Rabbi Aaron Poston for Yiboneh on Chanukah

Good evening. I'm going to start by sharing a few ideas about Hanukkah through some questions. Hopefully through these just asking the questions, we'll be able to get some deep insight into the holiday of Hanukkah itself. Number one, one of the things that we notice when we learn the laws of Hanukkah is that the the wicks and the oils that we're allowed to use are very different than Shabas. For example, on Shabbat, we're supposed to use very high quality oils and wicks. When it comes to Kaneka, it's permissible to use even the most inferior of wicks and oil. The question is why? What's what's so different? We know both of these han the Hanukkah and Shabbas candles, they're both considered holy. Yet, there's a huge difference in the quality that we're allowed to use for Hanukkah. And I think there's some deep insight behind that. Another thing we know that the right side is always considered more important, more holier. We say that the right side is mercy. We bring close to the right. We we bring close to the with the right hand and we push away with the left. The left represents den and judgment and perhaps a side that we're not so comfortable with. So there's a big difference there. And yet the hanaka the manorus to be placed on the left side of the doorway as you're coming in. When you have, of course, when you have muz on the right, the hanaka is to be placed on the left. The left has a certain connotation, perhaps even negative, and yet we're supposed to place the hanaka on the left side as opposed to the right side. Another idea is that the hanaka is supposed to be placed below 10, 10 hand breaths. Yet there's a concept that the divine presence does not rest below 10 10 hand breaths. So what's the deal here? Why is it that the hanaka is to be placed on such a low level? And I think that that also when we think about it and we really ponder upon it, it may help us understand this a great deal better. Also there's a concept of mahadin minimadrin. We know that so many people light in the household. The father, the sons, perhaps to the girls, but you have almost everyone in the family lighting their own minora. And not only that, we have each person lighting an additional candle each night. Okay? So if you have eight people in the family lighting, by the last day you have 80 candles lit at the same time. But the real mitzvah, the bottom line mitzvah, the minimum of the mitzvah is just one candle. That's it for the whole household. And not each night. Not that you add an candle each night, but you light only that one candle each night. Meaning by the eighth night, you still have only one candle lit in the entire household. One little itsybitsy small little flame. not as we do today where everyone is doing a mah in a mahadin to the best to the most beautiful extent that they could. So why is that that that is the base? It's a very uh very it's it's it's mindboggling that that is the since we're not familiar or we're not accustomed to doing it that way. And the last question I want to ask is what is it about the day itself the 25th of Kislev that is so significant that we start this 8th day holiday and with that I'll begin to answer some of the questions but I want to discuss this idea of the soul the soul itself and how it's related to in Tanakh in the Bible as a flame. So there's an idea that in the very beginning of creation, God said, "Let there be light and there was light and God saw that light and it was good." That's in the beginning of Genesis. Later on in Proverbs Mish that's chapter 20 verse 27 it says that a man's soul is the lamp of Hashem Hashem and in Proverbs 6:32 it says that the commandment is a lamp and the Torah is the light. So just trying to get a little bit of an idea of how a candle or the lamp or the light the flame relates to the soul. So Emus mentions that the rishiote the letters of the word nephesh nun pin actually represents what we're discussing here as the nare. Nun is a nare that's candle. The pay is patal is the wick and the shin of the word nephish the last letter shin represents sheman the oil itself. So what do we know about the a soul? So too about a flame. We know that the flame is constantly striving to go upwards. It's flickering and it's alive. It doesn't stand in one place. It's constantly trying to go higher and higher. And that is what the soul is. Yet what do we find? Just a little bit of some background some of the previous parot that just passed by in paras. It talks about the angel the archangel of Adam is battling with Jacob with Jacob. So if you turn to that would be Genesis 32 verse 25. So we see that Yakov was left alone with a man wrestling with him until the break of dawn. Okay. Yakov was left alone that he he wrestled with the man. The word wrestling is the yabake means dust. When you're wrestling, you're bringing up all this dust. And what does it do to your eyes? The dust blinds you. This is what we were told that the angel wanted to do was to overcome Yakov to blind him. And who was this angel? So he even asked his name, but he does not respond with his own name. But kazal tell us the rabbis explain this was the archangel of asav who is the sel this is the yates the evil inclination this is the malik the angel of death this is the satan satan himself so what do we have here that's the so we're going to take the name alhammed which spells his name S. What does sam mean? Ps could mean drugs. It also means to be blinded. Sam suma is a blind person. The goal of this evil inclination of the satan is to blind us from what? That's the first two letters of the word kale. Alfid is God's name. It's trying to blind us from the truth. is trying to blind us from seeing the true reality, the spiritual reality of the world that exists. And so his name is exactly as described right now, Psalm Kale. And that's what the dust also represented in the rrestling. Okay. So now we get to the next point of what exactly is the left side? The word samo, it sounds like the word smo. Smoo means left. We go in, we place the manura on the left side as we're entering the house. The left side. Now in Hebrew, the sam and the shin or in this case the sin can be interchangeable. So you have even though we're talking about the other side that's literally what we're talking about here when we mention this name of the angel or this yates we always refer to it as the other side. So here we're talking about it's literally the other side. It's literally the left side. Now why is it below the never rests yet? What do we do here? We're talking about that little bit of a soul, that little pintilid, the sparks that will never be extinguished. Even that one little light. Remember, we're not talking about eight lights on the eighth night or five on the fifth night. Always one of those lights is the minimum. And that light can never be extinguished. And it's lower down the tent, man. And it's on the left side. And yet it burns and it illuminates and it's trying to reach higher. What night? What was it? What is it about the 25th of this month of Kislev? So there's a concept called the winter solstice. Anybody knows even basic astronomy? We know this is going to be the longest night of the year. So there's a measures that's brought down about Adam the first man. First of all, he was told he was going to die after the sin, the transgression of eating from the the tree of knowledge, good and evil. So there's a gamorra and there's a gamorra brought down in a votar that talks about a holiday called Satna and Kalanda. Interestingly enough, Kalanda sounds like the word calendar. Satna was a ancient holiday worshiping idols and originally Utarishon when he was created in Nissan and he noticed after the curse that all the days were getting shorter and shorter. So approximately 3 months after his life began and the days were getting shorter and shorter. He said to himself, "Woe is to me because of my sin. The world's getting darker and soon there's not going to be any more light and it's going to go back to the way it was originally, darkness and void. And this is how he thought he was going to die eventually. But as the days as he was progressing, he went and fasted and repented and cried out to Hashem. And in eventually those around this time, the winter solstice, it stopped getting shorter. In fact, it eventually started getting longer. meaning the days were getting a little bit longer again, but they stopped getting shorter and he realized, oh, this is the way the world must have been created. Either way, he gave thanks to the Almighty and he made holidays on these times and apparently the way the Gomorrah expresses it that many of the early human beings, his own progeny mistook what he did and they started to make a holidays holidays for worshiping idols. In fact, not not that strange find here it is. [Music] There's um there's a lot of pre-Christian holidays that are uh worshiping idols. In fact, I'm sure that's no question about it that Christmas probably came and developed as a pagan holiday similar to the earlier pagan holidays. There was a holiday called what was it called? uh son invicta or invicti sorry sorry the unconquerable son su n but it also could be translated as s o o n which is no doubt where the Christians got there especially since it was also worshiped on the December 25th and there are some Marduk was a Mesopotamian god as well and he was also born of a virgin so there's a whole list you can google it if you In the meantime, just getting back to this idea that in in one of our recent paras also in VA interesting story that there was a woman named Mrs. Patifar and she was going to seduce. She had her mind set. She was going to seduce Yoseph and everyone went to church or went to temple or wherever they went to on this particular day. I'm going to say it. It was December 25th. And she said, "Okay, I don't feel so well. I'm going to stay home." But really, she had a plan. Her plan was sed to seduce Yoseph. If you look in Genesis Lamet, that's 39 verse 11, it talks about this very day that she went and tried to seduce him. So the verse says, "And it was on that day that Yose went home to do his work and there was not one of the men of the household that was there in the house, but she was there." So what does Rashi say on this verse? Very interesting. It was on this day that is to say it was when a special day came a day of fality. It was a day of their idolattorous festival. They all went to the pagan temple. She said, "Thy have no day as fitting for becoming intimate with Yoseph." Remember these words as this day. So she said to the members of her household, "I'm feeling sick and I can't go to temple today." So she stayed home to seduce him. And what day was this? It says Rashis brings down this was an idolatrous festival. If we go to our own prayers, we discuss the sanctification of these days, these holiness of these days, the what we have to give thanksgiving for. In Alhanim, it says, I'll read it in English, you delivered the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the impure into the hands of the pure, the wicked into the hands of the righteous, and the arrogant into the hands of those who were engaged in the study of your Torah. You made for yourself great and holy, renown in this world, in your world, and for your people Israel. You performed a great salvation and redemption as of this very day. In Hebrew, listen to these words. This very day as if the came down and saved Yoseph from this um seduction of this woman. He saw his father's own face. Remember, he already forgot his father's own face. How does it how is it that he saw his father's own face? Because his father's face rests on the holy throne of glory and as if Hashem himself came down with the holy throne of glory and reminded Yseph as he saved Yseph from such a treacherous sin. So we see this is what the holiday is really about that Hashem has come as he has an everlasting love for the Jewish people for us and that flickering flame will never go out even if it's so low as less than 10 less than hand 10 10 hand 10 10 hand breaths even on the left side which is the dark side and even if it's just one flame that's flickering it will never go out that Hashem's love for us is so strong and so great and he'll come to us in the darkest in the longest nights. And we should never forget and one of the psalms that we sing to remind us of this idea. So I just want to get out the English. I have the Hebrew in front of me. The Hebrew says it's from English. loss. We're all familiar with this. We sing this on Friday night. It is good to thank the Lord and sing psalms to your supreme name to tell of your love and kindness in the morning. We can recognize that in the morning, but it's the dark nights. Your faithfulness is at night. This is where the amuna, the faith, the real exercise of belief in our God, the God of Israel, that he is always with us. And may we take the strength that we gain through these days, these dark and cold and bitter and long nights, and take it with us through the rest of the year. Hanukkah everybody.