Preparing For Chanukah: Igniting Sparks In A Dark World - Rabbi Chanan Gordon

great to be back i think after that introduction we can go straight to q a um let me tell you why i know that every word that robbie just said on the behalf of kazakh is in fact the truth because following part one of our two-part series uh entitled igniting sparks in a dark world i got a bunch of emails which we're gonna try and address as we segue into part two so there's three major uh emails i see first email i got was from rabbi gov friedman saying dear i think you stole my thai tie that email we don't have to go through but the second email we will go through which is the following it is uh i've got a bunch of emails saying rabbi um can you repeat some of the stuff that you did in the first part of our two-part series which i will touch on and then a number of people said you know rabbi this is very interesting some of the concepts that you articulated i've never heard before i never thought of god in that way so maybe that's a maybe that's a good way for us to start our discussion here this evening for those of you who were not here for part one uh we had about i think 275 million people live but if you missed it here's what we did we said that a good public speaker tries to keep the discussion to six or seven points thankfully hazak the beloved host of this evening's seminar of the two-part series has six letters last week we covered c h a in a discussion discussing uh parts of hanukkah we spoke about choice that although we are not necessarily con we don't control what happens to us we can choose how we responded to what happens to us the h of hazak was how how we respond to adversity and then the a which i think triggered a bunch of emails was almighty and how people think of akaddish baraku and why many people have an erroneous concept of akadesh baraku so let's start off with that concept of how is it that there's so many people have a missed er ever a concept which might be a a little bit off of kilter of a classic torah hashgrapher so i think the best way to describe this let me tell you a story and we'll we'll try and figure out this riddle together picture this team ladies and gentlemen a long stretch black limo tinted windows the chauffeur of our limo let's call him james dark glasses cruising down wilshire boulevard there are no street lights on now if you were with us last week you'll recall one of the heroes of our story was moishi who was playing with the soccer ball in the front of his home there's james dark stretch limo tinted windows the door glosses street lights are off and he's cruising down 80 90 miles an hour our cute little five-year-old little moishi is playing outside his house james gets off the freeway and the first road after the exit that james takes is the road where little moishe is playing with his soccer ball james turns around the corner at 97 miles per hour and he manages to slam on brakes right in front of moishi the question of course ladies and gentlemen is how did james know that marsha was there again large black limo it tinted windows it talked no street lights the answer it was broad daylight now how is it that almost every single one of you as soon as i said dark tinted and there's no street lights in your mind's eye pictured the scene of a dark knight and this poor kid is about to meet his maker so my friends that's called theater of the mind where we subliminally create an image in the mind's eye of the listener often over a period of time we hear the concept of hashem we hear on a subliminal level and it's jolting sometimes to dispel that let's review one or two points from last week and i'm going to continue using the acronym z a q to finish the spelling of hazak zee zee my friends it stands for zoe copper lovers who was zoe koppelovitz every single year in new york this is before the pandemic there's a race which which is measured over 26 miles called the new york marathon the hero of our story ladies and gentlemen zoe koppelovitz in 1998 came dead last zoe copperlovers however 46 year old woman had a debilitating disease a multiple sclerosis ms it took her 27 hours and and 32 minutes to complete the new york marathon she said afterwards to the press underscores one of the important points we said last week about attitude and i want you to take this to heart it's incredibly insightful she said and i quote when you are born god gives you a television set with 100 channels and 99 of them have wonderful programs on them one has only static everybody with no exception has their channel with static on their set the only difference uh is the kind of static you were given on that one channel for some that static is a physical challenge for others it's a financial challenge for some it's the kind of background that they had but we all get a channel with static what zoe said which is which dovetails over to our concept of choice which we spoke about in the concept of enlightening chanukah is you can sit in front of that one channel for the rest of your life and look at the static or you can get up and change the channel zoe got up and changed the channel and would not allow a physical ailment to derail her or for herself to become a victim instead she became a victor we spoke also last week about the concept of akaddish baraku sees the full picture we are like looking through a keyhole and we have a very myopic and restrictive view of what goes on in the world to review last week i'll tell you the story of john orderborne some of you may know a renown and naturalist who one day was looking at a butterfly trying to struggle out of a cocoon and apparently john saw this baby butterfly kicking the inside of the cocoon and struggling to break through this cocoon and because he was a sympathetic person with a big heart he said i i need to help this poor butterfly he took a scissors and he cut open a piece of the cocoon and lo and behold the butterfly exited the cocoon it took three steps and died john later did research on those kind of butterflies only to learn that in the struggle of these baby butterflies to exit the cocoon they were they learned to develop certain muscles which are essential to develop the underlings of their wings without that struggle those muscles atrophy they will never fly they will die the analogy my friends for us in this journey called life is clear when we see struggle and we think that it's quote unquote bad the almighty in his infinite wisdom knows that it's causing us to dig deep to develop muscles that would otherwise lie dormant why is that it's because just like we think of james in the tinted tinted limo and we think of it's dark outside we've been told by pop culture that a happy life is a pain-free life my friends the torah tells us there's that there's there's nothing further from the truth in fact the rambam says in a four-tiered hierarchy the most benign pain that we can possibly have is financial pain the concept of zeus the concept of money being round money comes and goes it's awkward it's stressful if people can't make things eat but at the the grand scheme of things it's the most benign pain the next level up in terms of the pain according to the rambam is one's health we know intuitively that all the money in the world cannot buy a good health the penultimate level of pain as the rum bum writes is vicarious pain the pain that a parent feels for a child that one one one cannot almost do anything about but a loved one is making mistakes and the pain for the parents is and is incredible what is the highest level of pain what's the zenith of the hierarchy according to the rambam it's no pain at all the worst possible thing is indifference when akaddish barachu directs us who puts us in the cocoon when our college barracu puts us in a situation where we have to flex muscles where we feel uncomfortable it's out of absolute love because the almighty knows what's best for us he knows which muscles we have to flex the worst possible thing is god forbid to have a relationship with almighty that is indifferent so we said the fourth letter of our acronym z stands for zoe kappa lovetts let's move on to a with the penultimate letter of hazak which is a issue that i hear from many many people which is rabbi i've made mistakes in my life i i've failed this i messed up this business a and i i will explain how this relates to chanukah is the word again the almighty will give you a chance again and again and again how do we know that what is the worst national sin of of our of our nation the worst and natural sin seems to be the haita eagle the the worshipping of the golden calf does the torah does the author of the torah hide this clear mistake of our people absolutely not it's front and center of the torah the almighty is saying that people are fallible we make mistakes and the important lesson is if cloudy stroll came back from the eagle you my dear yid no matter what you think that you did i'm going to give you a chance again another clear example being when the greatest person ever to join the planet marsha rabbanu came down with the sarasarthuris the ten commandments we know the first of the ten commandments on seeing the haita eagle were smashed into little pieces what we have so to speak in the kisar covenant is this second set why why is it why is it that that excuse me the first set the one that is crashed the one that is smashed that is the set that is in the most sancrocent part of what will be in the base amigdas why is that because my friends are karish baruch is teaching us that we can all pick up the pieces of our lives that we all make mistakes and those mistakes those stumbling blocks become the stepping stones for our lives the midrash says something incredible about the broken shards of that those first of the sarasotas the mirage says that a bird a bird flew down and grabbed one of those shards of the broken attendant commandments and flew over at the valley of ella and dropped that shard and a thousand years later dover mele when he leaned down with his catapult in the altercation with galius with david and goliath it was that shard that he picked up and he slew goliath with that s shard that exact piece of the broken part of the first of the ten commandments akaddish baraku is telling us that it is we are strongest in the broken parts it's the mistakes we make it's the missteps that become the most robust part of the way we grow in this journey called life so the a of hazak is again and again the almighty will allow us to come back because he created a phenomenon called chubba before the world was created hazal tells tribal was in the world and created time which means if we out of love return it to the almighty the arizona says that baracu can take out a new intent and dub it on the old action it's a miraculous concept where if we sincerely are contrite and we sincerely return to our college we see in the next world the cut version not the uncut version of our lives we move on to the final letter of hazak which is q for question the question that i think over the many many years of me being involved in speaking at many retreats and events i think is one of the most oft-asked questions and that is a question i think people are embarrassed to ask a question that i think people are ashamed is rabbi how do i know hashem loves me i feel abandoned this is going on in my life i feel the pain it's been compounded by the pandemic how do i know hakavish baraku loves me my friends the way we know hakanesh baruch who loves you the cue of a question in the akron the last letter of the word of khazak is there it's not by chance that the parties of the torah which deal with yesterwaz coincide with chanukah what happened in the plight of yoseph is when his brothers when the brother sold joseph two minutes rhyme he was he was placed in a caravan of people going to mitrov at the time the general the general containment of those caravans was toxic tar but in that particular caravan of college barracuda put person in a beautiful scent and rashi says it was very strange to have such a beautiful scent why it was dark it was scary you saw sadiq was being sold away from his brothers to an unknown land but in that beautiful smell the almighty was saying yosef i am here i haven't abandoned you i love you and i'm with you in chanukah it's no coincidence that at the same time as dealing with yes of attack we have a similar concept if you look at the main two miracles of hanukkah you look at we celebrate the miracle of a group of a few guys somehow overcoming the greatest army in the world that was a miracle that was necessary we celebrate that miracle but there's another miracle that we seem to celebrate which if you drill down we don't really need and that is the the oil itself the yeshua says that the truth be he said is we didn't necessarily have to have the pak sheman we could have used a shaman tame and we could have we could have used it until the tahoe oil was available but we celebrate this park sherman this beautiful pure oil and we use that oil and we will next week to ignite the manure why even though we don't need it so to speak hakadosh baahu is saying that the last yomtov in history is chanukah it's winter my friends it's dark it's been a scary several months when we ignite the menorah is telling us his beloved nation that just like he told joseph i haven't abandoned you i'm with you the smell of the basamine we don't really need the oil as part of the so-called miracle of hanukkah but when we ignite the menorah hakadosh barakuser is saying to us i know kinda like it's dark out i know it's been scary but i didn't abandon me i'm with you i love you and i'm with you the story of chanukah dovetailing with yes is to underscore the fact that it's a cush it's a kiss from the almighty to say i'm with you as you ignite the candles i have never abandoned you the story of chanukah my friends is really the attack of the greeks not on us physically but not spiritually on the most important thing that each and every one of you have and that's a yiddish nashamah there is no more powerful spiritual entity than the dna of a yiddish and ashama that's what the greeks tried to take away from us and i wanted to tie this together with a story that i believe will bring out why akaddish why we are here what chanukah is all about and i believe the work the incredible work that does the story is told my friends of a reunion 30 years after high school and on one side of the dance floor was larry and on the other side of the dance floor was jennifer it had been had been so long and larry was watching jennifer and she was so erudite she seemed so refined in her mannerisms that larry went to the principal that had been the principal high school and said is it possible for you to introduce me to jennifer i just see the way she carries us off i'd like to ask her out on a date the principal said there's no problem larry i can introduce you to jennifer but before i make that introduction i need to remind you that jennifer is blind so larry gets her phone number he has on a date one date leads to the other uh hassana harea boom they get married they start their journey of life together in new york and larry's love for jennifer grows and he sees the fact that jennifer his beloved wife can't see a beautiful sunrise can't see the beautiful flowers that the almighty has created and it starts painting him he starts doing his research and he finds in the cleveland clinic there's a particular operation called a retina implant where if it's successful his beloved wife will be able to see again and after doing some research he he reaches out to the cleveland clinic and he runs back into their duplex he says jennifer i found the operation and if this works you'll be able to see he said unfortunately there is a there is a waiting period for 17 years and as he said that as he sees it says that to jennifer he sees a tear well up in her eye and the pain of seeing his beloved wife in such a depressed state it goes into him like a knife the next day larry runs he says jennifer you're not going to believe this we lead frog to the front of the line we're next i'm going to help you pack your bags we go to the cleveland clinic we're going to have the written implants we're going to have the operation and lo and behold bags are packed they off to cleveland and before they leave and larry says the way the doctors explained is after the post operation as you remove the band from your eyes the band-aid from your eyes if the operation of success is success immediately you will see when the bandage comes off within seconds you will see and i need you to know my darling jennifer if the operation is a success you will look at somebody who has a cane and a dark glass as you see jennifer i too am blind and off to the cleveland clinic the operation then the post-op room the bandage the big bad the drum roll this is the moment is about to come off and jennifer looks and lo and behold she sees her beloved husband larry as with the dark losses and the white cane and within a day or two they pack their bags back to new york and their life continues but sadly for jennifer larry becomes a ball in the chain she has to slap him around and she wants to see the world she's never seen the world and weeks going to months and going to years and eventually she said my darling larry i love you but i cannot continuous we need to have a divorce larry loves his wife so much he said if that's what's going to make you happy he calls his brother and before he leaves the house and for the last time larry says to jennifer i wrote a note under the pillow in the master bedroom and with a click he closes the door jennifer goes up to the master bedroom uh looks at the envelope opens the letter from her soon-to-be ex-husband larry and my friends this is what the letter said from larry to jennifer my darling jennifer i love you more than words can say i want you to be happy i want you to see the alps i want you to see all the colors there's only one thing that i ask of you please look after those eyes you see jennifer they were my eyes and a karish before we come down to this world he blows in each and every one of us each and a part of himself called the yiddish and asham and he says look after that in the summer that is that is the parting call of akaddish baruch we're in this world he says one thing look after that in the summer and the greeks tried to take that away from us the greeks try to crush the light that we bring to the world my friends chanukah the jewish holiday of the jewish year and it stands for the calling card of the illuminati look after that bashamah there's 7.3 billion people in the world 14.7 have been given the spiritual dna of a yiddish and almighty saying look after that mushroom because that nashoma is an or it's a light lagoyin to the nations it's a light to your family and it it becomes the lighthouse of morality of ethics and of everything to this world chanukah reminds us look after that in shama organizations like are indeed fatigable in the work that they do to ignite that pinter-lied they ignite the yiddish in hashem which for some people for months others years lies dormant what the work of hazak does in igniting that yiddish nashoma is not only magnanimous it's eternal because they're giving back an eternity to each and every one of these beautiful children chanukah is about looking after that is an organization that that day in and day out does the almighty's work my friends as we relate to the menorah next week please try and take heed of our journey here the acronym that we have a choice that the almighty loves you that if you change the way you look at things the things you look at a change the fact that the almighty is not some old wise man out to get you but he loves and adores you and the fact that each and every one of you have a caviar a piece of the almighty himself that he blew into you with the calling card and look after that mashama you'll notice when you light the menorah next week flames tend to move up because a flame like an ashama will always look to actualize the potential always look to go up each and every one of you should go from strength to strength know that you are hand picked by the almighty look after that in shama you shall never i wish for all of you to bench beautiful things and to robbie and kazakh hashem keep lighting the shamans and keep doing the beautiful work that you do after everyone