Chanukah Message and Emotional Healing

uh felix and kanika this is chase taub and i'd like to speak to you a little bit about the special opportunities spiritual opportunities during these days of hanukkah you know there was a debate among the people of helm the wise men of helm as to which is more important the sun or the moon and they argued back and forth for many days and finally they concluded that the moon is more important than the sun because the sun is shining in the daytime when it's bright out anyway but the moon is shining at night when you really need it and every truth has a little joke and every joke has a little truth and there's a little maybe not just a little uh a lot of truth in this joke the minority that we light for hanukkah is based on the minority that was lit in the basement the holy temple in jerusalem when uh the jewish people re-entered the holy temple after it had been desecrated by the by the hellenists one of the things they did is light the minota lighting laminator was one of the daily rituals in the basement and as a commemoration of that we light a menata the the thing is that the monado that we light one very obvious difference is it has eight branches whereas the menorah and the in the in the basement had seven another uh obvious difference is that the minotaur that was lit in the basement was lit during the daytime as part of the daily routine and we light armani specifically at night you're not allowed to light it too early you have to and if you do light it early meaning like uh plaga minka is the halal earliest time you can light it you have to make sure that it's going to burn into the night because the whole point of the hanukkah moment is to burn at night so what is this idea of specifically shedding light at a time when it's dark and also how is that connected to the idea of the eight branches as opposed to the set as opposed to the seven and also just for good measure what does this have to do with the little tiny jar of oil that was discovered when all the other oil the all the other jugs of oil had been defiled had been rendered ritually and pure by the hellenists what was the significance of that and how can we draw inspiration and strength from that idea today okay so a few few issues out on the table right now right uh the hanukkah miner is based on the monetary from the base amigdas but it has eight branches not seven uh and we light it at night not in the day and what's up with the little jar of oil so tell you like this there are two kinds of light two ways of spreading light one is where life is good and things are stable and we feel safe and in that environment in that context we add to it we give our unique contribution and we increase the light and that's obviously a good way to be it's always like we say as good is good it's passing the special if things are good they could be better we could we could enhance it and that's sort of like regular light light that you bring there's already a lot of light going on now you bring a little bit more light and you make things even better but then there's another type of light a light that you bring to a situation of darkness where there's no other light it's dark right now and it almost seems like it's insurmountable how how intense the darkness is and it almost seems like it's not worth even trying to shine light into that situation and if things were normal right under normal conditions if there were other lights shining if there were other things that were healthy and and functional then i would add my health and my good functional function functionality but here things are crazy like i don't even want to go near it and what we have to know is that there is a light that has the power to take on darkness but it's not a regular light it's from a different place than we normally access than we normally draw from in regular life it's a supernatural level of light what do i mean by that i mean that everyone has a nature everyone has a a way of being and if we're never really pushed and never really challenged so we stay within our framework and we try to make the best of that then there are extraordinary situations and when i say extraordinary situations i mean unthinkable stuff that we certainly wouldn't think that this should be somebody's life story and yet somehow in his infinite wisdom god writes the story and we say well how is a person going to get through this and come out intact on the other side and the answer is drawing upon regular natural normal capacities they won't but the good news is that we we have a soul and the soul is supernatural it is not limited by nature and we're not going to get through this with natural capacities we're going to get through it with supernatural capacities in in our tradition we describe nature as a cycle of sevens because the world was created in seven days god worked for six days and on the seventh he rested the seventh day of rest is part of the completion of the work cycle the cessation of work is also part of the work so it's a seven day cycle and then after you complete that seven day cycle you start like any cycle you start over again start from the beginning and you come back to your immediate into the first day again in lather rinse repeat you just keep going through that cycle so the world and the natural order were created in seven days and are continually renewed under a cycle of seven days eight is one more these amps go to 11. eight is one more than seven eight is off the chart it's beyond the cycle eight is a number of beyond nature the harps in the basamiktas in the holy temple had seven strings when meshech comes they'll have eight strings why because we'll be beyond nature so that's the thing the menorah in the basement had seven branches because when life is good when there's a base hamikdash standing when there's light shining so you add light and all the light you have to add is natural light seven branches seven a natural cycle but when the base of mig-dish is destroyed and we're in exile and hashem's presence is in exile and we're wandering all over the world as we have been the past two thousand years and we're lighting the minority each jewish house lighting the menaida everywhere we've been in exile whether it's uh poland or morocco or yemen or lithuania or america or jamaica or china everywhere jews are in exile we're lighting that mineral and we're in a dark situation a spiritually dark situation think about the exile of the jewish people it's full of a lot of brutality a lot of dysfunction a lot of trauma and yet we keep lighting them at that menita but it's not enough to have a seven branched minota like was enough to have when the temple was standing no we need an eight branch maneuver we need to dig deeper to something that's beyond nature otherwise we're not going to survive but if we dig into that supernatural capacity of the soul then we can do it and not only we can survive the darkness we can shine our light into the darkness and make the darkness light so that's why we like the hanukkah monitor specifically when it's dark out to show what to show that this light this eight branched monero light this is the kind of light that can even take on the darkness and what does this all have to do with the tiny jar of oil tiny jar of oil we're told represents the benefic there are different levels of the soul there's the nephesh which is the vitality of my behaviors and there's the ruach which is the life of my emotions and there's nishama which is the energy which vitalizes my my thinking capacities and then there's then there's kaya which is uh spirituality altruism selflessness and then there's the essence of the soul we we darven five times a day on yim kippur because adam kippur the way that atonement works is that no matter what you did that may have affected the nephesh even the kaya but the yakida is pristine and cannot be corrupted so on yom kippur we dive in five times representing the five levels of the soul to bring out that yakida the is the part of you that no matter what happened no matter what you did and no matter what anyone did to you that part of you that essence that core that pintula yid that tiny little dot of your essential identity your core that always remains pure not only it remains pure it can't become defiled so we're told when the jews discovered the jar of oil in the basement with the seal of the kind goggle they're looking around everything's destroyed everything's defiled we're told that that's akin to a person who has experienced absolute devastation on the level of nephesh and ruach and nishama and everything has been torn asunder and yet he digs deep and he finds there's this tiny little jar of oil called the called that core identity where yehida meaning yohid oneness unity i am one with god my soul is bound up with hashem it always was no matter what was happening no matter what i was going through no matter what even i did that part of me remained pristine and pure and innocent and holy and cannot be defiled cannot be not only it wasn't defiled it cannot be defiled it is above defilement and when i find that part of me that was always pure that part of me that couldn't be hurt because it is one with god and it is infinite and it is it is indestructible and it is eternal just like god is eternal when i find that little part of me that real part of me that real me then i can go out and light up even the darkest situations so that's the lesson of chanukah the lesson of kanika is when things are regular it's enough to have a minor with seven branches and it's enough to use the regular oil the nephesh but when things are dark either for the jewish people or for you as an individual or a combination of the two then we need the eight branches we need to go above nature and we need to go to the little tiny jar of oil the shebang the essence of the soul but if we do all of that meaning if we look within the answer's not out there it's in here if we look within if we can get to that place then not only can we survive meaning preserve our own sanity and health and and ability to function but we can be influencers we can shine a light that will transform darkness which means that it benefits others and i know that's sometimes hard to think of like i'm just trying to get by over here i'm just trying to survive i'm just trying to scrape by and you're talking to me about helping others but here's the thing it's no more extra effort once you've found that little jar of oil once you've found that eight branches that supernatural miraculous place within you it's not extra effort to now be of benefit to others there's an expression that a candle for one is a candle for a hundred when you light that light it doesn't have to work harder if there's more people in the room it's like if you're cooking food i gotta know how many guests i'm gonna have because i have to work harder to prepare a meal for one guest i mean i have to work harder to prepare a meal for a hundred guests than if i have one guest but when it comes to light you flip the light on and it doesn't work harder because there's more people in the room and the people in the room don't make it less light it's not like they soak up the light hey you're eating up all the light with food yeah that guy he took two two helpings of of latkes now somebody else didn't get a latke but if it's light then everyone benefits so what i'm telling you is that when you find that little jar of oil and you find that miraculousness within you that that infinity that eternality that godliness which is indestructible and and incorruptible and cannot be defiled then not only are you able to survive but you end up benefiting everyone around you in a very special way in a very unique way um and this this role of the survivors of the miraculous people the people people who are forced to find their own miraculousness i think is a role that's going to emerge more and more in our generation where we see that the people who have been through the most are the ones whose wisdom and and guidance and example is going to be treasured by our community and by our world so look within find that godliness within you that was always intact and always will be try to identify with it don't identify with what happened on your nephesh level on your rooh level on your nishama level even on your higher level identify with what is eternal and unchanging and incorruptible about you and live that way and you're gonna see it not only benefits you it benefits the whole world even in the darkest of places a frailer can hanukkah