The History of Chanukah - Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

and uh I'm going to talk a little bit uh about uh some of the sources of the Kaneka story because the sources are kind of unusual sources they're not necessarily the typical sources that we would look at uh we have something called uh the book of the mabes and we have something called the Milla of antias and we have something called millas Tanis let me just explain all all of these different things are first of all uh when did the story of kanaka take place well that's not so simple either uh remember that um the base of mikdash the first temple was destroyed by the Babylonians the Babylonians were then conquered by the Persian Empire and that's where the story of porm happens and then the second temple was built under Persian rule uh but then shortly after the building of the second temple we now enter the Greek period Alexander of Macedonia toppled the Persian Empire and took over erisel as part of the Persian Empire so we are entering the Greek period and that's around uh less than 100 years from the dedication of the second temple meaning the Greeks run in now Alexander of Macedonia is known in history as Alexander the Great uh we ourselves do not call him the great but he's called in kazal he is called Alexander mtan just means Macedonia uh if you remember your history Alexander's father was Philip who was king of Macedonia Macedonia was a little country adjacent to Greece uh Alexander grew up became a World Conqueror not only did he conquer Greece but he conquered everything the Persian Empire everything else uh Alexander died at the age of 31 or so 31 or um the official cause of death his plague you know he was trying to he was engaged in an African campaign uh many say that he was poisoned he did leave over a young child who died a few months later of uh Illness but almost certainly the baby was poisoned for sure and Alexander therefore died without any successor and he left a huge huge huge Empire Legend has it that on his deathbed he was crying because he said he had no more worlds left to conquer because he had conquered the entire Known World at the time uh now uh Alexander's empire was divided among four generals for purposes of Jewish history only two of those generals are important T me that's PT o l m y and ccas taly took over Egypt and North Africa sucus took took over Syria and turkey okay so the Tomic Empire is Egypt North Africa the sald Empire is Syria turkey now if you can visualize this in a map I should have done a PowerPoint or something uh you will know that Eric Israel is right between the two empires and as a result for over 100 years wasn't a civil war these were two different Empires uh there was constant fighting between the call mayak Empire of the South and the salusin Empire of the north and erel was going back and forth like a football between one group and the other the truth of the matter is for the average Jew it didn't make any difference life was lousy under either Empire so it didn't really make a big Naina but there were all at this fighting in the book of Danel which is in tanak the Book of Daniel was written at the time of the destruction of the first bikes many many years earlier in chapter 11 there's a long prophecy about the King of the North fighting the King of the South and most MAF farim understand that the King of the South is the toic Empire which is south and the King of the North is salusa is socas okay so at this point although life was hard for the Jews as it as it always is there was no overt religious persecution Jews were allowed under Alexander under the success cessors to keep the Torah but the cultural Milo was what was known as helenismo ofy Greek Athletics whatever it would be so on a voluntary basis voluntary much like America let's say or even Israel many Jews were assimilating many Jews were giving up the Torah many Jews stopped keeping mitos not because of some persecution they were just doing it because Hellenism was a meal ticket to be successful in that broader Society so the Kaneka story starts when a man called antios II he's not our antias antias the thir who's actually called antias the Great finally decisively crushed Tom me and conquered the land of Israel okay antias the thiri antias the thir though once again didn't do anything against the Jewish people just he was a ruler and like all rulers he was a desperate and a dictator but he was not singling out the Jewish people for any particular decree ah so the Kaneka story starts when antios thei dies and has a son antios the fourth truth is like these bad Haram movie sequels there'll be a lot of anti there's the fifth the sixth the seventh that keeps on going but the the anti-hero the bad guy of the kanuka story is antios I 4th now antios I four gave himself the name antias epis which basically means antias the Divine you know he had certain delusions of grander behind his back his own subjects the non-jewish subjects changed one letter instead of antios EP they called him antios epim Manus and if you know your classical Greek which I I don't know it either epim Manus means the insane so epifanis means the Divine epim Manus means the lunatic uh so he called himself epifanis and they called him behind his back epim Manis now what was anas's agenda here so here's the interesting thing antios wanted to accelerate the process of heniz and assimilation that was going on anyway on a voluntary basis and indeed he didn't have to do what he was doing Jews were assimilating with or without him but there were still some holdouts some Fanatics some whatever it would be and anos instituted religious coercion to prohibit the Jewish people from keeping a number of Commandments and if they were caught keeping those Commandments they would be tortured and murdered and killed now this is fascinating you wouldn't realize this but uh many historians say he is the first ruler in history to impose anti-religious legislation against the Jewish people now you might be thinking well gee there were plenty of bad guys before antias let's think about nueter who destroyed the temple let's think about SV who exiled the 10 tribes let's think about parro who enslaved Us in Egypt fascinatingly none of those bad guys prohibited the Jews from keeping the Torah this is very fascinating pyro didn't care I mean let you were a slave so he didn't let you keep shabas whatever it is but that but that was not a religious thing that was just you had to do your job but parro didn't care if you w fill in or study Torah in your private time whatever that was netar destroyed the temple not because he was trying to take us away from Judaism but because he wanted to crush the revolt against him it's fascinating all of the bad guys before antias were not directly targeting the Torah at all they were persecuting the Jews they were conquering our land they were exiling us but they weren't directly saying don't keep the Torah or else H the story of porm which is earlier hon is in the Bible in the tanak hon wasn't embarked on an anti-religious campaign humman was like Hitler Hitler didn't care if you were religious or not religious in fact as far as Hitler was concerned you could have been a Jew converted to Catholicism and you would still die in a concentration camp as indeed was the case Okay so the very first king who targeted the practice of the Jewish religion was antias we don't realize this okay this is talking about um like one uh 160 or 168 BCE before the Common Era now in many ways in a perverse way you could you could actually say antias was not anti-semitic at all antias had nothing against Jews he basically told his Jewish subjects you will have full political social and economic rights in My Kingdom as long as you give up your old-fashioned religion okay he was not anti-semitic in that sense he was anti- Torah and the reason was because he wanted to accelerate the process of assimilation and the like problem was from our perspective most of the Jews went along with it many Jews went along with it before antias other Jews went along with it because they were scared of losing their lives but there was a small group of people who decided that we are going to revolt we are going to fight we are going to stand up and these people are known as the Abes or the the honi now I just want to give you a little difference between the the two names was the name of a particular family of kohanim who were the leaders or the instigators of the Revolution the spiritual head was a very old man who died shortly after the Rebellion started his name is matis yahu he's Mattis the son of yanan Coen now there's a whole big M was M the Coen or was his father the had to learn that and is the family name right so the jonian refer to the family where Mato and his five Sons Mao had five Sons uh elazar yanan yonasan Shimon and the most famous of the warrior Sons is Yehuda Judah the makabe ETC I'll get to the makabe in a moment but they are known as the kashim and at the end of the Revolt they actually established the jonian monarchy that lasted for a hundred years until the Romans came in okay now makabe is not a family name makabe was originally appended only to one of the sons Yehuda he was known as Yehuda H makabi now what was makabi in those days uh it was not uh the Health Service uh or or or or the like uh but makabi there are two interpretations it depends if you spell makab with a or with a K if you spell it with a K it means Hammer a sledgehammer and he was called Yuda the makabe because he was such a powerful Warrior he was like a sledgehammer if you spell makabe not with a K but you spell it with a so then many commentaries say it's an abbreviation of a p in the Torah who is like you among the Mighty God so the first letter of those words are me and that was said to be their Banner when they went into battle they had the banner of who is like you God others the cyer gives another origin that makab might be an abbreviation of maten the Coen the son of yanan now you may ask me a question the following the primary source for the history of khaka is not in the gamar the gamarra gives very very few details you're not going to get a story uh from the the G just says there was a war against the Greeks that's like all it says so where do we know the details of the Kaneka story we know it from uh a book that is called the book of the mabes safer now in truth the book of the mbes is not part of tanak it's not biblical because the whole story of Kaneka is after the time of the prophets it is part of what is known as the Apocrypha and in Hebrew it's called the excluded works now even though it's not part of our tanak it is regarded in our tradition as a reliable historical work so you can look at the book of the mbes to see the exact history of Kaneka it'll probably give you more detail than you're interested in unless you're a military historian because it goes over every battle every nook and cranny every bit of historical detail so the gar just says we fought the ofanim and we won the book of the macbes tells you exactly every little uh every little uh battle and the like now the truth is there are four books of the mccabes just like we have in tanak sh Al sh be so in the book of the mabes there's makim Al B giml doet but in truth giml and doet I would just cross off the list because giml and out are are not historical books they're more philosophical books and I don't even know why they were called book of the macbes they're just general philosophical discussions but the history of Kaneka is retold in makab one and mccabes 2 a lot of the information is repeated but there are different details in the two books the authors of these books are Anonymous however they seem to have been written very shortly after the events of Kaneka so they are considered to be reliable historical books so here's my question I just told you there's a whole mlo if makab is spelled with a and it's or makab is spelled with a K so it's m which means Hammer why don't you just look at the book of the m and see how they spell it and whatever they spell it is what it is the answer is the following we do not have a Hebrew version of the book of the mccabes now it's not clear to us if there was an original Hebrew version and it got lost or there never was an original Hebrew version The Book of the mccabes has come down to us in Greek only now it's it's true it's true that you can find many Hebrew translations of the book of the mccabes but they are not original they are translations of a Greek work okay there is no original extant Hebrew Book of the mccabes and if that's the case therefore in Greek you can't tell what the Hebrew spelling would have been I mean now there's the Greek text uses the word makabi but it doesn't say the meaning and you can't you can't infer the spelling uh in Hebrew from the Greek text and that's why we have this uncertainty who were the makabe so originally maab only uh was given to yehudah hakabe eventually it was extended to the entire Army so the Revolt historically is known as the Maan Revolt it's not called the Honan Revolt you see because the Honan was only one family that started it makabe was the name of the whole Army now the monarchy that was established at the end of the military struggle is called the Honan monarchy so again maybe this is not a major point but I I do want to differentiate between kashim which is a family and makim which originally was the title only of Judah the makabe it then got extended to the whole to the whole Army now again it's very important I said this last night and I'm sure everyone everyone else is saying it as well to UND underscore the fact that this was not a war for political Independence per se this was not a revolutionary war this was not a war for autonomy this was a war that was fought to be able to keep the Torah and the mitzvos and if the foreign oppressor was going to be overthrown which it was it was for the purpose of being able to keep the Torah one has to remember this this was a religious struggle yes it turned into a war it turned into violence it turned into physical deaths and and and conquest and everything else but it was a war over the freedom to keep the Torah and the Mitzvah that's why the mafor point out that this is a major difference between Kaneka and puim puim was an attack on our physical lives Kaneka was not an attack on our physical survival kanuka was an attack on our spiritual life that is why the Lush one of the great poin points out that on porm you must celebrate with a festive meal kanaka although it's customary to make parties but there's no obligation to have a festive meal on khah and the difference is because porm was a threat to our bodies we thank Hashem with our body our eating kanaka was a threat to our soul so we thank Hashem by lighting candles which is a representative of the soul of a person the soul of a person is called a candle by God yeah uh well I I I think that's certainly very of course it's appropriate to learn on for him too but yeah that's correct learning is is very important inion uh you know in for various crazy reason it's not very clear um in many places in Eastern Europe among many many from people there was a minan Khan to do a lot of gambling they play cards gamble in fact even drel drel is a form of of gambling in its original way but the truth is uh the gum were kind of it was a folk custom that was very widely practiced dice playing cards kanaka thing uh but the gum point out that those are not the best ways to spend your time and certainly Torah would always be a wonderful wonderful thing to do uh remember remember that the soul is compared to light and Torah is compared to light so you're matching up the light of your soul with the light of the Torah and the light of the Kaneka candles uh and uh and the light in fact let me just mention something about the Holiness of the candles Al I'm deviating from my topic for a moment uh how many kanaka candles uh do we light over kanaka not counting the shamish right so if you add up the digits add up the numbers you have 36 Candles there are 36 candles uh that you like that's why a package of kanuka candles will be 44 because you have 36 candles plus eight shishes so that that's how you get 44 as a standard package got to be careful not to waste the candle because they're exact because they only give you 44 they don't give you 45 so if you're out a candle you're going to have to borrow it from somebody now it's brought down the following IDE a that when God created the world so every day had daylight and darkness like day one there was night and there was day day two there was night and there was day day three there was night and there was day now the problem is that the sun and the moon were not created until the fourth day so that means there were 36 hours of light day 1 2 3 which did not have any so illumination so what was the light of the first 36 not was 36 hours meaning the first three days 36 hours of the first three days it was the light of the sh the light of God illuminated the world for 36 hours till it was replaced by the Sun so in CRA cabala it says that the 36 Kaneka candles correspond to the 36 hours of the Hidden light and therefore the light of the Kaneka candles are the light of the Shina the light of the divine presence that's why there actually is a practice for some people it's maybe hard to do that you actually sit by the candles and you gaze at the candles you know at least intermittently uh for half an hour for for a period of time because you're essentially absorbing a certain godliness of the divine presence now it's a little tricky because remember you're not allowed to benefit from the candle so you're not allowed to read by the Light of the candles that's why there's a Shamus that's why there's an extra candle and the truth of the matter is today that's why you should have electric light so you can read and eat without using the light of the candles so the light of the candles are not for you to use you don't derive benefit but there is a concept of gazing at them kind of absorbing a divine presence in there in there now I mentioned last night that uh in the middle of this war at some point anas's soldiers actually entered the B mikdash they entered the B mikdash they didn't destroy it but maybe they did something even worse they didn't destroy the building but maybe they did something even worse they desecrated the building what do I mean by desecrate very very specifically they built chambers of prostitution in the basa mikdash they erected Idols in the basa mikdash they sacrificed sacrifices to idolatry they even put pigs they slaughtered pigs in the Bas of mikdash Etc and they didn't allow Jews access to the basa mikes for 3 years three whole years we could not go to the Bas of mikas we didn't have the daily offering we didn't have the shabas offering we didn't have the pilgrimage festivals three years we had no access to the Bas of mkes and the Book of the macbes discusses all of the the techniques of G Guerilla Warfare you know it's very interesting um before you guys were born but you certainly have heard of the Vietnam War and Vietnam was a very interesting situation because essentially what you had was a bunch of rice Patty Farmers wearing funny hats were able to more or less defeat we don't call it that but everyone knows the United States essentially was defeated in Vietnam right we were trying to fight prevent a communist takeover by the north of the South and essentially you know they took it over and we left and the Vietnam War very very controversial but one of the psychological wounds of Vietnam was to the ego of the United States how could the greatest most powerful military force in the world be defeated by a bunch of rice Farmers engaged in Guerilla Warfare tactics so what's interesting is historically there actually is such a pre precedent that is none other than the maban revolt that took place over 3 years in which the macbes were essentially an unarmed untrained group of people who were not professional soldiers who were fighting and this is not an exaggeration the most powerful military force in the world the Syrian Greeks again the Roman Empire did not yet achieve a level of dominance that'll be in the next Century at this point the Greek army is it so I understand that uh during the Vietnam war the book of the macbes was required reading in West Point when they were training soldiers and they had to have a sense of how do you fight Guerilla war or what's the secret of Guerilla Warfare uh how could they be so successful look at the mccabes and then they were trying to devise counter strategies to the mccabes so they were reading the book of the mccabes I think for a reason that's different than why we would read it unless you like military history uh I don't think we would read it because we want to know the military strategies we read it for the spiritual message but in West Point they were looking at it for the military information uh that's in the book but after three years of fighting we finally regain access to the Bas of mikash and you know the amazing thing the book of the macbes is very specific because it gives you exact dates on the 25th of Kiss life that's today first day of Kaneka antios has entered the temple and desecrated it three years to the day we got in the same day in other words the day that became Kaneka was the day three years earlier that the temple had been desecrated 168 BCE 25 th of klave the Greeks entered 25th of klave 165 BC remember the numbers go smaller when you're BCE uh when we entered it we entered it okay and then we have the familiar story uh Etc of the oil but but again that's not in the book of the mccabes and I'll discuss that as well other words in the book of the macbes we just read on the 25th of klave we re-entered the temple and we dedicated it and we consecrated it and we purified it and we built a new altar because the alar that had been desecrated by pigs and idolatry could no longer serve as the altar of God so the altar was dismantled and a new altar was built the manora either had been melted down or had also been desecrated so they constructed a makeshift manura temporarily made out of Spears that were soldered together with tin and they put at the edge of the spear they put little cups that had oil in them again it does not mention the miracle of the oil that that's I'll get to that but it just describes how they lit the manura that's part of the ritual every day in the temple of lighting the manura now the book of the mccabes then concludes that the dedication ceremony of the Temple was eight days just as it was eight days in the times of mosha when mosha rabenu dedicated the mishkan in the desert there was an 8- day dedication ceremony kanaka is a holiday that celebrates eight days of the dedication of the temple The Liberation of the temple the dedication of the temple now this is very very important actually meaning what is the holiday of khanah according to the book of the mabes it does not say the holiday of Kaneka is because of a jar of oil that burnt eight days doesn't even mention that Kaneka is eight days because it commemorates the dedication of the basa mikdash that lasted eight days now this of course is one of the answers to a very very famous question and it's a very simple and elegant answer to a famous question that is the most well-known question about Kaneka is if they found enough oil that it could burn for one day and a miracle happens and the oil burned for 8 days then the miracle of Kaneka is only seven days the first day of Kaneka is not a miracle there's enough oil for one day so why is Kaneka eight days starting today it should be seven days starting tonight and tomorrow this is a question that's known as the base yosef's question yosf Ciro although he is not the first one to ask it and I can tell you that there are a thousand answers to this question how do I know I don't know a thousand answers to the question but there are for that put out it keeps on growing when I was in Yesa I remember we were so excited some safer came out with 50 answers to the question that was a long time ago and then there was 250 which is gatria there 250 answers to the question and then there was 500 and now somebody came up with a thousand now you know I'm not going to say that the Thousand answers each one of them is different if you kind of look at them you actually see they they kind of change a tiny little detail like you know answer 99 and answer 158 are really the same answer but in 158 they changed the Teensy weeny little fact but there's a thousand answers but I'm not going to give you a thousand answers I'm just going to give you one according to the book of the mccabes there's a very simple answer Kaneka is not eight days because of the miracle of the oil Kana is eight days because that was the dedication ceremony for the B mikash yeah we do commemorate the miracle of the oil but that's not the eight days the eight days of Kaneka and quite literally what does the word khuk mean means dedication ceremony the dedication of the bik very very simple answer that's why Kan say days now in mabes number two second book of mbes it even gives a different reason why kanak is eight days keep in mind remember the avanim had control of the temple for three years 168 BC to 165 BC that means for three years no Jew could be olar Regal no Jew could make a pilgrimage Festival right three times a year P us we are supposed to come to the B mikdash nobody could do it for three years when we finally Liberate the basa mikdash on the 25th of Kissle the Jews had an instinct that they wanted to somehow have a makeup ceremony for a pilgrimage Festival now what was the closest pilgrimage Festival that they had just missed they had missed sucos now sukos although sukus is a 7-Day holiday but we all actually consider it to be eight days because right after sukus you have shamini at sarth so it says in macbes number two that the Jewish people celebrated eight days when they rededicated the temple as kind of a makeup for the holiday of suot now I do want to point out Hally that's a meaningless thing but you can't make up sukos you miss sukos you miss sukos but spiritually they wanted to be connected and it says in the book of the macbes that people brought lul and esog to the B Mikes during the Kaneka Festival now because this is not a Hally valid ideaal in the gamar never mentioned khaka as a makeup for suas it is mentioned in the book of the makes but this was more of a folk feeling a feeling of the people it was not anything of the or the rabbis and yet I would like to suggest there was one illusion in Kaz that recognized the connection of sukos and and that is you'll remember or maybe you you've learned it there's a famous fam sh and how do you observe the Mitzvah of lighting the Kan candles B Hill of course we follow B Hill says you add a candle every night night one is one candle night two is two night eight is eight candles right that's what we do everybody does that but you know B shami says the opposite B shami says you start with eight and you go down now we don't P like B Shi but B shami says you go down meaning night one last night you would have lit eight candles and on day eight or night eight you're going to light one candle not counting the shamas now the gumar and shabas says I understand the logic of BAS hillo because B has following a principle that says males we always want to go up in Holiness so we start at a lower level we add more and more and more and more light but why would be Shi go down why would he light the candles in descending order so Bashi says Ah because that's the pattern of the additional offerings that are brought on sukos on sukos there were mfim that were brought on Day one3 blls Day 2 12 so just like sukos is descending order Kaka is descending order that's the gamorra now you're still left with a question why would kanaka be correlated to sukus there's no logical connection I would suggest The Logical connection is the passage in the sa for Hakim 2 that says that the whole reason for the eight days of the Kaneka holiday was as a makeup for sukus and that was preserved in be's M that you light candles corresponding now the common denominator between macbes 1 and mbes 2 is there is no mention of a jar of oil that was pure that only had enough for one day that lasted for eight days it literally is not mentioned in the story at all so if you're academic secular non-believer you will say things like madeup story didn't happen Etc that's not our perspective ifal tell us in the gar that there was a miracle of p a miracle of oil then we absolutely positively believe that such a miracle took place but admittedly you are then left with a difficult question if such a miracle did take place why was it not mentioned in the historical Chronicle of mabes one or or mbes 2 both of those books which are the closest historical Works to the actual events do not mention at all the miracle of the p and this is a very very good question so there are different answers that are given and that is some suggest and if you think about this this makes sense this was not a miracle that many people even knew about remember this the manora is located RAB mentioned this last night the manur is located in the temple building called the he that's where the manur is only kohanim are allowed to enter the is could not enter the and even if AO enters the he unless he's there for 24 hours if all he does is he walks in and he sees a manora burning he doesn't know that it's been burning you know for eight days or whatever it would be may maybe it was lit five minutes ago so very few people had access to the manur even people who had access didn't necessarily realize it had been continuously burning and you can also approach it from an opposite standpoint in some ways at that time it was not even so unusual because remember that even before the Hanukah story there was one candle of the manura that never went out one candle the manura had seven candles but that's called the nid do we have a nid over the AR okay whatever uh so in a sense for the candle to keep on burning and not going out was actually a normal feature in the Bas on MC although there's only one candle and here it was all all seven which means we do believe the there was the miracle of the P for sure but it was not the dominant reason for the holiday of Kaneka either because many people weren't aware of it or conversely they were used to a type of miracle in which the light kept on going because there was the n so what you actually see is the following I hope this doesn't sound too academic I can get in trouble for being too academic and that is we absolutely and again this is the single most important thing you have to walk away with we absolutely positively totally believe in the miracle of the p and right we're not going down the path that says it didn't happen it 100% happened but it was originally not the emphasis of the holiday of Kaneka the emphasis of the holiday of Kaneka was the victory over the oppressors that stopped us from keeping the Torah and that is why in the alhan prayer once again let me call it to your attention like the book of the mccabes there's no mention of the oil there is no mention of the oil what does alhim say the holiday of Kana is a about the fight against theim that tried to take us away from the T that's exactly what the alanam says and there is no reference to an oil that burnts miraculously so the suggestion therefore is that the original holiday of Kaneka was an 8-day dedication of the temple it was a commemoration of victory over the oppressor to allow us to keep the Torah according to macbes 2 which was a makeup for sucos later at some point later kazal decided to memorialize the miracle of the oil again that Miracle had happened but it was not necessarily the focal point of the holiday until later they changed the emphasis away from the war against yavan to the miracle of the PM you could actually call it khaka version one and khaka version two now why did they change the emphasis so there are a few answers you could give one answer is some of you might have read in your prior life your younger years uh George Orwell's uh little novel I don't mean 1984 but um Animal Farm now animal Farm is George Orwell's parody of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and if you recall the plot and Animal Farm the animals are being oppressed by human owners and the Animals rise up in Revolution to overthrow the human dictators and eventually what happens is that some of the animals become even more dictatorial than the human and Orwell's point was that's what happened in Russia you got rid of the Zar and you get Lenin and Stalin you know it's not clear that that's a net Improvement in any particular way meaning one of the negative consequences of revolutions is the revolutionaries become the very enemy they try to destroy well tragically tragically this happened with the the sikim the makes the sikim who were fighting to be able to keep the Torah and to liberate us from the oppression of Hellenism and their motives were totally L sh but when they established the monarchy and it went on for a 100 years do you know what happened to the later generations of the Honan monarchs what they became in a great irony they became helist they became persecutors of theim they killed many so years later the actually felt what do we doing we're celebrating the overthrow of Yovan which just it's just as bad now so they wanted to shift the the emphasis from the overthrow of yavan to a celebration of the spiritual dimension of light the miracle of the right that's what I call Kaneka version two now another reason might be political frankly and that is when you're under Roman occupation and the Romans ask you why are you lighting Kaneka candles so what are you supposed to say to them or what's kanaka say oh khaka is a holiday that celebrates the overthrow of foreign oppressors in the land of Israel H you know that's not what you want to tell a Roman who asks you why are you celebrating so you say we're celebrating the miracle of the oil etc etc right so again the point I'm making is I'm not I'm not God forbid again I have to say this a third time this is not saying that the miracle is made up the miracle was enormously important but I am saying it was not initially the focus of the the focus of the was on the overthrow of yavan only only later did the naos assume their prominence in the celebration and in fact in fact I had mentioned that the holiday of khah dates to 165 BC that's when we started celebrating khah there are that say beish that there was no takana of lighting candles till after the bikash in the year 70 that's more than 200 years later so I can show you makus and recognized that say that for 200 years we celebrated the holiday of Kaneka with Hal and Alan and there was no Mitzvah of even lighting candles see this is a very foreign idea to assembly because we're so used to the idea that the very definition of celebrating Kaneka is the lighting of candles not true the real definition of celebrating kanah is Hal and that was the original thing the lighting of the candles may have come not everybody agrees with this but some say the Mitzvah of lighting of the candles was not until after the year 70 so from 165 BCE BCE to 70 CE we celebrate kanaka with Hal the argument goes because when we had a b Mikes we were lighting the manora every day so we didn't have to have a special Mitzvah of lighting manura in our houses it's only when we lost the man in the mikdash that we started commemorating the man okay so again KHAK is a very very interesting holiday and I think it's it's illustrative of the idea that when you have a little bit more historical knowledge you can actually appreciate kazal much more you can understand what the gamar is referring to because the gamorra is not a history book but at the same time the gamorra presupposes a certain amount of historical knowledge so if you don't have that historical knowledge you will not always gets what the gamarra is alluding to so um this type of Jewish history is very very useful and by the way and I can tell you um the art scroll book on Kaneka happens to be exceptionally good it's really uh I consider it to be the best uh of the art scroll books on anything because it really really really if if you like nitty-gritty some people don't like nitty-gritty but if you like nitty-gritty history uh it does an absolutely superb job in telling you exactly uh the story of Kaneka and how it developed in in different ways okay and be well thank you for listening to this awesome production to find out more and to 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