Adam's Hanukkah - Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hey guys i hope you're all doing well and enjoying chanukah we're happy to be back on the farm as well um i want to share with you a really interesting passage in the talmud in the track of avodahzara that's the tractate that discusses um traditions of idolatry now there's a fascinating story there about adam first adam you know the adam now imagine that you're adam okay adam we learned already was created on rosh hashanah in the month of tishrei now he sins and then he's thrown out of the garden now think about the world as if you're there for the first time you're adam okay you haven't been around for a while okay now what happens in around the month of toushrey around like september-ish the days start getting shorter and shorter right the nights get longer and the days get shorter now that doesn't scare us or make us nervous because we know that the spring will come you know and things will start getting you know brighter the days will start getting longer again but imagine it's your first time around in the world and the days are getting shorter and shorter and shorter what would be your most obvious assumption it's not looking good right so now the talmud shares with us the process that adam goes through in that first winter season i'm gonna read it slowly because every word here matters okay adam saw that the days were getting shorter and shorter so he cried out woe is me perhaps because of my sin the world is going back to darkness and returning to its primordial state maybe this is the death that was decreed upon me by heaven he sat for eight days of fasting when the month of tibet began that's right where we are right now he saw that the days were getting longer and longer and he said oh this must be the nature of the world he went and made eight happy days and the next year listen carefully he made a daze he made these days festive days the talmud says in hebrew which means for this and for that for these and for those he said these days these eight days to be a holiday going forward for the sake of heaven but others turn those days into days of idolatry it's a really interesting kind of cryptic passage the talmud is noticing that many peoples around the world have idolatrous holidays around this wintry time of year as the days start getting um you know go from getting shorter and shorter to getting longer and longer like around the time of the longest night of the year many people have a holiday where they put out light they light things up on the dark time of the year for example in the roman world there was a holiday for the sun god that started on december 25th and was celebrated for eight days 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 right until january 1st when the sun god was reborn and it's obvious why they put it there because the sun really is reborn in a way it starts getting brighter and brighter if you don't understand why all of that's happening it does look kind of like the sun is being reborn it can also help us understand why those dates uh were set in the roman catholic church for christmas because there was already this tradition of lights in those eight days and not in all the churches did that happen but that was you know probably an easier sell because it was connecting with an existing holiday so now if we look at the ancient hebrew tradition our holidays also have a lot of connections with meaning right uh with that with nature right like sukkot connects with the harvesting of the fruit and it's also the time that hashem put us we also celebrate the sukkot that hashem gave us in the desert passover is called passover and it's also called holiday of spring shavuot we celebrate receiving the torah and the harvesting of the weeding you see it in the commandments of shavuot that is not just about receiving the torah we have you know the waving of the omer and and things that are related to bringing the first fruits so the biblical festivals all have this kind of double meaning now you know when we put this together with hanukkah you can see there wasn't really any kind of biblical holiday around this time of year perhaps hashem was waiting for a historical miracle in time to come give double meaning to this time it's not obvious why the maccabees would set the 25th day of kislev to be hanukkah there were other moments that they could have chosen various you know victories in battle that could have been chosen it's as if perhaps there was this ancient tradition of a holiday of lights around this time but it didn't have any holiness in it and the maccabees came and took something in the biblical tradition of you know taking days and giving them a meaning that connects both with the nature of reality and with hashem's providence in the world so now what does this mean what's the meaning then of chanukah that differentiates it from other holidays of lights i want to think a bit about the process that adam goes through in this passage it's not in the passage in the beginning because we have in the torah itself but what was adam's first response to being caught in his sin he doesn't say oh you know oh shoot sorry hashem i shouldn't have done that what does adam say he says oh ah it was the woman you gave me that's why i did this we don't ever really hear in the bible how he reflects further on this and so that's why we have the talmud to fill in those blanks for us so time is going on and he sees the world is getting darker and darker he's not blaming the woman anymore what does he do the talmud says he starts repenting and fasting he looks around him in the world he thinks all this darkness is because of me the bad things that are happening are because of my misbehavior and then what does he realize on hanukkah time he says oh there's a way that hashem set this whole world in motion not everything is about me there's a larger universe going on here i'm just a part of it i'm a part of the picture hashem created the world with a plan and a set of rules and so then he was happy and he celebrated that i feel like this reading is so sensitive to human nature at least to my nature because i go through this process a lot like when i first do something wrong my first instinct is to oh jeremy it's your fault i look for someone to blame you know why didn't you do this right or oh you know maybe it's because of uh you know i was tired or uh you know i had a rough day in work it's never my fault right in the beginning then after i finish the stage of excuses i go through the guild stage ah i'm so stupid why did i do that all these things that are going wrong are my faults right and then the third stage that i get to which helps me dig myself out of this crazy mental ditch i get into is to say to myself well even if i made a mistake hashem rules the world there must be a bigger plan and even my mistake even the place where i fell must be part of something larger and i just don't see the picture and then i feel better knowing that even if i did something wrong hashem put me in this situation because there's a much bigger thing going on here and it's surely going to be for the good and there's you know there's a there's a long run and a big picture that turns my little problem or mistake into something a lot less significant and so i think that's what the talmud is showing us that adam actually goes through he starts by blaming eve then he feels so bad he thinks the whole world is coming to an end and he says ah you know i'm gonna fast and repent for eight days and then he realizes oh this is how hashem runs the world and he's just happy and at peace but now what's really interesting is he doesn't leave it at that last stage he doesn't say well i'm going to now celebrate eight days to just remember that hashem has you know nature and and a way that he created the world the talmud uses this really interesting term when the talmud says this this part at the end it says the next year he made an eight day festival le eluva elu for this and for that well what is this and what is that what are the two things the only really two things that the talmudic passage talks about is these two internal processes these two kind of realizations or way of looking at things that he had so i understand that to mean that he set these days not to be celebrated just for his final understanding but this is nature but to actually try to capture and encapsulate those two states of mind in the same time in the previous year i'd had eight days of repentance and fasting thinking everything was because of him and then eight days of celebrating there's this nature to the world hashem's in charge and everything's okay i think the way to understand this is that in the following year he combined these two ideas to have an eight day celebration that brings our focus on understanding that both of these things can be true at the same time on the one hand you know there's a place to just be celebrating that hashem runs the world in this large picture hashem made the universe in a natural order and he's in charge and we're just kind of small little you know cogs in this system but at the same time recognizing kind of holding on to that first state of mind that he had saying maybe things that happen in the world around me are speaking to me and yes i am in a direct relationship with hashem hashem is teaching me something about my behavior it reminds me of a hasidic tradition rabbi bunim would tell his students to always wear clothes with two pockets so that they could have two notes on them at all times and he said on one note you should write the world was created for me that's a passage from the the mishnah and the tractate sanhedrin and in the other pocket you should have the verse that says that quotes with avraham said to hashem he says i am but dust and ashes like i'm nothing and he said you know both of those are legitimate ways of looking in the world they're both kind of true right like on the one hand hashem created us and we're very important to him on the one hand on the other hand we're just kind of specs in this huge universe together they're a complementary way of looking at things not getting lost in how small and insignificant we are but not seeing yourself as the be all and end all of everything but actually holding on to those two ideas in one consciousness so adam took those two states of mind and held them together in one holiday but the talmud says that his deep message was lost over time and idolaters turned this time into just days of idolatry what is idolatry in its essence idolatry takes nature and turns it into god the sun god the moon god we see this tendency all the way through until today right look around us how many people you know turn to look at nature changes in nature mother nature that is the most important the be all and end all all we should talk about the only value that matters is you know is stopping uh you know damage to nature even above and beyond human life like it it takes nature which is obviously something that hashem you know commands us to to guard the guard and hashem wants us to take care of the world and protect the world but you can take it too far and turn nature into the be all and end all and of everything so the idolatrous people forgot about that repentance element that feeling that hashem is speaking to you and having providence over you and showing you how to be in the world and they just took that part that he discovered about there being a cyclical nature to the world and only celebrating that turning nature into the ultimate ideal there's no right there's no wrong it doesn't matter how you behave in your life there's just nature celebrate things as they are without a thought to what the moral imperative is that's upon us so now if we look at hanukkah you can see that it really has both elements on the one hand it is set at this time that there was already an ancient tradition of lighting up lights lighting up candles because it's the darkest time of the year we don't reject that and say oh you know that tradition is worthless we say yes there's an ancient kernel of truth there there's a place to be celebrating the natural order of things and the way that hashem created the world but we don't end there we don't just say well yay now the days are getting longer and you know let's just celebrate nature we look at the providence of what happened at that time and understand what hashem is speaking to us through that time of year in history and how he's in a relationship with us so now here's something cool that i noticed in the book of maccabees we know that the maccabees reinstated and purified the temple on the 25th day of kislev and that's why we celebrate hanukkah then but a lesser known fact that you can see in the first book of maccabees is that the assyrian greeks also defiled the temple on the 25 on the 25th day of kislev and that defilement you know in previously and that defilement was what prompted the maccabees to say wait a minute wait a minute we don't want to tolerate this anymore seeing the you know the the destruction of the honor of the temple gave them courage to fight back and actually start this you know active movement of repenting and going separating from the greek infiltration and they didn't just say well you know let's be passive and accept things how they are this is just the way the world is they saw the darkness that the greeks brought and they saw that as a call to action and they led a movement that at its core was about really repenting deeply and so it's that very day that they came and re-purified the temple as if to say we get it we understand the message we're going to actively turn things around we're going to hear hashem's message to us in time and change our actions we're going to be responsive to hashem's messages to us so the uniqueness of our jewish holidays is that they don't deny nature they're not purely spiritual holidays that we say oh you know there's just us and hashem let's ignore the world we say yes there's a beautiful world that hashem created it has seasons and cycles that are blessings and they bring us abundance and we can celebrate that and be thankful for that but it's not only that the world is also a way that hashem communicates with us and looks over us in a way that's personal and natural not you know national and providential it's a relationship and if we can bring those two ideas to bear to keep them both in our pockets it'll enrich our celebration and give it a double uh deep meaning so with that i wish you guys all a beautiful and meaningful last day of hanukkah bye everyone hi my name is jeremy gimpel a lot of people want to know exactly what the land of israel fellowship is and what members receive when they join so let me explain the land of israel fellowship is a global online community with hundreds of members from over 40 countries around the world there are live sessions and gatherings that create a 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