in asia and india they're looking for spirituality and they think judaism is bereft of spirituality because that was missing from our background you know we did the surface level the beautiful synagogue perhaps but it didn't really have that spiritual depth only almost like a body and a soul it was the body we we had a judaism which was bodily oriented and it didn't touch down to something deeper and connected now that was the struggle between jews and the greeks between the hellenists and the staunch religionists it was a battle between what kind of jews are we going to be you know i don't know a lot of a lot of uh people don't really know i didn't really know this that the greeks really were allied with jews who were assimilated they thought we could live kind of jews at home and greeks in the world we were greek greek clothing we'll go in the gymnasium we'll we'll we'll we'll do our sports naked the way the greeks did and we'll have the best of both worlds now this sort of should ring a bell because this is similar to the kind of judaism that developed in germany in the 1800s a good jew in the home but all of our you know outside the home we're going to do in a very secular fashion meaning don't take god don't take spirituality very seriously what always had defined judaism before that time and even post that time and i would call it now those dudes who are committed jews now they can be you can be a committed reformed you a committee conservative do or and of course a committed orthodox jew but the real definition of are you committed are are you living in life with god in the center or are you living a life with man in the center with a little kind of like you know kind of coding of culture jewish tradition it doesn't really affect me on a day-to-day basis and i remember when i when i got married very interesting thing happens when you're married particularly in the religious tradition i didn't know my wife for for years we didn't live together we got engaged and we got married and up to that point i it was me and there was other people and i thought about other people and i would help other people and do things with other people but my my focus was really on me single people are focused on themselves i remember as i got married something interesting happened my wife and later my kids my little my little ones they kind of like occupied a place in my mindset i go out and all of a sudden when i made decisions i made decisions not only based on me what i wanted to do but they encroached on my decisions and initially i remember i was joking my wife i said oh you i carry around my head i was like how'd you get there i know you you like to be together but you know this is a little much you know and um we joked about it but i realized she'd become a felt presence in my life my kids my wife i felt you carry them around in your mind now i realize that is how we're supposed to have a relationship with god god's not just this thing this you know very abstract concept we do our job is to bring heaven and earth together and make god a felt presence in my life meaning if i'm gonna make a decision a practical decision about whether to do something right wrong ethical non-ethical a mitzvah don't do the mitzvah when i have god in my consciousness kind of like this relationship almost like my father my mother when i have them in my mind i tend to act differently when i'm disconnected from those figures those truths right which sort of set you straight father a mother god sets you straight know they know you they see you for what you are but they want the best for you that was the battle between the greeks and the dukes so if you look at the way judaism has i would say evolved over the last few thousand years it's become more and more greek the same way the greeks had statues of their gods so to speak in the temple they put a temple of zeus in our temple when they before we get them out of the temple mount they were happy with us having the written laws matter of fact they translated it ptolemy translated it the the bible into greek called the septuagint he thought it was great jewish culture put on the books of wisdom that all cultures have but there's nothing enduring about judaism there's nothing connecting you to a higher reality their viewpoint was man is homocentric now and they said before they didn't they didn't even exile us they said be hellenist be good jews in the home so to speak and greeks in the marketplace when we refused to do so they went to war to obliterate us so the kind of judaism we have today is really that secular what i would call it really secular judaism as a matter of fact i meet a lot of people you know i mean a lot of myself or reformed jews alternative jews when you ask you talk to people about their religiosity their spirituality often i hear this comment i hear this comment i'm very reformed now i don't even know if that doesn't mean that they're very active in their reformed synagogue you would think that that's what it meant they'd be the president they read from the torah very reform means i'm very irreligious think about that for a minute think about that for a minute secular judaism quote unquote which is an acceptable you know branch of judaism the way the regular person relates to it is that it's very irreligious it's kind of very surface judaism cultural judaism i think the height i'm not trying to pick on any tradition i'm just saying it tells a lot about the psychology of jews i am very irreligious and i even call that by a one of the movements the height of this kind of almost an oxymoron attitude that we have a few years ago i saw in the jerusalem post an article that left my mouth open i i was laborgastic and the article headline the headline of the article was first secular rabbi to be ordained in israel first secular rabbi to be ordained in israel and i looked at it and i said oh my the greeks have surely won or are winning this battle the hutzpah the hutzpah or the it's not even huts but it's the the um lack of understanding to realize secular and rabbi they don't go in the same sentence if someone understood judaism that it was theo said not again i'm not saying believe it don't believe it but it always represented a connection to god god was in the center so to have to even think you can have a judaism that's quote unquote secular means that you have no concept of what judaism represented now the greeks would be saying this is the greatest thing in the world as i said before if i can come on to something called secular judaism and i can have a secular rabbi i could think of being jewish and practicing the jewish tradition but it's totally divorced from god which was the reason why judaism started to begin with that is the furthest thing away from what judaism has represented and what the maccabees fought and died for you know five of those sons fought and after those 25 years only one was left chimo it was also that we could be jews committed jews faithful jews spiritual jews that is what that's what the war between israel and the greeks were all about you know today you can ask if you ask someone what do you think they'd be likely to respond you ask a jew who's not knowledgeable a normal jew 90 of the jewish people and you say who is jesus's mother i'll tell you right away mary you ask them who is moses's mother how many of you think would have the right answer you'll have it for those of you may or may not know if i asked someone to name three of the gospels or the disciples of jesus and i asked him to name three of the tribes of israel how many would know the tribes of israel gospels they would get right away the date of xmas everyone knows that do they know the jewish ate hanukkah very few people know that it's it's really unbelie and and the irony too is it doesn't even bother us imagine you know jewish people are so obsessed with knowledge education and being in the know you know if a kid doesn't go to college what a shonda to the uh to the average secular jewish family very educational oriented very high in professional circles jews are in the know in all different areas but in judaism most jews are not in the know and what's really fascinating is they're not embarrassed not to be in the know not at all now i mean they don't go into temple thinking oh my gosh i should really know more i should it doesn't bother them at all if they didn't know how to write they didn't know mathematics it would bother them to no end but in terms of judaism doesn't bother us at all that's how that's how far away and disconnected most of us are from our tradition it even goes it's so ironic and and again it shows how the greeks are winning this war i meet i've met so many um young people and older people in federation of different federations of jewish federations throughout the united states and these people are committed to the jewish people committed to israel community the jewish people uga it's crowd and i meant leaders young leadership older leadership and it was obvious to me for most of them not all of them many many many of them in high leadership positions had no understanding of judaism no understanding of judaism and one of my friends ken spiro is historian he had a great line he said to one of these fellows at one point he said if you're representing the jewish people shouldn't you be aware of what the jewish people represents you've got to learn about the jewish people you gotta learn about our torah to know how to lead us where to lead us and they look at them like interesting you know you would think it's obvious right that's that's my that's my point we're so comfortable in in practicing judaism we're not agriculture in a gentile way let's put it that way judaism as gentiles as judaism like we're so um comfortable in that space i don't even know what's the problem now let's get to the jewish philosophy which can kind of like unpack this war between the greeks the jews in a way which i think we're going to want to repair the breach a direction to repair the breach so we'll go back to the beginning i said before judaism is incredibly deep and hanukkah is connected to the beginning stories of the torah so right in the beginning second part of the torah is the story of noah we all know the story of noah the world had been corrupted he built the he built the ark the teva and his sons and all of humanity that were going to restart the world was with him on that ark so when he uh the rain subsided and they went out noah planted a vineyard he ended up getting drunk an unfortunate incident happened and the aftermath of the story is he blesses two of his sons and the third son becomes a servant to the first two so he had noah had three sons shame yathas and ham three sons three sons of noah ham is the one that becomes a servant shame it becomes the father of the jewish people we descend from shame that son of noah and the greeks descend from yathas so the greeks descended from ephesus jewish people descend from shame so in the torah nine genesis gracious 9 26 noah noah is speaking he said blessed is hashem god the god of shame may god this is the blessing he gives to yephis and shame may god expand yeah but he will dwell in the tense of shame god's giving no it no rather his prophet is giving a blessing to jefferson he's saying god should extend you he should make you great he should make you an amazing civilization but just one thing you have to dwell your place is to use your culture use your creativity use your brains use your brilliance to further the goals of shame to dwell in the tense of shame now the jewish people understand of shame typically reference our study halls and our synagogues meaning our jewish tradition our jewish wisdom greeks and jews have a partnership that really was the ultimate was the ideal relationship between the jewish people and greeks now shimsure phil hirsch who lived about 150 years ago he he says it in such a beautiful way he quotes the verdicts the lord is giving yes and he says the lord has given the ephesus beauty but let him reside in the tents of shame in the ephesus this is the greeks come together reason and a desire for the spiritual yephes reaches his peak in the culture of yavan greece until today these two remain israel and yavin representing sinai and humanism respectively yephis beautifies the world from an aesthetic point of view while shem the ancestors of the jewish people enlighten the world from an ethical moral perspective ephesus prepares the ground for the mission of shem first let a person be imbued with the ideas of the beautiful and the good in the spirit of the greeks and then afterwards let him perceive to be imbued with that which is still more beautiful and elevated and harmonious the holy the godly beautiful we're supposed to work together we actually almost begin where yetis leaves off it really is kind of like that directional of of the the physical leading to the spiritual heaven and earth on a ladder connected one to the other that's the ultimate goal but what happened and what was kind of prophesied in the torah that was going to happen there's another verse in voracious in the story before and the verse um writing this right in the beginning of the torah and the earth was desolate and void and darkness was on the face of the deep there were four descriptions here the earth was desolate it's called touhou and dark vohu and then it says and hosha and darkness alpine tahom was on the face of the beast the medrash two thousand years ago says that these represent four exiled exiles that the jewish people are going to go through the first exile touhou that's babylon remember it the first temple was destroyed in which people were exiled to babylon that empire then got was taken over by persia so that was the first exile of the jewish people then we went back to israel we built the second temple and during that era of the second temple is the greek exile the last one panic the home the depths the real depths that refers to rome but this third exile refers to greece as they mentioned before it's an exile on the land of israel so it was a strange exile we were exiled from our religion not from our land and not even from our temple there's most more from our beliefs this exile though is referred to in a special way it's referred to it's darkness why the measure says because the greeks darkened the eyes of israel of the jewish people through its decrees it darkened our eyes through its decrees now if you had to pick any of the four empires and ascribe one of those different words to that empire the last word you would use for the greeks would be darkness maybe rome their brutality maybe babylon you know you the they're in their sensuality and power but you wouldn't call greece darkness if anything you call greece light it's dazzled the world through its light through its science through philosophy architecture art the last thing you would say is that the greeks darken the eyes of israel but the majority mentions it's through their decrees so let's take a look at what they did for a second and i think you'll see a beautiful an idea symbol that will bring this idea home so they are lord torah right or study because torah study connected us to god they didn't want that it could be a book on itself we don't mind that but none of this talmud stuff you know we're not going to let you do that we're not going to let you get into the real deep stuff of torah forget it yeah lord shabbat that's understandable very very central practice of judaism they outlawed circumcision now circumcision is interesting because the to the greeks the body was holy so circumcision was a mutilation of the perfection of mankind we of course said that it was really to um transcend the physicality we take off a piece of physicality almost saying that we curb our connection to the physical in service of something higher the spiritual they thought it was an aberration it was a terrible thing mutilating the human body that stacked religious in greek terms they outlawed circumcision the circumcision we know is the stamp of god's god on our flesh very central shabbat central was the last thing they outlined that was the the observance of russia is sanctifying the new moon in the torah before the modern era we have done this with the calendar each month the jews are on a lunar calendar and we were it used to be instituted sanctified exciting two jews would have to come from jerusalem who said i saw the new moon sliver of the new moon that became the first day of the month once that was in position then we set our calendar for the next month we did it month by month by month when we were kicked out of the land of israel we went to a calendar and now we've used that calendar to this very big because we don't have a temple again once god willing we have a temple we'll go back to the system as it was before so if i asked you you know you put together shabbat circumcision mila right in rush countries those three practices and obviously coverage study they said which one of these four practices doesn't fit in terms of its centrality in terms of its message and its meaning i think all of us would say rashford you know okay so you're saying the calendar i mean that it it was interesting it's the first myths forgiven the jewish people we were given that mitzvah to sanctify the new moon in egypt as we were becoming a people so it's very interesting mitzvah first myths were given to the jewish people but you wouldn't say it was more significant than around the level of significance with shabbat with circumcision and with torah learning the this myth is very interesting though because the whole idea that the dudes use the lunar calendar much in our literature actually compares the jews to the moon the jews are looked at as the levana the moon now many beautiful ideas come from the moon i think one of the most beautiful is that it reinvents itself every month it waxes and wanes just as you think the moon is gone it's done it died so to speak there's a rebirth there's a renewal now that concept you know we're familiar with that as modern people but the jewish people brought that concept a concept of innovation a concept of renewal a concept of the idea that you could you could transcend the boundaries the limitations that you might have been under but most civilizations if you were you're born a slave you're not a slave you were born a surf in the middle ages you would die sir people did not transcend their limitations their social station in life but the jews brought this concept into the world which the western world grabbed onto that you could transcend limitations you could become something you could you could change for the better return repent come back to who you really are supposed to be that is a beautiful concept inherent in the idea of the moon the other concept is it represents it represents innovation it represents creating something from nothing invention it's all this idea of now as you know what was the original the original invention the original creation of something from nothing it was god's creation of the world god in his kindness gave human beings that power the power to innovate the power to create now now really it's very interesting though because whenever we innovate whenever we create something say we we achieve the incredible feat of space travel are we really inventing something from nothing or are we uncovering truths that already exist in the universe that are already there the these the science that made space travel possible when we get the rocket ship and all the prototypes right and it actually works all we've really done is confirmed the five six seven ideas that make space travel possible in other words those were truths in the universe in the world that god created something from nothing but it gives us an ability to share in that unfolding of these discoveries that's but as just as our ability to be mechadesh to re to bring something out of nothing in the world the moon does the same thing vis-a-vis the sun a person that's uneducated does not know where the light of the moon comes from things can mistakenly think that the light of the moon comes from the moon itself someone that has a broader perspective knows that the moon is merely reflecting the light of the sun in this analogy the moon is the jewish people the sun is god the jews roll in the world to use our god-given reason rationality our capacity to analyze and to be creative and to be mercadesh to bring into the world truths that we learn from god emanate that are sourced in god and we're the connector the jewish people are supposed to be a light of the nations we're supposed to reflect the light of god in the world and be a living witness to the truth of that high reality from which everything comes that source that holy source that one source and my rashiva berkowitz says the greeks it's not that they went too far they didn't go far enough man's greatness is that he can transcend his limitations his reason his rationality and he can be holy and he can connect the mysteries into truths that are far far beyond him so what did the greeks do they cut off the moon so to speak from the sun they said look at my brilliance look at my dazzling ability to rule the world to dominate the world science and technology we don't need god we have it all figured out all we have to do is use our human reasoning that happened you know by the way the renaissance greeks they started they died and then they were resurrected in the renaissance renaissance means rebirth go back to the classic greek and roman foundations of the world the renaissance led to the enlightenment enlightenment in other words we were barbarians before now we're enlightened what about god what are the jewish people we never lacked for enlightenment it was a great story you know jews um always pray for the governments from which where they live for the welfare of the government always and that you know in russia germany in that area in europe borders changed an awful lot and uh one of the great the one of the great rabbis there was the balatanya one of the bhavaji rabbis and a jewish community like on the border of russia and um europe romania asked the bola tanya who should we pray for should we pray for the tsar or should we pray for napoleon who was sweeping across europe and he will be in here any day who should we pray for what's better for the jewish people now if you know if you had a you know 100 dudes and asked them they probably would have said you know 98 of them would have said napoleon represents enlightenment he represents they represent reason they even gave jews a place in um trades in the government that was never available to them before it was a new it was a a hope that brought tremendous light with it so the czar act i'm sorry robert actually said to pray for the czar not for napoleon and they didn't understand it but in light of what happened through history he said the tsar you know exactly what he stands for you're a jew he's the czar he's brutal you might have to go through a few programs but you're not going to lose your very identity he said the enlightenment the jewish people very seductive the jewish people's achilles heal his wisdom how bad can it be the enlightenment those are all jewish values and they really are they're jewish what i would call judaism light but it's surface level and little by little we didn't know it but we lost our connection to god and to torah because of the enlightenment because greek values re-emerged and they won the war all through germany it spread judaism changed and that's where the reform movement was created when i was growing up i thought it was america i had no idea it was it was germany you know it was germany and that it was exported from america so it was it was totally because of the enlightenment they cannot depict on anybody i really believe they had the interest of jewish people in mind they felt you know we have a possibility of getting out of persecution here all you have to do is be good jews in the home and good germans outside and everything will be great they're offering us a place at the table no one's ever offered that to us before so it's very seductive and the the deduction of america and the 20s and the 30s and trying to get jobs in america and having to lose a job every week because of shabbat and and the cultural echo was it's old-fashioned those values you have you know you don't want to be the green horn from eastern europe get with it be enlightened change your name yada yada and the assimilation train began again we didn't have our great rabbis with us it's this is not a fault of anybody it's just really being clear about where we are because where we are is going to help us get we want to go so many people have lamented me you know over the years their children i gave them i gave them everything and they assimilated i gave them everything and they're so far away from the tradition and i can't help thinking yes you gave them everything in the material world the only thing you didn't give them is what you had in the home you grew up with now the home they grew up with they couldn't replicate because that home they grew up in their grandparents were also in that home and they brought in the tradition in that home and they brought that connection to that home so they had a different connection to judaism that wasn't possible for their children unless they were very proactive about it and i guess i would say the jews who are making it kind of making it today in america in a jewish context i mean in a jewish way it prolacted about judaism because if you're not proactive about judaism you the inexorable tide is to move away that's what simulation means you would simulate you move away the goal of a growing and a jew is a jew that's more connected today than he was yesterday it's all about connection that's the idea so when the greeks outlawed rosh what they were saying is the moon has its own light we're going to shine that light now it's the greatest form of darkness because it's a darkness masquerading as light the darkness of rome and brutality and christians trying to convert us or at the uh at the the point of burning in the um in spain in 1492 that is clear that's brutality jews aren't going to become christian because they know it's the other team but you're giving me something that looks like judaism that smells like judaism the wisdom of judaism someone's told me it's like it's a very good analogy um if you get a synthetic potato it's beautiful it's not dirt it's not gnarly it's not it's much nicer than a potato that's in the earth in the ground that you pull out you look at both behaviors you'd say ah i'm going with the newfangled synthetic potato only problem is synthetic potato it might taste good it might satisfy your hunger but if you take a bit of it you put it back in the ground you can't grow another potato or the authentic original is going to grow the other potato i just want to tell you one other concept i kind of think it's fascinating here as well yvonne just to see how deep this holly is the word yvonne it's three parallel lines in the hebrew of that word the unit is a very small line the vowel is a little bit longer line and the note is a little bit longer like three small parallel lines that is grease in a nutshell you can measure it it's linear but it's very it's only the surface level it's a linear it's a line it's one part of a plane no depth to it there's no inner dimension to it not only that because there's no inner dimension because there's no nuance and no depth none of the lines connect to any other lines there's no connection made physical body without a soul is no connection the soul in the body doesn't connect we don't connect to other people because a real connection the soul connection and obviously then we can't connect to god jewish people on the other hand the word for one of the words for jerusalem is zion that's where zionism comes from theon now tzione has those same three letters that greece had the the righteous person the person in jewish history that was called the sonic known as assadic was yosef hadzad yo safe is is a prototype now if you look back in the bible the amazing thing about yosef the beautiful thing about among many other things by the way he was the most successful jew in the entire world if if anybody asks you who is the most successful jew in the world it's not rothschild it's not the right men's it's not you know anyone not even rebbe who's personally very incredibly rich person the most successful jew ever was joseph joseph held the treasury for the superpower of the world egypt at the time everywhere joseph went he went to he first got to egypt he was in the house of the prince potiphar he ran the entire house then he was thrown in jail even in jail he ran the entire jail everything that joseph put his hand on turned to gold he wasn't a spiritual you wouldn't think guy in a ivory tower divorced from the world he devised the plan to save europe he was the guy who can make anything go anything work in this world yet what joseph was known for he was known for connecting all that success to god he was like that moon when everybody said joseph you're amazing you're amazing the bible testifies and said god was with him said god is with him all he does and rasheed the commentary know god was with him so definitively and he and rashid says because joseph always had god on his licks lips he was shagor bepiv he asked joseph how are how is the harvest going he said ezra hashem with god's help it's going to be great joseph are you going to ramses today to oversee the distribution of the grain hashem with the will of god i'm going there how's everything going joseph baru hashem everything's going great you know he who connected everything he did to god ask the adult bowl the jewish people it's not to take credit like the moon not about me no i'm just a vessel i'm just a vessel for god and i want to tell you a story even it's hard to take away these trappings of our my bagels and schmear upbringing you know it's hard i tell you when i when i decided i was able to become religious i loved it because i loved the wisdom knowledge i couldn't believe that it was like the biggest greatest secret that i couldn't believe was even kept from you all these years i mean how deep our tradition was how much was available and initially i wasn't going to practice he wasn't even thinking in terms of was i going to do the mitzvah i wasn't even thinking of that but you couldn't deny if you were a thinking person if you wanted full life you couldn't deny the incredible wisdom that was inherent in the torah i remember the only thing that i mean one of the things that got me given the hebrew gb's i guess i would say is that when you would ask people how they're doing everything everything was baroque thank god thank god thank god it was like a mantra now besides the fact i found it was quite unoriginal because everybody said that was the you know it was like the lingo that's the weather hashem and i would it bothered me and i was trying to say to myself why does it bother me you know i believe in god why does it bother me and i realize every uh you know on the weekends really early in the morning a young kid you wake up your parents are still asleep and nothing to do in those days it wasn't 50 million channels there was like seven channels so there were these televangelists you know tammy baker jimmy swagger you know billy graham and they were good speakers so even though i wasn't interested and they would always invoke god's name hallelujah praise the lord you know and i realized that i think a lot of jews have this the only thing we know is we're not christian we know jesus is the other team we know that so i think it bothered me very deeply when people would say it reminded me of the evangelical christians in my body my wiring that was the other team and i realized what an incredible desecration of god's name that is we're supposed to be the people comfortable with god on our own comfortable with who we are expressing that to the world being like the nations and i was embarrassed about it and i was becoming religious alex all the more so can you believe all the jews out there i can understand why they have such an ambivalent relationship to god why they're so like afraid to get even close it's just real love hate it's the greeks unfortunately my friends are winning the war so what's the antidote kaneka is all about it comes from the word dedication we rededicated the temple we rededicated it and the idea is that we it infuses us every year in the midst of this darkness and this jew light thing that's darkness but there's the capacity to rededicate ourselves to that light which is in that candle that candle in them itself is inert it's dark the fuel source it's greek and we light it and we say no no no there's a higher reality there's something inside of you at spiritual potential that connected something greater and it converts into a flame and this is a season where it will burst into the flame we have to take a step we have to increase our we have to kindle some light rabbis mentioned that that light is the torah it's the light of torah that's the greatest way we can connect these two worlds because what is torah it's taking our reason our man-oriented reason and rationality that god gave us and it's connecting us to something greater that's the candle have the the reason you have man's oil so to speak our power and if we light that candle that oil spirituality that connection to god will rise above it so we have need to rededicate ourselves to jewish practices and jewish wisdom that's the idea and we make a declaration these aren't showing this is the one time during the year where we put our menorah outside israel it is literally outside here we do it on the window we shine it out it's called pursuminisa we shine it out into the world that's a very unjewish thing to do we're very low-key under the radar in diaspora and we are in diaspora but we we the one holiday we reserve for a little chutzpah is in making the stand this is who i'm about i'm a jew who's about connecting myself my family and the world to god that's the stand we all make as jews and it's one house at a time we make it house by house family by family together connecting us together strengthening us and hopefully strengthening the entire jewish people our antidote to the the holiday the assimilationist holiday of hanukkah and i think that's what it is the the greatest tragedies that it has assimilated the way we practice hanukkah has assimilated the reparation for that that we practice hanukkah in a way that we truly nurture that jew inside of us and we take a step any step a mitzvah a step towards shabbat a friday night dinner whatever step any jew takes is lighting that spark that candle right that you like physically the card spawning candle more important candle within you and anything you take on you're lighting that spark as you see my kids just when they first light it it's very small and it grows into a tremendous flame and no matter how many flames you light the candle will only get stronger never weaker so my blessing to all of us is we turn around the holiday of hanukkah but what it was intended to be a holiday of connection to real judaism real connected judaism to each other and to god