Chanukah and the Hidden Jewish Spark - Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair

[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]