Transcript
Auto-generated transcript. Not time-synced to the video.
[music]
>> Here's a classic awesome air story.
Ben Gurion Airport immigration stand.
The uncle hands his ancient British
passport to the lady behind the desk.
She opens it and turns to the
photograph. Looking back up at her from
those pages is a Hollywood record
producer with a Douglas Fairbanks
mustache and a very self-satisfied look
at his face.
She looks at the picture and looks back
up at the uncle. Rabbinical beard, side
locks tucked smartly behind his ears,
black Gore-Tex rain coat, black fedora.
She looks back down at the picture and
she looks back up at him.
She pushes the passport away from her,
folds her hands, and in a voice which
manages to combine tremendous sympathy
and total bewilderment, she says,
"What happened?"
The uncle replies with two words in
Yiddish. Now, the uncle doesn't know a
lot of Yiddish, but these two words he
knows. He says, "Pintele Yid."
"Ma?" comes the reply.
Apparently, this lady's Yiddish is about
as extensive as the uncle's is.
"Netzots Hayehudi." says the uncle.
It means the Jewish spark.
Hanukkah is the festival
of the Jewish spark. Hanukkah is in the
middle of the winter, the darkest time
of the year. You cannot know what light
is until you've been in the darkness.
The domination of Greece is symbolized
by darkness. But throughout that
darkness, throughout the long years of
darkness, there's a little Jewish spark
that burns on through the darkest
darkest night. Through oppression,
through assimilation, like a prisoner in
the darkest dungeon, like a tiny
pinprick of light at the end of the
longest darkest tunnel, the Jewish
spark.
The Greeks defiled the sanctuary of the
Holy Temple more than any other nation.
That was their specific power to enter
the very holiest place and taint its
[music] purity.
This ability to invade and pollute the
sanctuary, the Heichal,
can be seen from the Hebrew language
itself. The gematria, the numerical
equivalent of Heichal, is 65. The
gematria of Greece, Yavan, is 66. The
Greeks were, so to speak, one up on the
Heichal. They could dominate it. They
could dominate the holiness of the
Jewish people that emanates from there.
They had the power to overcome, to
invade, to violate. And it was for this
reason that the Greeks specifically
contaminated the oil because
the oil is for the menorah and because
from the oil comes the light.
But despite all their defilement, there
remained a pure flask of oil, untouched,
untainted. Like that pure spark in the
heart of every Jew, however distant he
or she may be from their people and the
one
who watches over kindness, a pure flask
of oil sealed with the imprimatur of the
Cohen Gadol, the high priest.
For even though the Greeks were able to
violate the Heichal, the holy, they were
not able to touch that one flask of oil
with the seal of the Cohen Gadol. For
the Cohen Gadol is on a level above the
Heichal, above the holy. He's on the
level of the holy of holies, the Kodesh
Hakodashim.
Because only the Cohen Gadol may enter
the holy of holies, and that only once a
year on Yom Kippur.
That little flask of pure oil is the
pintele Yid, the little spark, the
little point of purity, the holy of
holies. The littlest letter in the
Hebrew alphabet is the yud.
It's a little dot, a small point.
The pintele Yid is the pintele yud.
The numerical value of yud is 10. 10
always connotes completion, kedusha,
asiri kodesh. The 10th is holy. And in
the decimal system, when you go beyond
nine, you go back to one. You've gone
back to the beginning. You've gone to
10, but 10 is really one starting again
on a higher level of magnitude.
10 [music] is an entire level above.
The gematria of the Heichal, as we said,
is 65. The Greeks were able to dominate
here because their gematria is 66, but
the gematria of Cohen is 75, an entire
10 above, an entire magnitude higher.
The Cohen Gadol can go further than the
Heichal.
He can go into the holy of holies.
And that's where the Aron resides,
[music] with the Torah inside it.
Torah is related to the word "ora",
light, because the light emanates from
the Torah in the Kodesh Hakodashim.
Over that flask of pure oil with the
seal of the Cohen Gadol, the Greeks had
no domination.
Because even though the Greeks could
dominate the Heichal, they could not
dominate the holy of holies, whose
measurements were 10 by 10 [music] in
the Mishkan.
A little 10, a little yud, that little
flask, that little point of light in the
Jewish soul can never be dominated by
any of the Greeks in any generation.
The Maharal notes that the word heichal,
the sanctuary, is written with a yud.
When we read it, however, the sound of
the yud is faint and almost concealed
within the diphthong "ay".
We don't pronounce a separate "y" as in
"hay-ye-khal".
Rather, it's a blended vowel sound,
>> [music]
>> "hay-khal".
The yud is hidden.
That little spark, the yud is hidden in
the heichal. Hidden in the heichal. It
stays hidden like that little flask of
oil giving an eternal light which shines
on
in the heart of every Jew.
>> [music]
