Light Upon Light: Chanukah Teachings from Eight Torah Masters

Hello there. I'm Tanya Kazanov [music] and you are listening to Human and Holy. Today we're going to be exploring eight [music] pieces of Torah in honor of the eight nights of Hanukkah from eight different Jewish thinkers, one for each night. I'm excited. You can listen to this spread out over the eight days of Hanukkah if you'd like. One piece of Torah for [music] each additional light. The theme of Hanukkah is just so easily [music] moving. Even just the barest experience of lighting the Kaneka Manora, adding light into your home, into the world is something that is [music] on its own moving. And then obviously as you dive deeper into the story of Khan and the lessons [music] for us, it feels enormously relevant for the world that we're living in. [music] Kaneka is also a unique holiday because it's lived in tandem with daily life. [music] And as a result, it is this really unique experience of living within a holiday energy while also living [music] within regular life. It doesn't have the same separation as other holidays where we immerse in a shabaslike environment. [music] And as a result, I feel that you can really see how the [music] lessons and ideas of Kaneka just naturally play out in regular life. I'm excited to dive into it. We will not be having a solo episode next [music] Wednesday on Hanukkah itself, but this one is packed with Torah and there's a lot to hold you over over this [music] holiday as I will be immersed in the holiday with my family. Today's episode was generously [music] sponsored with blessings for Mala Mayasha, Boss Esther, and Yahushua Ari Benha. May God bless you with [music] an abundance of revealed good blessing, light, joy, connection, [music] and everything you desire in your life. Thank you for bringing this Torah into the world with human [music] and holy. Let's start with Ruff Cook and the question of the blessing on the manora. The first blessing that we make on lighting the Khan manora is laad near Khaneka to kindle the Khan light. And the natural question is why is the light that we are describing in this blessing in singular? We obviously light many candles, many lights throughout the night of Kaneka and yet every single night we say laadlik near Hanukkah to kindle the singular Hanukkah light. Havuk has a beautiful teaching on why we bless the light as singular. Rufk describes how the Jewish people give many blessings to the world. We are called to give our Torah, our wisdom, our prophecies, our morality, our sense of justice and compassion, and so much more. There are many distinct and varied lights that we bring to the world. And more specifically, every person brings a distinct and varied Jewish light to the world. And when each of us shines the light of Torah within our own selves, we do it in unique and varied ways. And this is why you have so many different segments and sects of Judaism. You have so many different very particular lights expressing the same wisdom of the Torah. And technically the light that we are bringing into the world is expressed very differently in every single Jew. Every community, every path, every interpretation of Torah has unique and distinct light to bring to the world. And Ravuk teaches that sometimes in order to contribute your light, in order to contribute your experience of Torah, in order to contribute your perspective on Torah, you actually have to root very clearly in your distinctness, in your unique perspective. Whenever there is haka conversation about a topic, hashkafic conversation about a topic, it's different distinct voices having unique and strong points of view that are coming to be in conversation. And so this distinctness and uniqueness and singularity in each approach to Torah is actually necessary in order to offer something to the world. If you're everything, then you're nothing. We're distinct. Each of us is distinct, unique. When we teach Torah, when we offer Torah, when we shine our Jewish light into the world, it's going to be distinct and singular. And this is why we have so much to learn from each person's path. Because each community has something that they shine for. Each path of Torah has something that it shines for and also has something to learn from other communities and other paths. And this is the brilliance of shining your light in this world is that you have a distinct soul power. This is what Rav Cook speaks about the unique soul energy that God gave you which draws you to a certain type of illumination which draws you to a certain interpretation of the Torah which draws you to a certain bend of understanding the wisdom that you are teaching. And when we live in the time of exile, when we live in the time of gullis, it is appropriate for each of us to lean into that distinctness to shine the light of Torah in individual ways. At times, this can be a cause for makus, people seeing the distinct and unique points of view all within Torah as being in opposition to each other and being separate from one source and one light. Ravkuk says when Messiah comes we are going to see how each light of the Jewish people each person's interpretation each person's illumination each communities a path and approach is not are not separate at all we are all revealing and shining the exact same light in a time of exile we look and we see many different lights and we see division we see separateness we really highlight and recognize what is different about each person and about each approach of Judaism When redemption comes, we will see how every single expression of the light is one facet of the infinite light of Hashem, lighting one candle. Every illumination of the Torah in this world is reflective of the singularity of Hashem, all coming from within one source. We can internalize this message of the one light of Hanukkah by being able to see every unique approach within Judaism, every different perspective on the Torah as being reflective of the same divine light and to be able to appreciate each distinct community, each distinct Ashkafa, each different path and facet of God's revelation in this world and to learn from each other because every community, every approach to Torah, every eshka, every unique soul has a unique energy and a uni unique lesson and ideal to bring to the world. And when we really can see each other and each other's communities as having something distinct to offer and recognize how that distinctness is a reflection and a facet of one individual light, we can more easily learn from each other and welcome the diversity and the distinctness and uniqueness of each community's path in revealing the light of Hashem in this world. We can recognize how the diversity of the light all shares one route within God. All right, night number two, the rededication of the temple. This is a piece of Torah for Rab Jonathan Saxs about Kaneka. The word Kanekah comes from the word Kanukh which means rededication which is what the Makabes did when they entered into the holy temple and rededicated the temple for God. It had been desecrated by the Greeks. They found one tiny pure flask of oil and they used that to light the monora and the monora famously lasted 8 days and 8 nights. The Mcabes rededicated this physical building of the temple. But what does this rededication represent? What does the temple represent? And what does it look like to rededicate our Judaism after this defilement of the Greeks? Over time, the word Hanukkah became connected not just to the word Kanuk, dedication, but to the word, which means education. And Rabbis says, "How do you rededicate a people after they have been defiled in the hands of the Greeks? How do you bring them back spiritually to the civilization that they once knew?" And he says, "Kanukkah became the festival of celebrating a miracle victory." To a festival that celebrates a spiritual and civilizational victory. To defend a country physically, you need an army. But to defend a civilization, you need educators, teachers. You need to focus on the the education. Teaching the value of this civilization and its values. The cultural victory of Kaneka is being able to hand our values on to the next generation to have the manura of our values burning bright within the world. And the only way to do that is through this rededication, the education. The rededication that happens through Jewish education. The only victory of Jewish values happens through educating people truly on the wisdom and truth and eternal everlasting value of the Torah in our lives. The battle of the Greeks was a battle against the spiritual values of the Torah. And so the answer, the victory, the solution to this battle is education is to strengthen Jewish people with a recognition of the significance, holiness, and eternal value of the values within Torah. One of the most crushing defeats of the Jewish people during the Kaneka story were the Msabnim, the Jews who became Greeks. Because the battle was pointed at our values as Jews, the defeat was also within our value as Jews. And the victory happened through ensuring that we know who we are. That we know how significant who we are is. That we recognize that the weaponry of a Jew is education. that if we can arm every Jewish person with wisdom and knowledge about who they are as Jewish people, the ideas of Judaism will be so compelling that no Greek perspective, no secular perspective will prevent the manura of our Torah from shining bright in this world forever. And I love this message for Kaneka highlighting the word, the word education within this holiday. how the antidote to spiritual warfare is only Torah education. There is no substitute for Torah education to teach someone the value of their own Jewish soul and to strengthen and fortify ourselves in spiritual warfare that we experience all the time values that are not always congruent with Jewish ones. And the Torah, the education that we can give ourselves that answers that question that shows us with real rootedness the path that is luminous and eternal. Night number three, Rev Salv pulling from this idea of the Msabnim, the idea of the Jews who became Helenists, who became involved in the Greek way of life. This is actually a piece of Torah from Rebasher Beris Salvichek or Rav Joseph Salvichek, whatever you referred to him as that I got to hear because there's a recording of Rev Salvich saying this in Yiddesh. And it's incredible to me to get to hear someone in their native tongue. I'm so grateful to my parents for teaching me Yiddish. Yedish is my first language. And it really hits differently to hear it from the teacher themselves, meaning like spoken, not just in the written word. So I'm going to include the link in the show notes so you can watch that yourself. It's also transposed with photos of Rip Salvage speaking so you kind of get the feeling that you're watching the full lecture. its audio over images that are sliding across the screen to be very specific. In an explanation as to why Kanaga is not mentioned in the Mishna, Rafalvichek turns to a gamarra that says that if a safer Torah is being burnt, we need to mourn. Rafalvichek points to a tom katan which says that if a safer Torah, if a Torah scroll is being burnt, we need to tear ka, tear our clothing in as a sign of mourning. But another piece of Talmud in a vodara we seem to see the opposite. We see a story of the Romans taking Ra Khan benton and wrapping him in a Torah scroll and burning him at the stake. And the Talmud says that as the fire was burning, Rafina's students asked him, "Rebonded, I see the parchment is burning, but the letters are flying away." SV asks the obvious question. It seems that the reason why we would hear ka, why we would mourn for safer Torah, Torah scroll being burned, is because the letters are being burnt. Something holy is being burnt. But then in this tomudara, we hear that the letters are flying away, that they're not touched by the fire. And he resolves this contradiction by explaining that there's a difference between a safer Torah being burnt by a Jew and being burnt by anyone else, someone who does not have the same language, the same relationship to the Torah. When the Romans wrapped Rafina benton in a scroll and burnt the scroll, they did not have a relationship with the holiness of the letters. The letters were free to fly away. But when a Jew burns a Torah scroll, because a Jew has a relationship to Kadusha, because a Jew has relationship to the language of the Torah that is embedded within her own soul. The letters are trapped there because they were burnt by someone who knows its holiness, who knows its purity. And so of Salvichek's answer is that the reason why it is not Kaneka is not written in the Mishna is because the Msyavnim are the great tragedy of the Kaneka story. The Jews who became Helenists. The Khan story was not just them versus us. It was also us versus us. Us not always being able to maintain clarity about the purity and the wisdom and the eternal nature of our own Torah. It is only a Jew who can defile a Torah scroll. And as devastating as the story is, the story of the safer Torah being burnt, the understanding that there were those in the times of the Hanukkah story who really lost themselves to the Greek culture, there's also such a beauty to this lesson for me, which is I live within the Torah. The purity of the Torah is responsive to my own choices. The defilement of the Torah cannot happen from an outside source but only from within. And if we are able to defile, surely we are also able to uplift. It is because we have a relationship to the holiness of the Torah itself, to the holiness of its letters, to the holiness of its scroll, to the holiness of its values and ideals. It's because of that relationship that we have the power to shape it either for better or worse. And this is an incredible, enormous, and really profound responsibility to me to have a connection with its purity or impurity. The Torah is not separate from us. We speak its language. Our souls speak its language. What we do with the Torah has an enormous impact on the world because the Torah is responsive to us. Because the Torah is vulnerable to us. Because we are the ones who are shaping it. And so if we can defile it, if we can burn it, surely we can also uplift it. The MSAVIM, the Greeks are proof that just as we can denigrate the Torah and destroy it, we can also bring it to its right honor, we can also uplift it, develop it, and continue to expand it in ways that will only enlarge its eternal wisdom. This is the message of Kaneka. Our interwoven identity with the Torah, its responsiveness to us, its vulnerability to us, the ways that we can impact it in real tangible ways. And now, night number four, the Baba Drama in Hayomy on Dal Tves, the fourth day of Tavves, the seventh day of Kaneka, explaining what the battle of Kaneka was really about. I'll read a little bit of it inside for you because I just think the language is jolting in the most incredible way. The campaign of the Greeks was intended to make the Jews forget your Torah and have them violate the decrees of your will. In the words of Boracius Rabba, the Greeks challenged the Jews to write that you have no share in the God of Israel. Their entire war was directed against godliness. They would have allowed the Jews to study Torah and observe mitzvos, the Mishbatim and the Enduos, so long as they did not mention that the Torah was God's and that the mitzvos were the decrees of his will. Their objective was that the Jews refrain from associating godliness with the Torah and its mitzvos. This is one of my favorite teachings from Khaneka. It's explained in many different sources. I think this is a very direct and crystal clear one. The fight of the Greeks was the fight against godliness. Torah and mitzvah is fine. But if you bring God into the picture, if you're doing it for a higher power, this is where they started having a problem. They had an ideological issue with the concept of God, with the concept of something transcendent, with the concept of focusing these Torah and mitzvah for something beyond ourselves. The fact that the Greeks challenged the Jews to write that they have no share in the God of Israel. Keep your Torah, keep your mitzvah, but leave your God to the side. And I think we see this same campaign of the Greeks playing out over and over again over the generations. Keep your wisdom, keep your acts, but leave your God behind. And in a world that actually really respects spirituality, I think this is the delicate campaign being waged against what Torah and mitzvah truly is, which is a comfort with rituals, habits, perspective, practices, spiritual wisdom, but not with the underlying God consciousness and awareness that is being asked of us within those acts. Our rebellion is in our transcendence. A rebellion against the Greeks is in saying, "I practice Torah and mitzvah not just because I love it, not just because it is the most beautiful wisdom, not just because this is my lifestyle and my habits. I practice this because there is an underlying belief in a transcendent God that I am serving through this Torah and through this mitzvos. I choose transcendence. I choose to experience my share in the God of Israel. I choose to experience the Torah not just as divine spiritual wisdom, but as an act of intimacy between me and the creator of the world. I experience mitzvos not just as beautiful ritual acts, but as an act of connection between me and Hashem. I experience each divine act as something that funnels the life force of God into this world over and over and over again. this belief in God, this belief in transcendence, this willingness to be connected to the Torah and mitzvos, not just as practices, but as something transcendent and to own that yes, we are a transcendent religion. We are a transcendent people. This is what binds us to God is our godliness, is the belief that there is a creator, a belief in that creator, a belief in that transcendence, and our willingness to devote our lives to Torah and mitzvos. Night number five is directly tied into this teaching. A teaching from Arbenstein about how all of our relationship to Torah and mitzvos is about expressing and revealing light in this world. He highlights how obviously the miracle of Hanukkah symbolize the challenge that our people face, which is to bring light into a place that may be defiled and impure. To find the flask of oil and to have the trust in something transcendent that allows us to light that first flame, not knowing if we will have enough light to last longer than one night. Each of us is called into our life and the world to illuminate whatever God is presenting to us as our opportunities for illumination. And very often we do it not knowing if we have enough oil. Not knowing if we have enough light in us, not knowing if we have enough to shine for as long as it seems like the world needs us to shine. But the task of transcendence is to light that candle just as the Mcabes did in the temple. And to trust that if we are doing this in partnership with God, in partnership with something transcendent, not just for the sake of beautiful light as a concept, but in partnership with an infinite creator of the world, then our miracle will be revealed. Our task is to create light as much as we can with whatever we have. And God in that transcendent call back to us is the one who will create the miracle which is allowing our light to shine so much brighter and stronger than we ever could imagine or that we could ever do on our own. This is the relationship between our own lightbearing and the transcendent response, the transcendent miracle of the light burning so much longer than it should. Rabstein quotes two verses tubukim from proverbs that mentions light. The first being that the mitzvah is a flame and the Torah is light. And the second being that the soul of man is the lamp of God. And Rabbi Steinalds highlights how the Torah is a light revealing and illuminating a depth within this world. And a mitzvah is a flame, a fire which is connected and consumed by the fire of God. He writes, "Light enables us to see while fire acts upon things and transforms them. And the mitzvah does both things. It changes the world by illuminating it. Just as the oil of the mitzvah is transformed into light, is transformed into something that is illuminating the world, our souls through this path of revelation become the light of God. When we channel our own souls through the light of Torin mitzvos, our presence in this world becomes the light of God. In ways, it's a simple metaphor, but I think that its implications are very deep. When I begin to see how my soul when channeling this light of Torah and mitzvah in the world is the lamp of God, I recognize that when I light that one candle in the world, I am in partnership with a transcendent creator. I am inviting the miraculous to continue my illumination in the world in ways that are so much larger than I could ever do on my own. Whenever we choose to share something with another person, give to the world in any way, illuminate the world through our Torah mitzvos, have courage in the ways that we use our voices, it is an act of trust in our partnership with God that we will give a little bit of light. We will try to create a small opening of illumination in the world and God will respond with miracles. God will respond by sustaining our light. We our souls are the lamp of God. Night number six. Following along the miraculous, the Kaduca Levy asks why Khaneka was turned into a miracle when there were many other great battles and victories that the Jews experienced that weren't turned into holidays for posterity. And he writes that the miracle that our ancestors and original prophets and members of the Anacasdollah saw, they established by establishing the holiday of Kaneka as a holiday for all time. They established this time as a time for recurring miracles. Not just an experience of the miraculous that happened then. There were many different experiences of battles and subsequent victories. But they established that this miracle of Kaneka would be a renewed and recurring miracle that we could tap into every single year. Just as the exodus from Egypt is described as being a time when every single person is called to leave their own personal redemption year after year after year, Kaneka is a time for us to experience God's miracles year after year after year. Not only are we spreading the miracle that happened to us, we were also being called into a frequency of miracles for ourselves and for the entire world. This belief in miracles, again returning to that theme of transcendence, that the one thing that the Greeks wanted to get at was our belief in God, is actually core to our understanding of what it means to be a Jew. That yes, we can live within the frequency of miracles. That we are not bound by nature. Kaneka is an opportunity to really lean into the miraculous, to believe that miracles are possible for our own life, that miracles are not a reality from the past, but one that God can create at any moment. and on the night of Kaneka to really dream and desire our own miracles. I am someone who is often very skeptical about the miraculous always wondering if the miracles that I hear about are real, wanting to corroborate the details and the evidence. But this Hanukkah, I would like to lean a little bit more into this miraculous vision and belief and trust and just imagine, let myself imagine while sitting at the Hanukkah candles what miracles are possible for the world. what miracles are possible for myself and allowing myself to be fantastical in that belief that God is miraculous that Hanukkah is a time for miracles and that God can offer us miracles this year over and over again. Night number seven. This Fos Mis has a beautiful interpretation about the law for when we light the manura that teaches us something that the Hanukkah candles have to offer us, which is actually related, I'm thinking now, is related to what I'm describing of wanting to lean into something new and different over Kaneka, wanting to lean into the belief in the miraculous. In my experience of the Hanukkah candles, the Shanak writes in regards to the timing for when we light the Kaneka candles. The Kaneka candles are not lit before sunset, but at the end of sunset, but not too far afterwards. And that there are those who say that if you're busy, you can light from the time of Mina and onward as long as one puts enough oil so that the Khan candle remains lit until people stop passing through the marketplace. Regal Minuk. The MS looks at this word regal. Regal Mina shook that you should put enough if you do light a little bit early you should put enough oil in your lamp in your monora so that the light lasts until there are no longer any passerby any feet passing through the marketplace. Regal mean and he says regal is the same root as herel which means habit and this fas says we light the khan candles to bring renewal and remove the spirit of habit from our divine service from our Judaism. This word regal, he says, is alluding to the word habit. Herel, this experience of a habitual [clears throat] experience of our Judaism. The Kaneka candles are a jolt of wonder within our Judaism. They are something that could awaken us from the habitual experience of life and our connection to the Torah. And they could, if we allow them to, they could awaken us from that experience of dry routine and habit within our Jewish experience. And if we lean into the wonder of the candles, we can be awoken from the sameness in our routines and return back to the light of our Jewish experience and return back to the light and the fire and the fervor and the passion and the mind and emotion and presence within our Jewish experience every single day. until we can remove the sameness from our Judaism where we can feel it as an adventure, as new, as renewed, as something that isn't simply a boring routine, but as something that is illuminated and alive. Night number eight, I'm going to end with a story for the last night. The Rebab, the fifth Kabad Reb had a student, a disciple named Rebakia. Repres once stood up at a simplest Torah gathering and said that the rubber said he doesn't perform miracles but he had a story to tell. The rubber shop told him you work in forest and sometimes you spend a couple days in a row there. When Kaneka comes I want you to make sure that you don't forget to bring candles to light Kaneka candles in the forest and make sure that you bring extra large candles. When Hanukkah arrived that year, he did need to spend some time in the forest and he remembered his Reb's words that he should bring not just candles but extra large candles with him. During his time in the forest, thieves found him, took him, took everything that he had and told him that they were going to kill him. He begged them for one final wish before he was murdered. He said, "It's my tradition to light Kaneka candles on this night. I just want to experience this mitzvah one last time." He lights his Kaneka candles, the extra-large candles that the Rebab had instructed him to take with him. A nearby landowner passed by and saw something flickering. He came, he had a gun, he chased away the thieves and they saved the life. Saved's life. Besides for being an enormous, miraculous story, I'll tell you what it means to me, what it represents. The Reb told him, "Bring candles. Bring extra-l large candles to do the mitzvah." And when he shown that light, his own light saved him. Sometimes we find ourselves in darkness that feels unescapable. And in those moments, we take out whatever it is that we have. Whatever large candles we hold in our pockets and we light them. Sometimes it is our own light that saves us. It is the candle that we bravely light in that dark moment when it feels like all hope is lost that ultimately ultimately can lead to our redemption. I recently heard this from a friend who shared how she was having a hard day with just things going wrong in her life, just feeling the challenges, the burn of living, when she received beautiful moving feedback from a project that she had created a year and a half before, something that she had put out in the world so long ago, that she had completely forgotten about, that was not part of her daily life at all. And in that moment, she experienced her own light boomeranging back to her in a hard moment. And to me, that's a practical example of lighting the candle in a forest and that ultimately somewhere down the line somehow coming back to save us because we all sometimes find ourselves in the dark forest and sometimes in the position to light a candle. And it's remarkable to see how a light that we kindled very long time ago. A candle that we stuffed into our pocket years before because the Reb Rashab instructed him to take a candle with him into the forest can illuminate us, save us years down the line when we find ourselves in the forest and have no one to cry to for help. Happy Kaneka. Like Rev Cook, may we see the common root in all lights. Like Rabbi Sax said, let's experience the rededication of the temple as the primacy of education in Jewish continuity. Like Salvich said, a Jew has a relationship with the purity of the Torah. We mold its message and vision. And the wisdom from the lab, how the Greeks went after transcendence and Judaism is a call to be connected to something beyond this world. To experience the God of Israel within our Torah and Mitsos or Denstein, to be a Jew is to create light in this world. Like the caducious lady said, Kaneka is about reexperiencing the miracles every single year, recognizing that this time is miraculous. And like the Vasis said, to allow the light of the candles to take us out of the sameness of our daily lives and to experience and awaken once again the magic of being a Jew. And lastly, the story of the reparab of the in the forest whose large candles saved him. Sometimes the [music] light that we shown long before can come back to save us in dark moments. [music] We don't always get to be in the position of illumination. Darkness is as much a part [music] of our lives as light. But trusting that that candle in our pockets or the light that we shown years before can come back to save us in harder times. Happy Hanukkah. [music] May you feel the light. May you experience the wonder of the lights of the candles. May you experience [music] the power of your Judaism and Torah and the warmth of this miracle that we get to experience every single year. [music] Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I'll see you soon. Bye.