Mindflex- Flick The Switch- Take Back The Night- Harry Rothenberg Esq.

hello everyone out there i hope you can hear me um always uh interesting on a live stream all i can see is myself but i hope there's some people out there um if you are out there happy hanukkah and thanks for tuning in so uh before we get to hanukkah and the lights of chanukah during the festival of lights i wanted to grab a quote from another holiday it's one with which most of us will be very familiar because we say it all the time every saturday night when we end shabbos shabbat we make abdullah and one of the lines in the half dollar is the following it's that line is cribbed it's borrowed from the megillah mcgillis ester that we read on purim the line means let's just accept the context before i translate it um what happened was during the purim story which is pretty much the same story that we have on almost all of our holidays except for hanukkah they tried to kill us we won let's eat that's the story so it's at the end of the megillah holman and company they tried to kill us and we won and so the line like i saw aurobis and to the jews they had and they had happiness and they had joy and they had honor now i get it they were almost killed so they have happiness and they have joy and mordechai is is elevated to a higher position so they have honor what does it mean they had light what's going on they had light and everybody else had dark like it was lit up in the jewish neighborhoods or the jewish homes and it wasn't lit up in the non-jewish homes it's very weird but obviously it's important and it's so important that we borrow that line from the magilla and we say it every saturday night when we end shabbat so in order to figure out what the mcgill is talking about and what we are talking about every saturday night i wanted to talk about light and what more appropriate time than during the eight days when we are very focused on lighting our lights right in our front windows or outside our house proclaiming to the world and reminding ourselves this is a jewish home and i'm very proud of that it's the only holiday when we have to do that every other holiday you go to synagogue you can blow the chauffeur in your synagogue on rosh hashanah you can fast privately even sukkas when you got to build that hut you could do it in your backyard you have trees up or if you have a fence up nobody has to see yourself there's no rule they have to say it fanuca festival lights got to announce it to the world let's talk about light now if you want a little trick when you're trying to figure something out in the torah a biblical preset there are two generally fail-safe ways to do it some tricks some hacks so one way to do it is to look at its opposite and that will give you insight into what it is and the second way to do it is to look at the very first time that it appears in the total so i want to do both of those so first let's look at its opposite for those of you who are paying attention this late in the evening the opposite of light obviously is dark and if i mentioned to you when i said before what's going on jews had light and and their enemies didn't have light you might say you know that actually sounds familiar didn't that happen once and it did happen once it happened during the ninth plague that's exactly what happened the jews in egypt had light and the egyptians did not during the plague of darkness and it's interesting the commentators explained chief among them rashi the greatest of the biblical commentators who i quote often or in classes early and often he explains that there were really two sets of darkness within the plague of darkness there were the first three days and then there were the second three days during the first three days the egyptians had darkness it was dark couldn't see it was dark during the second three days it was so dark that they couldn't move very interesting there's another earlier example of this in the torah it's not as well known what happens is that god sends two angels to the wicked city of sidon and each one of them has a mission because angels each do one mission at a time not two missions so one of them has the mission of saving load avraham's nephew his wife sarah sarah's brother and the other one has the mission of destroying saddam and its surrounding cities lord takes in these two angels believing that they are men he's hosting them as guests which is a cardinal sin capital punishment in fact it's dome you cannot invite guests over let alone in your house feed them and then have them stay overnight it's an outrage and so the men of stone crowd outside the door of load and one of the angels brings them in and strikes down the men with something called sun varen and the men outside get blinded they can't say and the torah tells us that they exhaust themselves trying to find the petsach trying to find the entrance to the house which makes no sense they're on load's front porch so even if they're on the front porch and they're blinded which they are they could still go like this and like pat around like you're going to feel the house eventually you're going to feel the doorknob or whatever they had in those days why did they exhaust themselves so that they could not find that entrance so another commentator classic commentator explains that this type of darkness was a darkness that was it was a darkness that blinded not just the eyes but also the heart so now we get some understanding of what this type of darkness is this is a darkness think of like somebody curled up in a in a fetal ball god forbid with no hope left literally can't move that's what that type of type of darkness is when they were exhausting themselves trying to find the doorway the pesach the opening what that means is that there was no opening there was no pesach there was no opening to come back no ability to repent they were too far gone and they're all about to die just like pharaoh who later on we'll see in egypt loses his ability to do the right thing he'd literally he he loses his inclination for good god hardens his heart no longer has a choice there's no going back and so that's what that darkness is it's a total lack of hope lack of faith lack of clarity a confusion that just roots someone into a spot and they can't even move now let's talk about light and let's talk about the first appearance of light because as we've said second wave if you want to figure something out is look when it first appears in the torah we all know i don't care when the last time was that you looked at the text of the bible you know when light first appears in the bible right god's creating the world and he says and let there be light and wouldn't you know it he's god snapped his fingers or just said the words and there was light and we're told when light first appears that gods saw that the light was good the words that the torah used to describe that reaction that god had to his own creation of light are ki tov he saw that it was good rashi quoting him again explains something very strange i'm going to tell you what he says i can't describe how this happened or what exactly means but i'll tell you what he said he says that when god saw the light he saw that it was too good so he took that original light and he put it away he hid it somewhere he hid it for the righteous and the world to come very special light it's put away for the righteous in the world to come so whatever light we have now that sunlight it's some distant second cousin ersatz version of the original light that is now hidden for the righteous in the world to come interestingly we see later on in the torah we'll see this in in several weeks that when baby moses is born baby moshe his mother saw that he was good and the torah uses the words ki tov isn't that interesting exact same words that the tory is what god created the original light now rashi leaps in right here because his spidey sense starts tingling wait a minute wait a minute it said ki tov over there it's a ketov over here and so rashi tells us you know what this means you know what this harkens back to hearkens back to that original light that god took and hid for the righteous it means that when moshe was born the room lit up does that mean the room lit up if you've had the the gift from god to have a child you know that the room is very lit up in the hospital you know doctors have to be very careful there are there are injury lawyers like me that are that are out there if they make a mistake god forbids there's a lot of light in that room so let's meet the room lit up obviously raunchy is referring to is some type of supernatural phenomenon the room lit up with some of that original light god put some of that original light back in the world why because that little kiddo baby moses baby motion someday he was gonna go up the mountain wasn't just going up a mountain he was going up to heaven he was going to bring down the light of the torah so god let some of that light into the room when he was born because that's a foreshadowing of this kid is going to go bring back some of that original light the light of the torah now as an aside we're later told that when moshe comes down from the mountain the second time with the tablets that he carved himself versus the ones that god had carved that he later broke when he saw what the jews were doing with the golden calf when he comes down the second time he's he's glowing his face is glowing and rays of light are coming out from his head the taurus says that he karen or ponov that he's rays of light karen is already in hebrew a ray of light unfortunately for us or maybe it's good maybe kept us on our toes it's just not pleasant carrot is also the word in the torah for horn so the rays of light that are shining from moshe's face he's so radiant gets mistranslated as horns of light and thus is born the long-standing ridiculous canard or stereotype the jews have horns in fact great michelangelo a sculptor i'll show you this i'm not sure if i could do a screen share on a live stream so i'll just hold it up the great michelangelo when he sculpts his unbelievable um sculpture of moses himself he has him in the sculpture with what do you know horns coming out of his head every time i go to state supreme court in the bronx in new york i have to pass by a statue of moshe of moses that's a recreation and he's got the horns on his head drives me crazy i have a friend he's now a rabbi when he was younger he was uh the captain of his high school basketball team in the deep south and so they are playing another team down there and he's playing with his friends part of uh jewish school and before the game the uh ref is going over the rules with my friend who's the captain and with the other team's captain and the other team's captain says to the ref i kid you not hey ref what are they going to do about their horns because you know they're playing the jews so the ref instead of saying hey you cut that out right now the ref turns to my friend like what are you gonna do about your horns okay and my friend without missing a beat says don't worry ref before the game we unscrew them okay so that's what you've got that's what that's what we have to deal with but again the light the original light was this special light that's put away for the righteous in the world to come it comes out again it makes an appearance when moshe is born because he's the guy that's going to bring it down again and then it makes another reappearance when he brings down the second tablets when his face is glowing with that light so what is that light the light that we're referring to when we say that the jews had light we're talking about the light of faith the light of hope the light of clarity the light of the torah it's interesting just to go back as a footnote in that story when the angels were sent each one to do a job there were actually three of them originally three of them came together to visit abraham avraham after he had listened to god at the age of 99 and had circumcised himself and was looking for guests and the three angels each had a job one of them was supposed to heal avraham and one of them was supposed to destroy sedum and one of them was supposed to rescue load and one of them was also supposed to tell abraham the news that he's he and his wife sarah are going to have a son so four jobs four angels wait one second they're only three angels in fact the commentators have to stand on their heads and say yeah each angel has one job so one angel did two jobs like the angel who was there to heal avraham also saved load healing saving kind of the same thing what's going on god didn't have a fourth angel it was like his day off there's like union rules like they that you can't send to any angels on the same day what's going on in fact we know that god has four main angels last time i checked he's got um rafael raphael and he's got um nichole michael he's got gabrielle gabriel and he's got uriel so where's uriel we're told that the other three angels were indeed rafael and gabriel and mikhail where's uriah four jobs god sent four angels so i heard a beautiful answer once the answer is that uriel wasn't around god had not yet introduced him to the world because uri l from orr is the angel of light when did he first appear in the world when the torah was given the torah of clarity and faith and hope torah of giving always giving us a chance to come back that's when he appeared in the world and so now that we have some some insight as to what light isn't that darkness and what light is faith hope clarity torah now maybe we can tease out some lessons that are relevant year round maybe particularly on hanukkah so number one we have to be very careful not to turn the beautiful light that god gives us in our lives into darkness so i'll give you an example i have a friend married and neither his or his wife's first name nor last name sound jewish nor do they look particularly jewish and they were vacationing in the caribbean and they had met another couple not non-jewish couple and had you know gone along i don't know where they met them at the hotel and they met up again later that night they were comparing your notes hey what'd you do today so my friend says oh we rented a boat it was you know it was great we spent the day on the boat oh very nice what'd you do today so this other couple the non-jewish couple says we went to the uh to the market and my friend says oh how was that we heard about that you know it was they said oh it was great oh so much to you to buy there in fact look the guy says you know my i got my wife that necklace and she takes this necklace and she shows me so that's really nice he says yeah you know they were asking 500 but i them down to 300. my friend says oh um we're jewish to which the guy says oh what i meant yeah like what exactly did you mean what exactly did you mean when you used the term jew as a verb that meant like to to really haggle and negotiate well okay i don't know maybe we should take it as a compliment i don't think that should be our be-all and end-all goal that when someone says jew that's the first thing that comes to mind okay it would be nice if the first thing that came to mind is when somebody was faced with a difficult moral or ethical dilemma and they pass it that they say you know what you know why i decided to do that because i have this jewish friend and i know he would never do the wrong thing so i decided to do the right thing like that's what we have to do we have to try to redefine that words that the dictionary definition is not to haggle to the last dollar and we have to make sure to say thanks um we have to turn hanukkah and turn every day into a thanksgiving day like we just celebrated it's interesting we're told by the commentators that the first person to really thank god was leia when does she when she thank god she has her fourth child and when she has her fourth child she's already had reuven and she said shimon and she's had levi and now she has yehuda yehuda is her fourth child and she calls him yehuda because yehuda comes from hoda which means to admit or to give thanks and so she calls him yehuda from the word thanksgiving because she recognizes that she's thanking god and you'll say wait a minute this is her one two three fourth child took her four children to realize like oh you know what i forgot the first three times i talked how could i have forgotten god i forgot the last few times thank you so much i'm so nice you give me this little baby what's going on commentators explain that she knew prophetically somehow don't ask me how to prophesy works that her husband was going to have 12 sons and she knew her math he had four wives he had her remember she was switched by her father for her sister um rahul rachel whom he thought he was marrying and then he also married the two handmaidens bill hud and zilpo tiago's got four wives so she did the math 12 divided by four wives means each wife is going to have three children so she had her first child of course she was very thankful but she figured okay of course i mean he's gonna have twelve i'm gonna have three then she had her second child i'm gonna have three then she had a third child i've got my third then she had her fourth child and said wait a minute how do i have a fourth child i thought he's only supposed to have 12. wait a minute i took for granted the fact that since he's gonna have 12 he's got four wives each wife's gonna have three i now realize there was no guarantee of that in fact she ended up by the way having six she didn't half of them was when she had her fourth and she had the realization wait a minute there's no guarantee these 12 could come from one it could have been could have been some other combination i might have had zero or one or two like her sister ends up having only two so she realizes that now i have to be even more of course she was thankful before but i have to be even more thankful because i just got something more than i was expecting and that makes you realize that everything was more than i should have expected you can't expect anything and you have to thank god for everything it's also fascinating when we go to pray in the morning and afternoon prayers we say the amidah the silent shimon esri it's the high point along with the the shema it comes right after the shema of the of the prayer service in the morning it comes after the shema on the afternoon it's earlier um and it's the big one it's the most most important prayer when we finish after we take our three steps back the cousin repeats it it's so important that in the morning in the afternoon we say twice once ourselves and then the khaz the person leading the service repeats it and as he says each one of the blessings we say i mean he says and god you know you should bring us all back to israel amen he says god we should all have health and we say amen he says god we should all have wealth and we say ah man okay each one them whatever he says we say ame there's one particular one when he gets to it we say all mean but then we have to say our own paragraph it's when he gets the modem modem is the paragraph where we're thanking god got to say that on your own you cannot say do me a favor when you run into god give me a favor just i'm so thankful just tell them i said thanks doesn't work that way that's one word you can say i'll mean to his blessing but you have got to say it on your own you have got to thank god and what modem like you heard his name yehuda which by the way is where we come from our our name yeah who jews comes from it's all about thanking and recognizing recognizing miracles and that's why on hanukkah we say a very interesting blessing the second blessing that we say before we light the candles for those of you who lit um earlier today and made the blessings second blessing is is we bless god who did miracles for our forefathers by back in those days we know about the miracles right we all know the story there was they were they the small group of maccabees were able to be victorious over the huge greek army and then they only found that one little jug or cruise of oil and it was only enough for one day and it lasted eight days you know what the miracles were god did miracles for our forefathers back in the day and then we finished the blessing in these times because he's writing us yeah he didn't stop doing miracles come here son come here daughter or come here i want to tell you the story of how god used to do miracles that's a big mistake oh yeah he did miracles and he continues to do miracles and that's one of our jobs we say is one of the prayers of me in on hanukkah that god did these miracles so that we can thank him and praise him we go back and we remember them it's extremely important to remember that if not for those miracles we wouldn't be here but it's equally important to constantly be on the lookout for the daily miracles that he does for us we have to talk about and recognize and thank him for the miracles he did back then and the miracles that he does now if we don't do that then we are turning light into dark and that is a very big problem and people often don't we're all we're all guilty of this we pray to the extent that we that we do we should with access to the man upstairs our father in heaven he's like guys what can i do for you what can i do for you it's giving us the opportunity and hopefully we avail ourselves of that opportunity we pray and sometimes we don't pray every day sometimes we only pray we're really in trouble when we really need something it's not ideal but you know what better than not prank okay and what do we pray for we pray for everything when we pray right we pray that we'll get good grades when we're younger that we'll get into the right school that we'll get a good part in the play as we get older we pray that we'll we'll meet our bus shirt the our significant other um get married happily and remain happy that will help children and they'll be happy that we'll advance in our careers we pray and we pray and we pray and we pray but do we thank with the same enthusiasm and vigor and frequency with which we pray i was sitting once with a very well-known rabbi and they asked him a a very tricky question and we were interrupted the phone rang he picked up the phone he apologized to pick up the phone sure it's your house you're giving me time thank you apologize and it was obvious just listening to him on the call that somebody was calling him to ask him to pray for a young child that was going through a significant surgery and he he listened very intently and he took down he wrote down the child's name he said absolutely i'll pray and he said you know please let me know what happens um and they obviously thanked him and he hung up the phone and he and he said to me um you know sitting in the room i heard at least his side of the conversation i know who was calling i don't know who it was he said you know people call me very often and i don't know that my prayers are any more significant than anybody else's i was sitting thinking myself that oh i'm with them i think your prayers are much more significant than than anyone else's due to your your pious nature and all the things that you do for jewish people in the uh and the world he says but look i don't know that my prayers are any more efficacious any more significant but somebody asks me pray i'm always happy to pray he says but what happens like in a situation like this i don't know what's going to happen here is that it affects me like i just heard about a very very difficult situation and so i pray like they'll tell me okay it's for this and this situation and so this is the surgery there's gonna be a missing this day and i pray this is but then most of the time with rare exception most of the time i don't hear back like what happened did the person make it was the surgery successful and it's painful i don't i don't know what happened i'm happy to pray let me know what happens so it's similar with god because we pray and we pray and we pray and we pray and by the way sometimes the answer is no he still loves us parent knows knows best for a uh for a child and god knows even better than a parent as our ultimate father up in heaven and often the answer is yes and often the answer is you know i got something even better in mind it's unbelievable we end up getting and and we don't thank with nearly the same enthusiasm with which we asked and that's a problem because that turns light into darkness and so hanukkah the hodos is an opportunity it's an opportunity to thank god for everything that he does for us and if you want to do a very simple experiment all you need to do is make a list make two lessons just take a piece of paper split it down the middle and on one side make a list of all the things that god has done and is doing continues to do for you and the other side make a list of all the things that you do for god and if you try to come you come back and try to convince me that the list that you made the things that you do for god are longer than the list of the things that he did for you i will respectfully laugh at you that means you did an awfully poor job you you did a great job working on the list of things you did for him bravo but you did a poor job working on the list of things that he did for you because that list for any of us is not close and i'm including people who are going through very very difficult situations i'm talking about that soon but if you make those two lists you will see that the list of the things that god does for you every day and has done for you vastly exceeds the list of the things that you do for him so we have to be in a constant state of extreme gratitude and extreme thankfulness and not doing that it turns us into what we call it's a terrible thing it's a coffee tove somebody who denies the good that was done for them second thing that we need to work on is flicking that switch like the title of this talk and and turning the darkness into light taking back the night um i represent people who um have gone through um some of the most horrifying things that you could possibly imagine i always say that if edgar allan poe came into my office and saw some of the case files he'd say oh harry that that's just that that's that's that's sick that's that's that's just just that's it's please get that out of here that's beyond imagining i would say edgar i read your stories you buried people alive he'd say yeah but i made that up these are actual real cases i can't imagine some of the things that we see i always say that given what we do for a living we meet some of the nicest people in the world for the worst possible reasons and it never ever gets easier you never get used to sitting with a family who lost a loved one you never get used to sitting with a family um or sitting with the injured person after a catastrophic injury somebody who has to so they and their family has to live on and live through that um it's extremely difficult and it is faith trying sometimes it could be faith crushing um it's not for me to judge somebody who's going through a situation in extremists like my clients go through but sometimes we see examples of faith that is uh it's so inspiring i can only tell you the story i have no words to to describe what the what the these reservoirs of faith are from some of my clients so i'll give you one example we have a client we had a client a number of years ago and her child went through an unspeakable tragedy uh i would describe it to you but if i did many of you would have difficulty sleeping tonight that's how bad it was that's how horrifying it was unimaginable and he was in a coma for some time before he passed away and so his mother uh in the hospital spoke to his siblings gathered them together um along with her husband and said i want to make the following clear just so we all understand that your brother right now has one foot on earth and he is one foot in heaven and if heaven calls his name if he gets called up we are never going to question god's decree because god always knows what's best we have to understand that we don't know what's going to happen we're going to keep praying and hope he survives but if he doesn't we're never going to question it and then the next day the doctors called her and her husband in and they said we're losing him his vital signs are are going and there's nothing more that we can do and it's time to say goodbye and so they went into the room together and she started yelling at him she started yelling at her son just before he died i wasn't there but i know somebody who was there present who witnessed this if i didn't hear this from an eyewitness i would not have believed it so i will convey this eyewitness during you he was standing outside the room she starts yelling at her son the torah says you have to honor and obey your father and your mother i am your mother you have to listen to me and i know you can still hear me and i'm giving you an order and you have to listen when you get up to heaven and you meet god you have to pray for us pray for your grandmothers and pray for your grandfathers and pray for me and pray for your father and pray for your brothers and pray for your sisters and pray for your cousins and pray for your friends and pray for your rabbis and pray for your teachers and pray for the jewish people and for the world i mean how do you begin to understand that most people would be the exact opposite standing by the bedside of their child screaming up at heaven god how can you do this it's not fair instead she's screaming at her son listen to me when you get up there you pray to him because he's not gonna be able to say no to you i know you're gonna be able to convince him so you pray for us when you get up there that is taking the ultimate darkness crushing darkness mind-bending darkness darkness so bad i can't move and finding the light through that light of faith light of hope light of clarity light of the torah realizing that everything that goes on in the world god decides the example that i like to use is the is the following um imagine that you you put your head on the on the pillow it's not cold enough you flip it over anybody else do that i always do that i like the cold side and so now you got the cold side it's great and as you're putting your hand on the pillow to kind of you know flip it over or to get comfortable like what's that what is that you pull it out it's like a it's a note that's weird it's a dress to you it's like really fancy it's all night like a really really fancy card stock and it's engraved it's not just like you know printed it's it's it's embossed engraved with your name on it you open it up it says dear so-and-so whatever your name is i knew you had a very difficult day i just want to tell you to hang in there and remind you just how much i love you love your father in heaven god you're like okay this is very cool it's very nice i don't know who did this i don't know if it was one of my kids i don't know if it was my wife i don't know if it was my roommate i don't know if it was my mother or else's father very very cute um okay and you start you come down either that night you get out of bed or the next morning you start asking people okay who did i really appreciate who did this everything i don't know what you're talking about like come on we cut it out it's very very nice who did it i don't know what you're talking about so you go to work or you go to class and you realize you have a professor or a colleague or a friend who works for nasa you know works with astronauts works with you know their their life involves outer space okay and so you say you know what just as a like a kind of a lark you give them this little card you say can you give me a favor you just check this out let me know what you think and the person comes back to you later that day that night the next day and says where'd you get that from and you say listen i don't tell the whole story whatever you weird like where did you get that from like what do you mean what's the big deal i say this did not come from earth like what do you mean like this did not come from earth we did some kind of spectral analysis chemical analysis okay like the the ingredients the the microscopic architecture of of this cardstock is not of earthly origin where'd this come from you're like oh my gosh like was that really god that sent me that note and what's amazing is that he sent you that note every single night every single day it's constantly something you don't know because no matter what happens everything happens for the best no matter how bad it is sometimes it's it could be a test sometimes just to point you in the right direction sometimes we have no idea what it is we'll find out you know at 120 when we live that long hopefully when we get up to the pearly gates but it's always for the best and that's why we say gom zhu atova every single thing that happens and it's easy to say gamsula tova when you when it's something that's so minor okay you you stub your toe like ouch oh i'm okay oh god zulutova that was also for the best okay but it's difficult to say gums on top when it really looks bad it's really painful and it's really difficult physical injury sickness surgery financial downturn that's really tough to say that and mean it you know i'm going through this brutal brutal situation gom zu latova this too is for the best and that's what we have to say but it's more than that because we have to say that on steroids because we have to say something else we have to say haven't you seren meaning that it says weird thing to say i love the pain it's like a it's like a cousin of um of no pain no gain when something bad happens you're supposed to say haven't you sir and god i'm enjoying this why because i understand that no one gets on i-95 and starts off in maine and drives down the entire coast the eastern coast of the united states and makes it to florida a couple days later without running into some problem traffic i needed an oil change i almost ran out of gas i got pulled over for speeding my something you know busted on the car i needed an oil change got into an accident god forbid there's no such thing you can it's not gonna happen something's gonna happen even if it's just traffic even if it's just a detour and that's life nobody goes from the from the cradle to the grave without having some speed bumps some issues along the way and when they happen we're supposed to say god i don't know why this happened i'm going to think about it because i know i'm supposed to take a message from this i'm going to work on myself instead of screaming and blaming you and saying why did this happen instead i'm going to say loma li ma for what what's the purpose i'm going to work on this but i want you to know a cern if this was supposed to be some kind of a you know a a uh a consequence for something that i did let it count you have my full attention don't do anything worse and similarly there's a story told of a ring maker and he was able to make a ring of any sort like whatever you wanted he could just he could make a ring there was no limit whatever you wanted this guy was so town that he could make a ring and so his fame reaches to king solomon hameles himself why is this man in the world so according to the story summons them to the palace and says to them hey i'd like a ring your highness it would be an honor i'm so flattered in honor to make you all right what can i get for you he says here's what i want i want a ring that every single time i look for look at it if i'm really upset it'll make me happy and if i'm too happy like kind of in a frivolous mood it'll bring me back down you know and get me down to you know to where i should be to equilibrium and the ring maker says um uh yeah let me um work on that okay because what's he supposed to do a ring that when you look at it and when you're really sad it's going to cheer you up ah but when you're too happy getting a little out of control you're going to look at it and say i got to i got to tone this down what's he supposed to make so he thinks about it puts in time and he comes back and he presents king solomon wisest man in the world with a ring and shalom takes one look at it and compliments him on his artistry and he says you've done it the guy gave him a ring and the ring had three words engraved on it the three words were gone this two shall pass think about that right something terrible happens look at that ring this too shall pass we're gonna get over this something great some fleeting victory uh you know something financial physical whatever it is and it's great news comes say your word be happy but realize okay this too shall pass and it worked so we always understand that we have to have that equilibrium to understand that every single thing that happens in the world the world and our country and our city in our home to our family members and to us all came from god now let's talk about another way that we can recapture the night there is a very interesting law involving hanukkah campbell's it is not well known and it's as follows when you light the hanukkah candles and you light each one you're supposed to take the whatever you're using let's say you're using a candle to light another candle or a wick when you light it what you would think is you light it and now it's lit and now you go to the next one and the law is not so fast you light it and as soon as you see that it's lit you hold the lighting flame whatever candle you're using or instrument onto that wicker candle a little bit longer an extra beat so you've made sure it's lit go to the next one no don't yet go to the next one wait a little bit now light the next one wait until it's lit and hold that lighting flame on the flame that you've just lit a little longer like a weird law what's going on just like oh well it's just you know make sure it's really lit it's not the reason for the law i mean that's a practical reason it's very nice but this is you know it's lit you see it's lit it's very clear that it's lit and yet you still have to hold it on a beat longer why because we're reminding ourselves that our job is to fan these flames i'm holding that longer because i want a bigger flame on my hanukkah candles which represent light they represent the light of torah of hope of faith of clarity that original light that god put in the world and then he hid it away for the righteous and he brought it back and gave it to some to the room when baby moses was born in motion and then he had it coming from rays of light from his from his head that is the flame that's the light that i am put here to fan no other meaning what flame do we too often fan especially during hanukkah when we get together with our with our loved ones and the family gets together to light candles we often fan the flames of rivalries and squabbles and frictions and somebody starts up with you and you give it back to them and they give it back to you and you give it back to them oh you fan that flame or you want you pick the wrong per the wrong person with whom to start up i'm giving it back to you we don't want to fan those flames and so we light that way to remind us only fan these flames only stoke these flames only make these flames the hanukkah candles the light of torah hope faith clarity make those rise in the world not the other ones not the ones of fighting whether it's family members or friends or colleagues in the community those are not the flames that we are meant to fan those are ones that are meant to blow out or not light in the first place we're told also you know and i'll end with this i heard this once beautifully that we we ourselves we're wicks the torah is the flame and so how do we how do we light ourselves up we light ourselves up through hessed through acts of kindness towards others and that's the type of flame when we learn those laws in the torah we can't ever forget and it's too easy to forget this that fully half of them i i don't mean numerically but maybe it is numerically i never sat down and counted but the same way that both sides of the tablets represent something else five of those are between man and god and five of those are between man and man and often for those of us who are observant and for those of us who are learning more or getting more in touch with our judaism we tend to focus on the ones between us and god those are like the ones that that that for which we for which judaism perhaps is more famous for better or worse the shabbos laws and the kosher laws and the the family purity laws and things like that between um man and god and we forget often about the other half the laws that are between man and man and it's through emphasizing being at least as careful about those laws as the ones between man and god that we can turn our bodies themselves into wicks and we can fan those those real flames those important flames and and be a light be the light uh the actual phrases um and to the nations a light uh mistranslated but it's fine it's popularized there's a light unto nations and that's what we're supposed to be so to summarize a bit we have to look for that light we have to avoid that darkness that that crippling darkness we have no no hope and no faith no future instead we have to find that light that light of hope and faith light of the torah that light of clarity we have to see god's hand in the good and in the bad we have to make sure not to turn the light that he gives us into darkness we have to always remember to thank him and we have to try to redefine the definition of jew and we have to um fan the flames and when we're when we're taking back the night we have to fan the flames of light of torah of kindness and hopefully by doing so uh we'll all come closer to each other both in our families and outside our families and come closer to uh the man upstairs our father in heaven and i want to wish everybody a wonderful beautiful end to what was hopefully a fantastic hanukkah holiday enduring these difficult times that hopefully during this pandemic will end soon thanks for tuning in be well and happy hanukkah [Music]