Gratitude in War The Struggle is Real, but so is the Chanukah Light - Tehila Gimpel

okay so happy Hanukah Hanukah is a funny holiday what do you actually do on Hanukah and I know I'm I'm looking at your shirt tar I know what you're thinking we light the kanuka candles of course we light the Hanukah candles but okay we do that at night and then you wake up in the morning on Hanukah and then what do you actually do what do you do on Hanukah you know on all of the other holidays there's just so much to do we're always busy and you know and that's only now even when we don't have the temple but just think about sukot you have to make your Suka and then be in the Suka and while you're in the Suka you're shaking your different fruits and greeneries and on PES every meal you're eating this special food and you're drinking your special wine and you have your whole seder and there's like and that's just now imagine in the times of the temple you had to get to Jerusalem and then there was all the temple service like every holiday has so much to do throughout the actual day what do you do on you light the candles you wake up in the morning and you're just like what do I do now what does a Hanukah day look like and so since it's not a Biblical holiday we can't actually even look to the Bible for an answer right like in in in the in the tall mood in the T mutic claw we hear about lighting the candles of course but what else is there anything else so to try to understand this this is uh actually a discovery that was revealed to me by Jeremy's brother my brother-in-law Micah he said when you look in the rhom my monties are a great scholar in his unbelievable Corpus his his his magnificent Corpus known as the mishna Torah the yaka his book was actually the first time in uh Jewish history where there was a legal uh codex made of all of the Torah Commandments and Rabin Commandments put together going all the way from the Torah through the talmud and all of the rulings you know when you read the talmud it's like a compilation a compendium of a compendium of ARG arents and stories and rulings and discussions you can't just open it up and know what to do so my Mones was the first one to actually write everything out in a categorized book chapter by chapter with like the legal summaries and bottom lines of all of the talmudic discussions so now when the ROM when my mon talks about Hanukah his chapter is entitled laws of the Milla and Hanukah and when he speaks there of Pam and Hanukkah in chapter three he discusses Hanukah and he discusses lighting the candles but then he says there's actually one more commandment that's special to Kaneka and that's to say the halel prayer now what is the Hal prayer oh sorry guys anybody who's doed anybody who's prayed in the sedor knows that on any festival or new month we say the holl which is a a special kind of festive compilation of Psalms that we say to thank Hashem Psalm 13 through 1118 this is a you know many people in the the synagogue will like singing this and it's really it's really festive and and and and we praise Hashem now one of the days where we do that is Kaneka what's interesting in reading my Mones here is that he says that Hal is a special commandment a special Mitzvah that we do on Kaneka no big surprise right but then he goes on to start explaining all of the rules of how we say Hal and saying holl on the other holidays now this is all in the chapter that's only about Hanukah why is that so surprising because he actually has my mon has an entire section an entire book within his codex about the laws of prayers he doesn't teach about halel he doesn't teach about this song you know this this prayer of praise and of gratitude in the book that he writes about prayer and he doesn't write it on where you would expect it to be in describing the laws of the biblical festivals that would be the most natural and obvious place to talk about like obviously on biblical holidays we're supposed to say a special prayer and thank Hashem and then it would be logical that would be like okay well Hanukah it's not like a real Biblical holiday but we'll say Hal on Hanukah too right but Mones does the opposite he says we say Hal on Hanukah and all those biblical holidays all the biblical festivals we say it then too isn't that strange it's like he's learning this central idea about all of the holidays from Hanukah but hanuk was the latest holiday to be added into all of our holidays so you know my Mon's work is almost impossibly methodical like he's so careful and cautious when he puts out his laws if he's putting the laws of halel here it obviously has a profound message about the essence of what Hanukah is okay so why is halel not just it's it's not only introduced my Mones here about Hanukkah but it becomes the paradigmatic Hal the Hal that that becomes the source that we just derive all other times that we say this praise to Hashem I want to suggest that the ramam is teaching us that Hal that he's teaching us that these special prayers aren't just another thing we do on Kaneka but it's actually an expression of the essence of haneka because you know every holiday has it unique Essence we talk about this all the time that sometimes something so dramatic happens in reality that it changes the fabric of time itself right every holiday has this essence you know on Passover we had the Exodus it was such a powerful thing that it reverberates Freedom through all of history going forward in that time on shabot Hashem revealed himself at Mount Si it's like we have the power to touch on Revelation that essence of Revelation every year at that time what what is Hanukah Hanukah is something else right so so so the ram is teaching us my is teaching us that it's a holiday where we the essence of what we do is saying Hollow what do we do all day the thing that we're actually doing is saying Hollow it's not an aspect of the holiday it's the aspect of the holiday if you want to understand Hanukah focus on that main thing that we do that's Hal that's gratitude that's the fundamental theme of the day so if all the other holidays are sending a message through time the message that is sending through time is the message of hollow the message of gratitude now to understand that why would the message of Hanukkah of all days specifically be gratitude we have to take a little bit of a closer look at the history of Hanukkah and you know Hanukkah is interesting when you try to get into the backstory because depending on who you're talking to you can get an entirely different rendition of what this holiday is like when you read the talmud there's no mention of mccabes fighting Greeks I'm serious it it's all about the miracle of a little jar of oil lasting for eight days now when you read historic accounts when you read historic accounts or the book of mccabes or you know the Books of various you know other historians there's no mention of the oil at all it's just about the mabes fighting the Greeks now that sort of and and and the main prayer that we say in the amida D in in prayer in our in our in our daily uh you know 18 blessings that we say that we add in for khah also only talks about the war and doesn't talk about the oil so you're like well which one is it and what's so interesting is that those two kind of versions of the holiday even exist today at you know throughout Judaism like within different groups in the Jewish people like throughout the Exile and and among you know traditional Jews and even today among Ultra Orthodox Jews the emphasis is almost entirely on the Miracle of the oil because imagine how far from our culture during the Exile did it seem to be like makab be with like weapons and fighting like how far that seemed from Jewish culture during the Exile so even now among people who like aren't connected to Zionism within Judaism really just identify a lot more with this miracle it was a miracle that allowed us to continue the uh you know the ceremonies of the temple and the rituals and then you know when when the first zionists the secular zionists came to Israel they focused almost entirely on the military parts of Hanukah you go back into like you know early Zionism they have all these songs about the mccabes and the entire holiday was about the mccabes because they didn't want to hear about the temple service they wanted to hear about people people standing up for themselves and fighting for Freedom so the zionists that came back to the land to fight for Freedom they're celebrating mabes right not God they saw the message of kukah as like Jews should be fearless and courage rageous and fight their enemies so so what's the real theme I think that the secret is the combination when we actually understand the cidology because if you look at the timing of Hanukkah according to historians and according to the book of macbes the the maban Revolt began in the year 167 now three about three years into that war the macbes succeeded in recapturing rededicating the temple and that's when we have the relighting of the manur and finding the oil and the Miracle of the oil three years into the Revolt but the war itself lasted much longer the battles continued for years and the like complete freedom of of Judea only came in the year 142 that's 25 years after 142 BC of course 25 years after the war started when full Jewish Independence was actually achieved under Shimon who was the only brother Left Alive of the surviving you know the only surviving son of Ma so now if we combine now what does it say in the book of mbes it says and then Judah and his brothers said now that our enemies have been defeated let us go and purify the sanctuary they offered sacrifices they lit them minora made this eight Day celebration it says in the book of mccabes to give thanks and praise to Hashem so if we combine this with the talmudic understanding that that at this point the oil lasted for eight days they were experiencing this miracle but they were experiencing it not the end end end of the war when they had Independence but what we now know to have been the beginning before the massive battles where ultimately the makabe brothers themselves are going to be killed and there will be so many sacrifices so now they established Hanukah and what does it say the purpose of establishing Kaneka was to give thanks and praise to Hashem they did the thanks and praise before Kaneka was even close to being over so it's this eight Day celebration of thanks giving thanks staying Hollow is not something we do among our tasks of Kaneka it is the point of the holiday every Jewish holiday is reliving something what are we reliving right on sukko WE relive it by we relive living in our fathers living in booths by living in booths on pesak WE relive our fathers eating Mata by eating matah what do we do on kanuk WE relive our fathers having gratitude at a time it didn't really make sense to have gratitude at the time when you would not ex three years into a 25 war is not the time when you would expect to be the holiday of gratitude and you know it's funny because because Hanukkah comes out in the winter people often compare it to Christmas but it's really not a good comparison it would be much more HT to compare it to Thanksgiving it's the Jewish Day of giving thanks it's Thanksgiving it's the day of gratitude it's the essence of our day and now what's more interesting is that they recognized what was happening to them why are they so grateful why are they so grateful only three years into the war couldn't they wait and see what happens are we ultimately going to be free and then set the day of gratitude no they saw this sign everything was going so rough it was going so bad and then finally they get to the temple and they're able to light this oil and last longer than they expected it's like Hashem saying hi I'm here with you however hard this is you know that gave them the strength to keep going we look back and say wow this band of Warriors they meet the you know they they won the mighty Greeks but they didn't know that that was the point in history that they were in they were saying thank you not because everything had been resolved but because they sensed hashem's presence and his hasaka as we say in Hebrew his Providence even in these really really difficult moments so the hollow that we say is the hollow that teaches us about gratitude at all times because it's easy to say thank you on Passover when we were already like totally it's not easy to say thank you when you're in the third year of a 25 year battle because we don't say thank you for the end of the story but for the Miracles that we see the Small Miracles that we see within the struggle itself because the monora was not the end of the war it was this glimmer of hope to show them that Hashem was still with them you know the um like for me in this period of time of this War I think for many people you know on October 7th there was like the shock I look back sometimes at the videos that I made back then and I see like how pale I was and like my eyes were just puffed out from crying there was like the shock and then came this massive motivation like yes we can rally together we can do this we can change things but then as things dragged on there was so much pain and so much loss there was just like this sense that it just felt like too much and then I think for me and I think for many people there was this moment and For Me Maybe for other people was different things but for me the Beeper operation with healah was like this moment like in like like the the oil just lasting for eight days it was this miracle where we know we're not at the end we know that there's still so much to do but it was such an insane Miracle you're like what is that it was an operation like nothing that had ever been done before it didn't mean that the war was over and it didn't mean that sacrifice is over but something in the spirit of Israel changed at that point and has been like a sustained change in the atmosphere and feeling in Israel since then because this feeling of of a tide turning where you're like Hashem is with us and so whatever it's going to take we have it we will give it because we feel like Hashem is really with us and so you know when we're lighting the when we're lighting our our we're lighting our Kaneka manura we're not just commemorating something that happened we're reliving that hem is always with us in our darkest times that's why Kaneka always comes out on the darkest day of the year the night that's the longest and the day that's the shortest always comes out on Kaneka because you know what happens after that night it's a night that's a little bit shorter like by definition if you have the longest night night in Kaneka you also have the night after that that's just a little bit shorter and just a little bit more light to show us that when we feel it's the darkest that's when we say thank you to Hashem that's when we say the Hal that is the essence of the holiday and as our story continues to just unfold in Israel may we all feel hashem's presence wherever we are on this journey be thank we can be just you know thankful and in a state of gratitude for the Miracles that we've seen uh so far and in all of our Lives I hope that you all feel Hashem with you if you're in whatever place that you're in whatever stage you're on on your journey may you feel Hashem with you just like the makab felt in that time of rededicating the temple bye guys