Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Chanuka Overview and the Responsibility as Lamplighters

[Music] anybody [Music] okay everybody thank you for coming uh first today's here is dedicated for a refuge Lima to Brea batshaba foreign dedicated by Ephraim and Naomi Finkelstein and again as I've always said to Mrs Finkelstein and her husband were tremendous influence on me and I'm very honored to be able to contribute something and the magician ruvain ban Yosef dedicated by a New York friend of mine Joseph kalimi and thank you very much for your castora and Father shmuel benav Victor hakone and in honor of the route whose friendship and Torah had been a great source of inspiration for his writing to ritorah he has just started his third cycle of writing his weekly devartora again has has been very very prolific in sharing his debrator and my broker is that he should reach ever widening circles if you want to be on his mailing list you can contact me and I can give you the information for being on his mailing list conducting its annual end of the year Hanukkah fundraising campaign they have many new projects that require funding as well as their ongoing activities new projects include several new Hazard projects with new olim and the elderly as well as even setting up a base knesset anyone interested in knowing more about these projects should speak to Rabbi Poston directly okay well we have the holiday of Hanukkah coming up and those of you who at least are from the United States may recall something that is often referred to as the December dilemma and that is there was a Big Mac Locus mainly among reformed congregations should Hanukkah be a big deal or should Hanukkah be a small deal some sayskin some say chanukkah has to be a big deal because after all you're competing with a major christian holiday and our kids are going to feel left out unless you make Hanukkah equivalent to uh Christmas and therefore Hanukkah has to be built up up up up up up up way out of proportion to what it actually is in Jewish tradition and yay show them the other way since Hanukkah is not a yamsif I mean you're allowed to do work you don't have a really a special liturgy other than the alanisa ETC so we should not make Hanukkah a big deal so here uh yeah this is a macrocus largely within the reform movement some years they make Hanukkah a big deal some years they make Hanukkah small deal and they go back and forth but the truth is what I want to show you tonight is chanukkah is not a yamchief that's very true but Hanukkah is a profoundly important eight days of the year and it's something that gives us guidance and inspiration and strength in very very trying times and therefore I kind of side with the notion that we ought to make Hanukkah even bigger than we sometimes make it because there is a message that's extremely important and let me start with the basic history which may be the key to understand what's going on uh we know that there are four Exiles and this is the rabbinic tradition interpreting verses in Daniel and in safer zacharya there is the Exile of Babylon who destroyed the base of miktas Babylonia in churn was conquered by the Persian Empire the Persian Empire was conquered by the Greeks under the leadership of Alexander the greater Alexander of Macedonia and eventually the Greek Empire was taken over by the Romans according to hazal the Romans are descendants of asaph although how they got to that is not entirely clear and therefore the fourth Exile is called the Exile of Edom which is the other name for asaph and according to khazal the Exile of eddiem is the Last Exile before mashiach meaning we're still in now one might ask a very simple question in what sense can we describe our situation as the golos of eddiem the Roman Empire is long gone we're not we're certainly not under the subjugation of the Roman Empire now the Roman Empire as you know eventually split into two there was the Western Roman Empire whose capital was Rome there was the Eastern Roman Empire whose capital was Constantinople that's uh it was known as the Byzantine Empire Byzantium but either way I mean the official date for the fall of the Western Roman Empire is said to be 476. and the official date for the destruction of Byzantium was 1453. in fact that's a day that's actually celebrated in Islamic culture because that's when the Turks so to speak uh conquered Byzantium so if there's no Roman Empire and there hasn't been a Roman Empire for hundreds and hundreds of years and we still have not been joking to mashiach in what way could we say we're still in the Exile of Rome the Exile of Eddie and by the way just as an aside I hope when you look at the song that we sing after we light the chanukkah candles that's the song Mao Sur now some people only say the first stanza which is more of a general idea that God redeems us from all of our tribulations but if you sing the entire Mao sewer you will discover two things about Mao Sor number one it spells an acrostic of the author of mouse or meaning the first letter of each stanza spells the name Mordechai an anonymous poet named Mordechai so the author of Mao Sur is a Mordechai of whom we know nothing else but the second thing that you should notice very much is Mao Sor is about the four Exiles that's the order that it goes But it includes what you might call the pre-exile Exile which is Egypt so the way it works is the first stanza is generically how Hashem is my salvation and Hashem will protect me and shield me the second stanza is how he did so in Egypt the third stanza is the Babylonian captivity uh in which God redeemed me from that the fourth stanza is which is Persia and the fifth stanza which is the only one about is about the Greeks trying to take us away from our religion the last stanza is a prayer because all the other stanzas we've already experienced Redemption but the last stanza is praying that Hashem should redeem us from the goddess of Rome you'll notice the language sale salmon push away the red one in the shadow to the shadow of death the red one is Ed dome which is another name for ASAP but still that doesn't answer my question my question is given the fact that there is no Roman Empire why do we describe our predicament as being the Godless of edin so there are three basic answers they overlap and you can elaborate on each of them but I just want to go over them very quickly answer number one is it's true that we're not under the rule of Adam but nevertheless the damage that Rome inflicted on us we have not emerged from they destroyed the base of mikdash they exiled the Jewish people we still don't have a base on mikdash we still have not gathered together more and more Jews are coming but still most of the Jewish World Elite is still in so in a sense we're in the Godless of eddiem even if there's no Eddie meaning yeah there's no Roman Empire but the galuts of the Roman Empire we are still suffering that's one answer the second answer is that essentially Eddie in Rome morphed into Western Civilization meaning in many many ways Western Civilization ultimately it came from the Greeks actually the Greeks in terms of philosophy and basic understandings of science but it was the Romans who spread the Greek wisdom throughout the world so essentially therefore Jews who live in western civilization which is most of the Jewish worlds are indeed governed by eddiem to this very day and the third answer is that Adam also morphed into the seed of Christianity we know that Peter the Apostle Peter right by the people always ask um have there ever have there ever been any Jewish popes and people have different Maison about various figures but the short answer is for sure there was a Jewish Pope because the first pope was Jewish that's no question about that the first pope Bishop of Rome was none other than the Apostle Peter Peter was a Jew so there's absolutely no question that the first pope was Jewish even if we don't know about later people and and the like and therefore Rome morphed into Western Civilization and Rome morphed into Christianity and pre-reformation the Catholic church was the repository of not only religious power but political power over all of the kings of Europe and the vast majority of the Jewish populations to this very day are under the Yoke of Christianity and therefore it is said we are still in the galatadam but it's very interesting that pierce add something in the standard hazal in the standard midrashram there's only four exiles Babylonia Persia Greece Rome but in Paris which says that the gulless of Rome will itself have a certain argumentation with a goddess that is called the goddess of Ishmael now Ishmael according to is said to be the ancestor of the Arab Nations now obviously Ishmael is pre-pre-pre-islam so we're not people make mistakes sometimes it's not Islam that is connected to Ishmael it's Arabs that are connected to Ishmael their religion happens to be Islam and and and the like and the parakeet Arabia liezra and this is elaborated upon by ruthal the great disciple of the Ariza the Great mccobel that the Jews will be under the physical rule of Eddie Christianity but they will be sorely afflicted by Ishmael who will have a collaboration with Persia as well wow so based on this madrish I mean imagine the current issues of Arab Nations joining with Iran Persia is Iran and therefore in a sense there's a Godless Adam that's Godless number four but we're experiencing a 4.1 because even though relatively few Jews are under the direct rule of Ishmael which is not always true there were times that perhaps a majority of Jews might have been under Islamic rule but but today there are relatively few Jews in Arab states or in Islamic states there are some but nevertheless if you think about the Stranglehold that Arab Nations have or Islamic Nations have on the world whether it's through fundamentalism to terrorism or the economic Stranglehold of controlling oil Reserves in a sense you understand that we are simultaneously under a sub under Adam and under Ishmael but I just want to point out that there's also something hopeful in this message because I'll teach us that Ishmael did shuva after Sarah died avram took back his former wife Hagar and she got renamed ketura because her Deeds were as pleasant as ketaurus and hazal teach us even Ishmael came back because Ishmael did Shiva the message tells us that since everything that happens to our Patriarchs is a foreshadowing of what's going to happen to us in the future that's called Masa avos did sugar the descendants of Ishmael will also do chuva biakarita says amazingly enough the very first step in ishmael's chuva was the conversion to Islam because prior to Islam the Arabs were pagans Islam with all of its evils and all of its violence did represent a monotheistic religion that is the first step of the Ishmael doing chuva I would add that maybe the second step is something we are experiencing right now with the abrahamic Accords with Dubai United Arab Emirates the possibility of Saudi Arabia now granted I wouldn't call this a true bot of love of God it's not a Cuba mayaba it may be a chuva only because of economic desires and the like but it's so interesting that side by side with Islamic terrorism fundamentalism violence which is still very much here unfortunately and that represents azer of high and vital said the most dangerous of all of the Exiles we also see a counter movement within binay Ishmael of a chuva the gander of Mayor simply said Islam itself was a step in shuva bringing them closer to a monotheistic conception of God and now making peace with the Jewish people may be that second piece of the puzzle so we have the four Exiles let's go back to chanukkah chanukkah occurs during the Greek exile which lasted around 180 years 180 years at the beginning of the second temple the second temple was built under Persian rule but uh only um only 32 years later I'm sorry 34 years later it was conquered and therefore we became under a Greek rule now when we say Greek rule let me just explain what that means just to understand it we don't mean we were ruled from Athens rather what happened was when Alexander of Macedonia died his empire was divided among his generals because he had no surviving child he died at a very young age the talmayak dynasty took over Egypt and North Africa the seleucid dynasty took over Syria and turkey and in the Book of Daniel this is prophesied by King of the North King of the South and Eric Israel if you can imagine a map is right in the middle of those two empires and essentially for over a hundred years it was a football going sometimes under tomayak rule sometimes under seleucid rule okay that's how it was so the story of Hanukkah hits us at a time when Antiochus III that's the that's the father of the Antiochus that we're concerned about until there is also called Antiochus the great he waged a major military campaign and he defeated the talmayak empire and he established a stronghold in Eric Israel he conquered Erica not from the Jews the Jews were under foreign domination either way but he conquered it from the tomayic empire Antiochus III had a son who was Antiochus IV but at the August IV gave himself a name he named himself he called himself Antiochus epiphanis which means Antiochus Divinity incarnate in other words he proclaimed himself a god his own people I mean the non-jewish people considered him nuts and they changed his name behind his back instead of calling him Antiochus epaphanus which is Antiochus who is divine incarnate they changed one letter they called them Antiochus epimanus which apparently in Greek means Antiochus the insane uh but so be it Antiochus had a certain vision and this was the vision of Hellenism now the notion of spreading Greek culture was something that Alexander the Great already started but Alexander did not use coercion Alexander Used assimilation Alexander Used persuasion Alexander wanted to show how beautiful the culture of Greece was including the literature and the science and the philosophy the mathematics the drama the athletic events all of these things uh so and he was quite successful many many Jews as well as other nations became totally assimilated to Hellenism before Antiochus came on the scene but Antiochus IV Antiochus Epi Finance wanted to accelerate the process through elegant so Antiochus instituted what we will call Extreme religious persecution against the Jewish people we were not allowed to do many many mitzvahs keeping Shabbos publicly keeping kosher he abrogated women going to the Mikvah and in one of the things that's most shameful don't like to talk about it a lot they only allude to it every woman on her wedding night before she could be with her husband had to be with one of his officials that was actually in force for around four years and the gamara gives different stories how people did get married in secret and they did various ways to avoid this but tragically many many women were actually victimized by that particular uh practice which by the way during the Middle Ages was was fairly common in Christian Europe it's interesting that they borrowed it from Antiochus I think he was the first one that instituted that particular practice so so what happened was that Antiochus basically told the Jews the following deal a very strange deal he said you have the right to be full citizens of this wonderful Greek Empire you will have political rights you will have social rights you will be able to go while there weren't any Universities then but the equivalent of saying you can go to university you could be a doctor you could be a lawyer just give up your distinction become like everybody else homogenized don't stick out don't do breasts don't keep Shabbos don't keep kosher and if you do that we'll be best friends if you don't do that I'm gonna have to kill you that was the deal tragically most of the Jewish people at the time either went along with it even before Antiochus or out of coercion they went along with Antiochus it is estimated that less than or around 10 percent of the Jewish people remained faithful to Torah during that very very difficult time now think about that I believe statistics show maybe it depends on the place obviously that around 15 percent of jewelry is identified as orthodox so if we assume that Orthodox equals keeping mitzvos and again the definitions are tricky it turns out that the percentages of people who were keeping the Torah were lower than than is even the case today Judaism was hanging on a threat so there was a man and this is uh again forgive me if I'm going over familiar things there was a man who was towards the end of his life he was an elderly kohang his name was maticio this is towards the end of his life he did not participate in any fighting he was almost dead shortly before his death but he gathered together his sons and he told them we cannot allow Torah to be taken away from us we have to stand up we have to fight we have to risk Our Lives we have to be willing to be most significant and even though we're small and even though we're insignificant and even though we don't have an army Hashem will be it would be with us if we're committed to our cause now maticiano is known as and his sons are called the kashmo Naim what is the origin what does mean right it's interesting um hasmonian so there are different interpretations it's not so pashut mean some people connect it to a word in the book of to heal him which by the way appears in Mao's means nobility people of Distinction would simply mean people of great distinction are not the same words so you'd have to have a little poetic license at that point but a second interpretation is that means coming from a village in Eric Israel during the second temple period And although matisyah at the time of the Hanukkah story was living in modian which by the way is not the same place as modern but the family origin was said to be or kashmona and therefore the family was known as the IM and the five sons of Monticello the most famous of whom is Yehuda hamakabi of course but then you have Yehuda Shimon elizar yokana and yonas and five sons of The Maccabees they organized a guerrilla Army fight against the most powerful army in the world and that is Aviva the seleucid empire operating out of Syria Antiochus was the king but he sent generals Etc and and and and and alike now just a little clarification of definition uh we talk about the name and we talk about the makabim so what is the difference between the hasmonians and The Maccabees technically they are different are members of a specific family maticio his sons and their later descendants they were kohanim right they are the hasmonians The Maccabees is the name of the entire Army this is the Maccabee Revolt right the makhabim is the name of all of the army that they gathered and there is a machlokas what does Maccabee mean it's an acronym for the pasok in shmos Hashem who is like you among the powerful God and this was on their Banner meme in those days you had to pay for service you there was no socialized medicine but Maccabi was the flag that we went into battle in God we trust them there is another interpretation that Maccabi is from the word in Tanakh means a sledgehammer and it refers to their great great military strength and their military success indeed to this very day by the way the battle plans of The Maccabees are studied certainly during Vietnam they were studied in West Point because in some from a purely military standpoint there's actually a lot of parallels between the War of The Maccabees and the war in Vietnam because what did you have in Vietnam you had a powerful powerful Army the U.S fighting these rice paddy farmers guerrilla warfare and uh who won the farmers won that's basically these untrained farmers were able to defeat the United States of America technically we never declared that we lost in Vietnam we just withdrew them but obviously uh there was a tremendous defeat here and uh in The Maccabees it was the same thing because here you had this Guerrilla Army that was fighting the avanim and yet they were successful so if you would have gone to West Point uh sir I don't know about today but in the 1960s early 1970s the book of The Maccabees was a required book to read about guerrilla warfare and and the light that's not why we we would look at it but that was important for for our military strategy and the like so Maccabees is the name of the army and Maccabees either me Kamala mashem or Kevin Hammer Sledgehammer now there is a difference in spelling is there not because if Maccabee is then the second letter would be kamoha if it's Mark Kevin sledgehammer my cabinet is spelled with a cuff so one might ask Natasha how can them before shim debate what Maccabee means look in the book of Maccabees which was written around the time of the event and see how they spell it if they spell it now imagine it doesn't the book of Maccabees doesn't tell you what Maccabees means but by the spelling you can figure it out if it's with a huff it's me kamaka by Elam Hashem if it's with a cuff it's my cabin look in the book of Maccabees well the reason that doesn't work is that the book of Maccabees is in Greek it is not in Hebrew any Hebrew trans any Hebrew translation that we have is modern in fact I believe that the earliest Hebrew translation we have over the book of Maccabees is around 1850. so as a result all you had from the time is a Greek book and in Greek you cannot tell from the word Maccabee if there if there would have been a Hebrew cuff or a Hebrew cuff right and that's why we we simply don't know okay so I don't want to get into too many of the details but but here is the thing at some point in this war against Antiochus the Greeks captured the base of miktas and one can only imagine what a tragedy that was for the Jewish people they captured the base of Magnus they took over the sanctuary they didn't destroy it right Tish above is not during the period of Antiochus it's later but maybe they did something even worse they desecrated the basement they put up Idols by desara in the base of meghtash they sacrificed hazarim pigs to these idols on the altarak that when The Maccabees regained the base and make dust they had to remove all the stones of them as bad because they had become corrupted they erected houses of prostitution because that was part of the Pagan worship is sacred prostitutes and and the like and they control the base of mikdash for three years now fighting is going on all over the place I mean the fighting is all over our richest row but this was a movement in which the evonim captured the base on mcdouch and contaminated interestingly according to the book of Maccabees they captured the base and mikdus on the 25th of Kiss life the very day that later became Hanukkah was the day that they the Greeks entered the base my 25th of his life and the leg so Hanukkah essentially celebrates the regaining of the base I make Dash three years later from the hands of the evonim and the ability to dedicate the base of now there are two important points to keep in mind here if we ask I don't know if we ask many people why is there a holiday of Hanukkah the answer they will give you is because we discovered a jar of oil that was only supposed to burn one day and it burnt eight days so to commemorate the miracle of the oil we have a holiday called Hanukkah that is not true that is not why there's a holiday of Hanukkah yes there was such a miracle and there's something that we do to commemorate that Miracle naming lighting the menorah yeah there is but that's not why there's a holiday of Hanukkah the holiday of Hanukkah is celebrating the rededication of the base on mikhna after it was contaminated you understand the point I mean indeed that's why it is called Hanukkah meaning dedication or some divided into two words they rested meaning they secured a victory on the 25th okay do you see the difference this isn't this is an important difference there was a miracle of oil and we commemorate that Miracle of oil to be sure but that is not why there's a holiday in fact I'll tell you the truth from one perspective the miracle of oil is not even that significant because yes you had the home in the burning for eight days but the truth is even in regular times you had a near Tamir there was one light of the night that never went out so the notion of an eternal light was not even limited to Chronic it happened all the time so why don't we have a holiday every day in memory of a light that should have only burnt you know uh one night and lasted right the answer is as morale says we don't make yum tips because of Miracles in other words a miracle happens we make a yamchief because God saved us God gave us something and the something that he gave us was the ability to reconquer and reclaim the basic and purify it and dedicate it okay again this is the point that I think a lot of people don't get that is what chanukkah is celebrating now that's Point number one Point number two it's also very interesting most people think that when we reclaimed the base of mikdash and we found the oil Etc and it burned for eight days that was the end of the war Antiochus was defeated we assume that that's the end of the maccabean revolt it was not the war against Antiochus and his successes Antiochus died shortly after Hanukkah but the wars and the persecutions and even the violation of women continued even after the Hanukkah story the war continued for another 25 years the Greeks were not banished from Eric Israel until 25 years or so after the Hanukkah story and that is when Shimon the last surviving son of matisyo was proclaimed the king the king of amisrael and that he inaugurated the hasmonean dynasty that ruled for 103 years until the Romans came in now it is interesting some of you might have read uh years ago a book by George Orwell not in 1984 but another book Animal Farm and Animal Farm is a George Orwell's parody of the Communist Revolution right prior to 1917 Russia was ruled by czars the czars were cruel oppressive arbitrary Lenin and the Bolsheviks wanted to establish a more just social order based on equality and they revolted and overthrew the dictator is ours but what they established was a lot of time much worse than even what exists under SARS and this is kind of the history of revolutions that idealists tried to overthrow the established order and they create something that's even worse so an animal farm if you remember what happened uh the animals revolt against the human owners because the humans are so dictatorial and the Animals want equal rights they want equality but eventually some of the animals become even worse than the human owners well in some ways that is the tragedy of the hasmonian monarchy the original 's five Sons were righteous great sadika whose kavana was totally the same shamayam so that we could keep the Torah and they were fighting Hellenism paradoxically their descendants in the hasmonian dynasty became Hellenistic and became persecutors of the day became the very thing that their ancestors were fighting against as a result if you look in gazelle they consider the whole thessimonian Dynasty to just be a continuation of Greece they basically say we went from Buffalo to Persia to Greece to Rome so you could ask Natasha what do you mean from Greece to Rome we had 103 years of a Jewish state under the hasmanians why do you assume right after Greece came round the answer is considered even the osmanians just be a Greek monarchy not any better so that's really a talk for another time and I mean in some ways you could you could actually say the Revolt of The Maccabees was a failure ultimately tragic failure chanukkah was a way station but going back to the chronology the point here is that the regaining of the Temple the dedication ceremony of the temple and the Miracle of the oil did not occur at the end of the conflict it occurred towards the beginning of the conflict chanukkah is not the end of the war it's a major victory within the war but the war kept on going for two and a half decades right so the question is what is the significance of that meaning maybe it's an interesting fact but what's the difference if the miracle of the oil happened at the beginning of the struggle or the miracle of the oil happened at the end as most people often assume there's a tremendous difference and I think it places the holiday of Hanukkah in a very different perspective if you assume that we regain the temple at the end of a long conflict and we finally achieve Victory and as part of our Victory we can dedicate the temple and God gives us a miracle of oil that would simply be a nice frosting on a cake we drove out the Greeks and Hashem even shows us this great miracle of oil that would be nice but it wouldn't be particularly necessary like okay Hashem shows us a beautiful miracle but if you position it in the beginning of the struggle there's a very different message imagine that you're a Maccabee whether you have the family of the name or whether you're just a regular Maccabee Soldier you are fighting the most powerful army in the world you're untrained you're not a professional Soldier you don't have weapons and what's even worse is your own people do not support you your fellow Jews look at you as crazy they look at you as a fanatic they look at you as a person that is preventing the spread of the beautiful civilization of Hellenism you're not supported by your people you're all alone and you wake up every morning and you look at the job that you have to do and it looks hopeless it looks like it's impossible Who Am I who are all of us against this Juggernaut this is awesome power that has conquered much of the world remember Alexander's Empire extended over the virtually the whole Known World in fact there's even a legend you know Alexander died at 31 or 32 I mean that that's a historical fact but the legend has it that he died of heartbreak because he said I have no more worlds to conquer he didn't reach the United States or America and and the light actually probably he died of plague but whatever it is but but the legend of this is uh what they put into his into his mouth so you feel like there's no hope like what's the point so either you surrender or if you want to keep the midsole As you move to a cave in other words I'll keep the minutes as I'll hide and I'll keep them it says but I I'm not going to fight this struggle so what is actually I'm showing them in the middle of this struggle they do achieve a significant Victory they regain the base of Mickey which itself is a great sign but more than that they take a jar of oil that can only burn for one day and they light that oil that oil burns for eight days what does it tell you as a McAfee you're looking at that oil and you're saying if you do what you're able to do as puny as and and as insignificant as your action is God will bless it Beyond what you thought was possible wow I'm facing this impossible task I feel inadequate I feel unworthy I feel I'm unable to do it what's the point God is giving me a sign do what you can do and your efforts will be blessed Beyond what you thought would be possible you see this is the tremendous importance of locating it towards the beginning of the struggle at the end of the struggle we already achieved Victory it would just be another nice thing the beginning of the struggle is God's message don't despair don't give up keep on going my light is with you and when my light is with you your puny efforts can accomplish which would otherwise seem to be impossible so Hanukkah is that message of Hope faith in Hashem faith in yourselves truth is we live in a world that is filled with Darkness on many many levels the Bible you say in fact that's it's nice that I'm mentioning the Ruby today as many of you know last night and today not now and now is the next day already it was a great great day in the Chabad calendar they they call it Rosh Hashanah of cressidas although technically if you want to be pedantic it's Russia say this is not necessarily oh casinos but the 19th of kids life is a very very significant day in the hasida calendar really in the Jewish calendar in that way because the alter rebbe rev schneer's almond was imprisoned in Cyrus Russia and obviously whenever you're imprisoned by desire you know you're not really sure you'll come out alive or whatever it would be and on this day he was released from prison in fact the authority actually looked at this in very Cosmic terms he actually said because of the alter Webbie was teaching Kabbalah so to speak he based his hasidus on many deep kabbalistic ideas and he was criticized even by other Hasidic rebellum for trying to bring Kabbalah down through the masses who are not necessarily worthy of it and he saw his imprisonment as a struggle in shamayam between different forces in which some were saying in shamayam he has to be silenced and some were saying we have to let him teach and disseminate his wisdom and that's why he's in prison because there's a struggle going on and he saw his release on you test his life as a Divine decree that he is supposed to go on and teach that then even on a deeper level that's why it is said that his teachings after the 19th of his life we're actually deeper and more complex than before the 19th of Kiss life because he felt he had Direct divine ratification validation that this was supposed to be taught although they do tell they do tell a funny story if I could digress for a moment that apparently he was supposed to be dropped off in Saint Petersburg which was the Cyrus Capital he was supposed to be dropped off at a Goldberg until this casino would come and take him back to liotti and uh there were there were you know Goldbergs it was a relatively common name apparently they gave they dropped him up at the wrong Goldberg they were supposed to drop them off at Goldberg and they dropped him off at a vicious mississ were able to locate him so for the whole three or four hours this Goldberg Miss nagate was telling him how foolish and stupid all of the hasidus was and the Remy didn't say anything he just listened to it and the Ruby said afterwards maybe it was a joke maybe not he said you know those four hours were worse than all the time I had in prison because he didn't he didn't want to defend himself at all because you know let the person say whatever the person wanted wanted to to say but being as it may the alter rebbies great great great grandson the last little ebbing mental uh used to say that every Jew is a Lamplighter what is a Lamplighter in the days before electricity so you add gas lamps in the street and every night there had to be somebody who would ignite the lamp our job is to bring light to Darkness every Joe we're supposed to be a source of light but we live in a world of tremendous Darkness there's the darkness of assimilation the darkness of ignorance the darkness of violence and War and poverty the darkness of the individual struggles that people have with depression despair not finding a of not having children health issues lack of Shalom bias estrangement of parents and children Darkness exists and summon a lack of moral Clarity with respect to a lot of things fusions and issues like transgenderism and all sorts of just confusions of what's going on we don't have a clarity so Darkness exists on so many levels and it's our job as individuals and as a nation try to bring light but here is the thing sometimes you look at the darkness and you look at yourself and you say the darkness is so great and I'm so insignificant what can I do what difference can I make what contribution can I possibly contribute to alleviate this situation Annika tells you you do what you can do no matter how insignificant you think it is and then God will bless your efforts Beyond what you thought would have been possible that's a tremendous message because that applies to me in the in the Here and Now I look at the darkness because remember let's say the Jews would have had the same attitude what if they would have had the attitude that says you know what's the purpose of lighting the oil today it's going to be gone by tomorrow so why bother let's just wait until a week from now we'll have pure oil whatever it would be there wouldn't have been a miracle of the oil at least so what do you see you do what you can and then God blesses the result if you don't do what you can then nothing happens nothing happens so this is why I think Hanukkah is extraordinarily important it gives us hope it gives us strength gives us courage it makes us recognize the significance of what we do even if objectively it would seem that our little contributions are not so significant and therefore I actually side with the reform position that emphasizes and builds up Hanukkah and that's why of course the commentaries say that the word hanuka which again means dedication on one hand it commemorates the dedication of the Temple on the other hand a human being is also called the temple you know the phrase from the safer karate them it's been set to music bill is also a series of very fine books very fine story mishkan Esh that means I will build a tabernacle for God in my heart so when we talk about chanukkah as dedication of the Temple yes historically it's referring to dedication of the temple yeah but it also means the dedication of the Temple in my heart to make my heart a Dwelling Place for God and when I make my heart a dwelling place for God I now can become a generator of light I can be someone that can take the life within me and give it to others so it really is a very very lovely time in the middle of in fact even the very fact that it's situated in the winter when the days are short and it's a myth for that we do at night when it's dark I mean the whole ceremony is not only get the life dispels the darkness and that's the message of of of Hanukkah now I just want to mention I it may be a side point that's very interesting you know one of the most famous questions about chanukkah is a question of Joseph Cairo the bay show safe and he says why is Hanukkah eight days they found enough oil to last for one day the miracle was it burnt for eight days so the miracle is only seven more days so why do you have Hanukkah for eight days the holiday ought to be seven days meaning starting from the second day of Hanukkah I mean we should have seven seven days this is a very very famous if any of you have uh children or grandchildren in school they can come home and tell you all of the answers that they learned I can tell you there are at least 500 answers to this question because I have a safer that has 500 answers to this question although I think the author cheated a little bit because some of the answers are so close close I would not call them separate answers like you know answer 55 is very similar to enter 93 okay but at least I think you can get a hundred for sure a hundred very distinct answers to this question some say for example there was a miracle that they found the oil uh some say that when they found the oil the Joseph himself says they didn't pour all the oil in the in the in the cup they only poured one eighth of the oil meaning they were going to pour an eighth of the oil every day and then have something so even the first day an eighth of oil burnt the whole day that was a miracle itself very different others say they poured all the oil but then the cup got filled up even on the first day miraculously right so many answers other assignments you're giving you a little sampling of answers I won't go through too many of them is that maybe God wants us to realize that even nature is a miracle you think oh oil burning is just normal no life is a miracle the nature is also a miracle the Teva is a nasis well as we say in the Shimona esri al-nisakra we give thanks to God for his miracles every single day but the morale gives an answer that really based on the share that we gave that is a very simple remember I made a point earlier which morale really makes that the holiday of Hanukkah was not because of the miracle of the oil at all the holiday of Hanukkah was the regaining of the base and the dedication of the basement so why was it eight days because when Moshe Rabino dedicated the mishkan it was an eight day dedication ceremony there was seven preliminary days and then rosh kodesh Nissan so the morale says very passionate and by the this is born out in the book of Maccabees that the eight days of chanukkah is not because of the miracle of the oil the miracle of the oil was only seven days the eight days of Hanukkah was the eight days of dedication parallel to Moshe rabena's dedication beautiful answer but there's a little question on that and that is yes it is true that Moshe urbainer's dedication of the mishkan was an eight-day dedication ceremony but shalom who built the first base his dedication ceremony lasted 14 days by the way Yom Kippur was one of those days and because I'll tell us that Yom Kippur they ate because that was a Divine permission to eat on vacuum keeper so my question is simply this is in dedicating the basamikdish wants to imitate the precedent why are they looking at the precedent of Moshe and the mission the closest precedent would be shalom's dedication of the bias region so I would augment what morale says with a medrish basicta the Manchester says the following when the Jewish people began to construct a mishkan right after Yom Kippur they actually were finished in the month of Kiss life they were ready to dedicate the Michigan in the month of Kiss life but Hashem didn't want the Michigan to be dedicated and kiss like Hashem wanted the Michigan to be dedicated to Nissan because that was the month of redemption Etc so he deferred the Hanukkah of the mishkan to Nissan so as the madrasium always say the month of Kiss slave was very offended you took away my opportunity to be a month of dedication so Hashem promised kiss life I will make it up to you in the story of Hanukkah so now it's beautiful it works perfectly since the dedication of the second miktash during Hanukkah was to restore to the month of Kiss life the right it acquired in the midboard that's why the dedication is eight days because you're connecting it to most European's dedication rather than dedication hello my mother's dedication was in tishray okay so again mishkan was Adar the last week about our Nissan chanukkah of course is in kisly now although it's little it's a little interesting maybe I'll throw this out as a question to think about I don't have a full answer Hanukkah it was a rededication of the base I make this but it was not the official dedication the official dedication of the bayashani was in the Persian period they dedicated the second temple the Greeks didn't destroy that Temple they desecrated it and we kind of rededicated it so it's interesting that we don't really celebrate the dedication of the second temple we celebrate the re-dedication of the second temple and those are following the history Because the actual dedication of the second temple was before there was the Greeks at all the second temple was built by Darius II who is the son of akrish version Esther and that's recorded in Tanakh the tanakri chords I mean that's the last event of tonight the biblical period ends with the dedication of the second ish the Greek period is post-biblical it's only the Persian period that is in enough so that's a little horror but but again I probably the connection is that we don't stop as I celebrate dedications we celebrate dedications when we've been redeemed from darkness and persecution and that occurred during Hanukkah so I want to wish everyone a Hanukkah may it be very joyous may all of us feel the inspiration of the light of Hashem that is coming from those Narrows and may it give us the koak and the courage to become lamplighters that can try to in whatever little way we can spell so much of the darkness that exists in the world thank you [Music] crazy