Modern-Day Maccabees: Chizuk for Iron Sword by Rabbi Dr. Ahron Adler

B good morning to everybody before we begin I'd like to just mention that this series of shirim for the year is being sponsored by the Frist family in memory of the Beloved daughter um elisheba and sister I am very very familiar with the family the mother H is a regular at the U Center um the certainly our learning should be and I would add also as a for for all our wounded soldiers and civilians and should watch over each of the and all the security people who need it need's uh guidance and protection in these days this ready leads us into a discussion this morning about the modern dayim we are just a few days away from the first candle lighting Thursday night will be the first candle lighting and it's interesting that the RAB Yosef Caro the author of The and his more celebrated B he asked the perhaps one of the most famous questions in the world of Hal we know know from the story of Kaneka that they theim they found one jar of oil and they that was still protected from any type of T it had the Seal of the Kult and that jar of oil which would have lasted normally for one day lasted for eight days and and hence we have the Eight Day miracle of Kana so rabf Caro says when you think about it the miracle was only seven days because for one day they had oil so you can say that the miracle expanded to 8 days so that's a very very good question what's the answer well to this very famous question there have been suggested about a thousand different answers there's so many different responses to the question of Ros of Karo so we could spend the entire year trying to discuss all the responses to the question of R of caro just going to give you just a few a tasting of some of them and one is that actually even on day one there was a miracle because instead of the entire jar of oil being used for the manova that first day only an eighth burnt that first day so in essence the miracle spread out for eight days and on each day an eighth of the um amount of oil burnt and so the first day was also a miracle that's that's one of the classic answers but another classic answer is that you're right the miracle of the oil was only seven days however the Yum of khek is eight days because we had to celebrate something else and add a day to the celebration of the s-day miracle and that was the military Victory we are at a situation where there was a miraculous uh Victory on the battlefield of what we say in the Alan the the were few in numbers and they were battling many great uh whether it was the the Greeks in their army or the Jews who were who went over to Greek culture and were also fighting against the traditionalist so we have here B battles and we know that the battles ultimately the the the family they they were actually with the years they were killed out in the in the various battles the last one was shim and it's eight 18 years after the khaka story so I just want to point out that the khaka story was a little bit of a lull so we're familiar now with our current situation with the word hauga a break in the action so there was a hauga there was a break and at the time of rekindling the bet the mikdash and basically getting the B mdash activated but that doesn't mean that the war was over the war was far from over and it was another 18 years until some semblance of Independence uh kicked in and and at that time many of the Kash family were actually killed in battle um those who live in the gion area know that there's a yesu called elazar and that was elazar the brother who fell in battle not far from the gusion area and so on so we have um we have this idea that we should also have a y to celebrate the miracle now there are different types of Miracles as you know the it was already the ramban in parat BO who distinguishes between the miracle which is Supernatural H going beyond the normal laws of nature and the Miracles which seem to be uh coincidence of course Judaism doesn't believe in coincidences uh things are um somehow directed from above and and and many times miraculous situations come out because of what you might be consider a a a scenario that was nothing but a um circumstances that that developed uh and and worked in our favor so just a few weeks ago I already mentioned that uh in this particular War that we're engaged in right now many people have been talking about great Miracles that have happened and while it's very very painful to talk about the people who were murdered on and the immediate days after who fell and theim who fell in battle uh until this unfortunately until this very day obviously very very painful situation but nevertheless uh within the the framework of the pain situation we also have great Miracles I mentioned that my own daughter who lives in kib um it was a most fortunate situation that the 20im 20 terrorists were trying to crash into the gate of kibuts sad failed to do so because out of nowhere an Israeli tank appeared and one shell blew away the um 20 terrorists and the kibuts essentially was saved um everybody was saved in the kibuts all their belongings all the everything that all their homes everything so while they're not living there right now but they're from the few very very fortunate ones from the uh Aza area who are going to be able to go back home this was a miracle no doubt because the timing of of of that particular tank right at that particular moment um led to what we consider a miraculous situation so therefore the Battle of Rim it's not a supernatural Miracle it's not like the the Red Sea split it's not like mun coming down from heaven and all the various Supernatural Miracles that we read about in the torat nevertheless these were Miracles and uh the miracle certainly has to be recognized we know that purum was a miracle in porum there was no Supernatural events at all every could have been explained by normal political uh explanations U thear even tells user the Milla is called a letter and it's called a book and explained that letter in if we would update this to modern day idiom we would say a newspaper you can read the news of what happened in shushan and say all right you know it just just uh what a struggle luck and it went the way for the Jews and everything worked out at the end of the day or you can view it as a safer not a book in the Shelf but part of the of the Canon of of tanak that this is a book where a kados was behind the scenes um directing directing um many many uh events to that which occurred which ultimately brought about the Deliverance to Yeshua and and this time type of story we say when we read the mill we ackowledge the fact that this was a miracle so this was a miracle and Kaneka was a miracle and the Kaneka Miracle is divided into two sides one was the miracle of the oil and the other was the miracle of the battle so the battle was was clearly a miracle and and um while at the time of candle lighting we give expression to the fact that we are now on some level maintaining the MIT of lighting the in the bet mikdash now this is a novel theme that was developed by the ran in because the Tor tells us with regard to the lighting of the in the mikash it's going to be Everlasting the question is what do you mean Everlasting there was a destruction of the mikdash and and they're not nobody's there lighting the candles day in and day out so the ramban says that as opposed to most of the beta mikdash activities which unfortunately do not take place because there is no beta mikdash today but the lighting of the does take place on a more limited sense by lighting Kaneka candles so we're not in the bet mikdash we're home and we're doing it only for eight nights not for the entire year but nevertheless we are remembering the fact that there was a Mitzvah of lighting the in the bet mikdash so there's something about bet mikdash activity that now has extended beyond the days of the destruction until this very day so this is something that um we focus upon when we light the candles we sing or say we familiar with the text and we we we we talk about the and explain why we're lighting candles in this as a matter of fact I'll just point out that while our custom is to make to to to recite the two BR one after the other at the time of the very lighting of the candles we say we light the candles in conjunction with the the second God perform Miracles that's our we say the two BR together yet there is an opinion that was mentioned in the days of the found in a source called that they actually made only the first and then went to light the candles and then on afterwards they would say the and explain what's behind the lighting of the candles and only after the recitation ofu did they say the second because the on the Miracle is actually supposed to be made when you appreciate the fact that there was a miracle so therefore there is some type of uh explanation uh that that's done uh I I think that many of us actually try to uh catch the idea of sh that they begin lighting the SEC the candles while they're even saying again I'm not here to to to recommend change of any of your Minh slh habits of candlelighting continue to do it as your grandparents and great-grandparents did it but nevertheless it's interesting to know that there are some different opinions as to um when to make that second braa so you have the idea of the explanation of the of the miracle and and that's one point but then there's the miracle of the war and the Miracle of the war is given expression in the Alan so Alan is what we add during daving in all of our in of and in in the of we have and we have the text of and basically it highlights the battles that took place and there it was it was many were given over in an army of the few which were the and so on so we we focus in theim on the other side of the miracle so let me point out that Alim like all of our are written in Hebrew and we we shouldn't be terribly surprised about that except that there's one word that's Aramaic and that's the word pan it says allahim Miracles and Allah what does the word puran mean and then the arrest is Hebrew everything there is Hebrew so why do we use one Aramaic word I me that's something maybe our children or grandchildren who who speak heish and they little mixture of Hebrew and English so they mix words within the one sentence but you'd expect that a which is an official text from our they would be careful to to speak Hebrew when they want Hebrew and speak Aramaic when they want Aramaic and yet here we have a text in Hebrew with one work in Aramaic a word that we are familiar with from the Shabbat which say the beginning of Shabbat so what does that mean should send a Salvation from Heaven some type of you might even call it a Redemption and the question is what is missing in the AL that we have in Hebrew so if we skip the word there are many many beautiful words there that we have that we're citing that did for us for and we say it for Pam as well so obviously there's a word missing that our felt that we're going to use an Arab AIC equivalent to point out that actually there's a word that is missing and it's conspicuously absent and that is the word g Redemption Redemption there is no usage of the word Redemption when it comes to khaka to a certain degree also for PM there is an exception but it can be explained but for khaka categorically no one ever uses the word g Redemption and explained that the reason is that the word g is reserved for two occasions one is the Redemption from Egypt and the second is the ultimate Redemption the Final Redemption and therefore any other event that um that might lead us to saying Hal and express thanks to that that he got us out of a tremendous tremendous Jam big problem we can use the word Yeshua it was a help it was a Deliverance all kinds of words that we can use but we're not going to use the word and hence to show to demonstrate that we're not using the word Gul replaced the equivalent of G with its Aramaic word for so it's and so on now when we talk about that there were straight very powerful armies and we were relatively speaking a weak Army and yet we were able to overcome them um the the um perhaps the crust the the the the most important Point here is not so much the that the weak overcame the strong and the the few overcame the many but what it says in the continuation it says we were pure we were pure and and they were fighting people who were who were defiled people and they were and we were representing and in other words it was a war of good versus evil sound familiar I mean what's going on now is a war of good versus absolute evil and we know that there's absolute evil on the other side we're trying our best to to to eradicate this in a in the in the very uh obvious way of um of the war of Amal that's exactly what what we have at hand the um when we talk about a war that's defined as a mitvah so we can go back to yobu in his encounter with asov and assures him and we read this just yesterday was very very worried of course there was much to worry about there's no question about that he knew that ASA wanted to kill him and and and and eradicate his family yet uh Yakov was assured that he does not have to fear and that Assurance shows up in the n in the prophets for is in the future as well in Chapter 30 do not fear of the yov and in the context of war the Torah teaches us in that there's even a probis can you imagine a Prohibition of of of of being frightened now that's not something that's easy because to to to maintain because the Torah tells us that if indeed there's a soldier who's frightened so we might as well just send them back to send them home because that kind of behavior can be contagious and you certainly do not want him to infect any other soldier with his fright yet um there was a person who was a Coan and he's known as the co Mas he was anointed for specifically guiding the spiritual side of the soldiers in a war and U he would be the equivalent I would say of a a chaplain in the Israeli Army he would give a pep talk before they went out to the Army and the torat even gives us you know a little bit some suggestions of what he might say sh pay attention you're going out to war do do do not fear do not do not be frightened and it was really a pep talk it was a we call in the Army today a a motivational pep talk before going out to battle teach us that it's not an accident that the speech began with shma Isel because this reflects upon the shma Isel that we all know about and teach us that even if the soldiers they may not be fully religious soldiers but even if they have is on their on their lips that's going to be good enough to for to guide them to be with them throughout the war and you should know that in this war there are many many many who not only ask for but who who are saying is because they believe deep down must necessarily be with them during this war and and and therefore the Torah actually says as I mentioned a moment ago that those who are just totally frightened out he should not in infect the others with his fright what's interesting is that there are two opinions in the mishna what exactly is he Afraid from SOA says obviously he's afraid from the battle I mean God from my gosh I mean there there's there EXP iions there was Guns there's there were all kinds of things shooting against him and towards him and and and obviously this could be his last day so um there's what to be worried frightened about so that's Raba says that's the Fright that the to is talking about Lally says something else says that um he's frightened about the fact that in his record by there must be some a there must be some sins and here is a very convenient moment for to take care take care of of this particular soldier on the battlefield and and this Soldier is very very worried that aosh is g to utilize the opportunity of battle to um to to somehow punish him for whatever he may have done so the gamar brings this the mishna brings this as an opinion of r that he's actually fearful because he thinks he has some sins in his Rec on his record soar says what kind of sins might such a soldier have that he's so concerned that on the battlefield theh is going to deal him a death blow so you might think that who knows maybe he thought he ate you know pork on Yuma no no no no no nothing at all like that the gar suggest something that it's so hard to believe that this is the type of that was concerned about that a a soldier might be worried what is it it's like a little detail almost an aster in the in the you know when men put on Fillin um so we have the Fillin on the hand we have Fillin on the head so there is all discussion whether it is one two ra says there's one the says two and you know check check out a you'll see they only make one and go to asazi you see they make two that's all very nice and dandy but whether is one or two BR there is a h stipulation that we should put on the second on the head immediately after the without any Interruption what's called a he No Interruption whatsoever okay so that's what we should do which means if somebody's in sh putting on his Fillin on the hand and some gentleman walks into shul you know at 6:15 in the morning and says good morning and you blur out good morning you know it's a very nice thing to do to return a greeting or perhaps initiate a greeting you know somebody walks in you haven't seen him a long time you want to say shalom even though maybe we shouldn't say shalom before ding but whatever you blur out something it's not not a big deal and then you go put on thein of the head the sh Ro the gar says that's the a that Ros was concerned about that this Soldier is going to perhaps fall in battle and this is like astonishing astonishing that the is talking about that somebody is worried according to worried that he has some sin some some Earth shattering sin that God's going to deal with him on on the battlefield what is it says the that he blurted something out he's talked he interrupted he was M between the filling of the hand filling of the head that's what it's all about it's it's mind bar that kind of understanding so it what we have to do is perhaps homiletically try to interpret this so I'm going to give you a a thought but I'm give it to in the name of the one who said it so it's not my thought right somebody says a thought in the name of somebody who was the author of the thought and you don't say it in your own name that can bring Redemption to the world so I'm going to say it om the following thought was said by my sonan who's now up there in the north and he was in the k Yesa for his army and learning has their Yeshiva and they like all theot there they have Torah journals and the guys WR T so he wrote The Following several years ago on this very very question and supplied an interesting answer we know that the symbolism of the filling of the hand is that it corresponds to the heart that's where we put thead on the muscle so when the arm goes down it corresponds to the heart clearly the RO corresponds to the brain so there are really two connections to Judaism one connection is the heart and one connection is the brain there is a an emotional connection and there is a an intellectual connection we know that the Torah itself refers to itself as a song write the song s down and teach it to the your children which means the Torah is not only T but it's also a song which means that there's at the same time not only an intellectual connection to Torah but there's also an emotional side to Torah what my sonan said was the idea of not being maik not interrupting between the Y and the is that there should be no blackout between one's emotional ties to and one's intellectual ties that both the intellect and the emotion should run on Parallel courses and be in touch with each other and not separate from each other a person should not have a an intellectual approach to a Mitzvah but deviate from the mitzvah because his emotions are pulling in a different direction one has to somehow train one's emotions to be in line with one's intellect as well and if somebody is out of line and out of sync between one's emotional bond to Torah and his or her intellectual connection to Torah that is a serious serious deviation of Torah and that is to that end R said if that's where the person is standing he's in big trouble if he's going to go onto the battlefield so it's not the what the G seems to indicate who maik somebody walked into SCH and before he put on his he said good morning to somebody I mean that's technically what the is saying but what's really behind it says my sonan is that it's the breach between the intellect and the emotion of Torah I remember back in the Gulf War remember we had the situation where we all had the sealed rooms and gas masks remember those days and I even made a a in those days we had a Mitzvah a wedding all kinds of where people had to bring their their boxes and kids went to school and they decorated their boxes and whatnot you know and Saddam Hussein was lobing missiles over to Israel and we had to you know be careful unfortunately one person perished in from Ramadan in in one of those missile attacks but thank God am Isel got through that war fairly fairly good and the war was if I remember correctly almost seven weeks worth and I recall that um the made a comment in one of his talks in 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn that this war is going to end on Pur now if you recall that war ended exactly on purm it was like amazing I remember on the day of purm we were pulling down the Plastics from our windows and and just getting our lives back to normal so in during those weeks um the um there were all kinds of instructions that were coming out how we should handle Shabbat so that's when the idea of a silent radio station was put up and other things had and many times these instructions were changing as the war was continuing U the at I knew somebody at the K Israel that asked me to go online uh in in a live broadcast for a few minutes every Friday afternoon of the war and give over the instructions of the chief ravenet in English so what I did was I went to the raash the chief Rabbi of Israel at the time and and I interviewed him about certain of the things so I should be clear as to what to tell the people in English in terms of the exact instructions that the rabet was giving so u i remember ra shapir told me that from all the things that you should tell them try to give over the gist of what the rambam writes in the seventh chapter of the laws of Kings and wars and here the ramam tells us that there is a Prohibition to be scared and R Shapiro said you tell the people on the radio not to be scared we have to have confidence inh and we have to do our best and we have to protect ourselves no doubt and we're not going to be complacent in any way or manner but it is extremely important to maintain a certain stature of confidence that is with us and um and therefore we we should not be afraid now you know that every psychi psychologist will tell you that fear is a function of the unknown that's why we fear because you're not prepared for something um we know that um those women and couples who go through um the Lama's training for natural child birth so one of the one of the um one one of the uh things that they try to do is teach the couple the stages of child birth and and therefore at least that facet of being afraid will be somehow lightened because once you know what to anticipate and what to expect so then the levels of fear actually go down and this is really what the rambam was trying to tell us that if you have a kadosh on your side so you can fear the situation much less because you know that is gonna help is we know that even with all these thoughts not everybody is coming back from the fronts we know that it's extremely extremely painful but I can tell you that in the history of Warfare when when armies uh sustain significant losses of of men and both in terms of lives and and in terms of uh um wounded what's happening now in this particular war and should watch and guard every single the numbers are relatively speaking very low thank God thank God and um that's also something that we have to be thankful for uh my father used to have a phrase he used to say is can IM ER it could always be worse I mean it's not always consoling to know that it could always be worse but it truth is it could always be worse I I just visited uh some of you know and I'll even proudly announced that just the week and a half ago my book on the rambam actually appeared U I didn't know that it was going to finally come out there was I knew it was in the printer and a week and a half ago when I was in New York City I got a phone call at 4 in the morning from somebody from a lunch foot at 11: in the morning who told me the good news that we have a book so um the the um a whoa I want to say something about the mentioning something in the book I'll get back to it I lost my train um with regard to um not fearing again with regard to not fearing but not not worrying at all that doesn't mean that um there there won't be God forbid um casualties and there are casualties but I say again that everything is relatively speaking relatively speaking um very very low as opposed to other Wars I I recall being a a student growing up in the United States during the Vietnam War which was a war for eight years eight years the United States was engaged in that battle 50,000 American soldiers lost their lives and over a quarter of a million were were wounded uh and it's astonishing numbers and here we're unfortunately talking about a few a few a few I mean it's already we count October 7th so we know that it's already 370 soldiers who lost their lives it's a big number for us uh but just remember young Kiper world we lost almost 3,000 um so we should understand proportions so I mentioned my book is because the publisher of the book actually is from alot um the Herz college and the director happens to live right across street from my house in katamon his name is I saf and he was wounded he was fighting in Aza and he was wounded in the Fingers um and they have reconstructed his fingers with plastic surgery and God willing he'll have some use from his fingers after he'll be fully recuperated and I visited him a few times already and he himself knows that this could have been a lot worse when a person knows that you know you're in battle and you know then you're wounded and you lose a few you lose a few fingers in the process it's not pleasant at all and and a person's going to live with this for the rest of his life this kind of injury and have to make the various accommodations and adaptations and so on but considering what could would have been so there's room to bench go to say go No Doubt and and and that's really what the r is telling us that we should we should understand that that is with us um and and we have to feel it we must feel it and this whatap told me to announce and broadcast week after week exactly in the words of the of the co Mas the chief the rabic chaplain of old um and and I say it for ourselves today as well and and that that leads me to where we're H today in this particular War so we had a a break for eight days and because of the negotiations with the terrorists we were able to secure the release of almost half almost half of those uh who were in captivity we're pretty sure that not all those who are in captivity are still alive but some may still be and the Army the the government and the Army believe that the only way to to perhaps secure their release is going to be by continuing to apply heavy military pressure which is going on as we talk we're getting into khaka and Hanah is just going to remind us that when you have sikim that's what it's all about not everybody's the biggest sadic in the world but when a person says he tells yes I'm with you I'm willing to put my life on the line for and is that person is a sadic for this moment we have sadikin out there we have genuine sadikin out there and it makes no difference makes no difference in their private lives you know if they put on filling they didn't put on filling these are people of sh Isel this is our army along with the fact that we have people on the battlefield who are Ben T who are who are in every sense of the word and together together am Isel is going to have a big victory we have to be patient because this is not what we call in Hebrew one shot and it's over it's not the case this is going to go on it's going to go on and it may go on for even another more than a it may go on for a year it's almost reminiscent of the beginning days of covid when I remember at the beginning you know people said oh it'll be around for a few months well it wasn't around for a few months it was around for a few years and it's actually not even over but from the point of view of epidemic it's over but it took a good two two and a half years to to get to that I certainly hope we don't have to be in this war for two two and a half years but it's certainly not going to be another few days that's that's painfully obvious and um God willing that which we have accomplished in the last two months of pulling Amel together into one nation we must maintain this we will maintain this even after the war we're going to have to somehow reflect upon the and that in the Mish in the days of M had to be fashioned out of one chiseled out of one piece of gold and the kazal teach us that M Rao had difficulty making fashioning the andh decided to tell him all right you know what take the piece of gold Into the Fire and it's going to come out miraculously a and the question that I've always asked was nothing was easy in the mishkan construction you think to Fashion the Kim the cherubs on top of the Aron was easy wasn't easy nothing was easy about the Mish so why was the Min difficult furthermore there are people in the Mah mikdash in The Old City who made the so if they could do it why could B Ru do it it's doable so apparently the problem of mosha rabenu was not Tech the technicality of making the Min but rather they somehow the symbolism the symbolism of the Min didn't match the reality so had difficulty what was the symbolism why were there seven branches one in the middle and three on each side the whole purpose of the man andash was not for illumination because at night time there was no betam mikdash activity anyway so why couldn't we just get away with one lamp and that's it and we didn't shut the lights down on the beta mikdash why did we have three off to the right and three off to the left and the center W on apparently the man symbolized different types of Jews there are Jews who are Centrist there are Jews who are off to the right and some are extreme right and there are Jews who are off to the left and some extreme left as long as we all come from the same solid piece of gold the Y Judaism tolerates some measure of differentiation of ideas and M said this is a wonderful idea but it's a king-size headache when I look at the people it doesn't match reality so said you know what take the piece of gold and throw it into the fire when Isel is going to be under sustained pressure and fire you are going to see the Unity come forth and indeed this is what MH does this is am Isel today am Isel where it's on the fire and now in a most unified stance haneka should give us the push because we're going to light from one candle to eight candles but from this of the Mana we're not going to stop we're not going to stop at 8 we're going to stop when when will allow uses we will continue and continue and continue to be a united front and United people andh should give each and every one of us the ability to be strong the ability not to be frightened the ability to carry on with our lives in light in spite of the battles that are going on K should bring not only with for to all the wounded the civilians the soldiers and so on those who should bring about the freedom the release of all the hostages shall allow us to end this war decisively quickly hopefully and so we can get back to doing what we do best that is building up ER Isel building up ER Isel on the physical side building up ER Isel on the spiritual side Soh should find favor in we should find favor in his eyes he should find favor in our eyes have a nice week and