Chanukah: Creating Miracles (Ep. 212)

Hi, this is Rabbi Alansky, and welcome to the Rabbi Alansky show. And whether you're watching with our friends over at Eternity Time, wherever you watch or listen to your podcast, as always, thank you for joining us and spending this time together. And this is, of course, our special Hanukkah podcast. I know I'm interrupting my Shabbos podcast. Uh but don't worry, they're coming right down the uh right down the pike. I've got more I've got more to talk about on Shabbos. It's It's amazing. Uh I I said if having a podcast has taught me one thing, it's that I can talk for hundreds of hours without really um missing a beat. So, I got a lot more to say on Shabbos. I can't imagine I was going to get tired of it. Shabbos comes every single week. But Hanukkah is a once-a-year opportunity. And uh as the Maharal explains, uh actually in uh Ner Mitzvah, in reference to Hanukkah, we don't look at time as a circle. And time is a circle, you say, "Okay, you know, you go through the mazalot, you go through the 12 months of the year, you go through the four seasons, it's a circle." We don't look at time as a circle, we look at it as a spiral, says the Maharal. So, you always come back to the same spot, but always on a higher level. So, that when we count uh for Yovel, we don't count 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. We count 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, 8 9 10 11 12 13 14, 15 16 17 18 19 20 21. So, it's always the same seven, but always on a higher level. And says Rav Dessler, we're supposed to do that every Shabbos. We're supposed to go through a week and look at it always as if we're coming to that Shabbos on a higher level. So when uh Hanukkah comes around, we always have to look at it from a fresh perspective. Um if you go all the way back and and I'm always amazed when I find people who have just discovered the Rabbi Alon Shvitz show. Uh as I mentioned, we're still in our process of a fundraising drive, so if anybody wants to help, by the way, uh some people said, "Is it okay, you know, if I don't actually sponsor, you know, episodes, but I just make a a random donation?" Or someone just contacted us to give a monthly donation. Yes, that helps, too. Goes towards the expenses. But um uh you know, we we uh we like to be able to go off and do more things and new things and uh uh obviously, we need we need the uh the funds to be able to make that happen. But um uh uh one of the things I would love to do is advertise cuz apparently, there are a lot of people don't even know this exists. There are even people who I would categorize as Rabbi Alon Shvitz crazies who don't know that I have a podcast. So uh it's really very interesting. Uh suddenly, I meet somebody and they say, "Oh, you you have a podcast? I didn't even know. You know, I listen to your you know, recordings. I didn't know that you have a podcast, you know." So uh they still have my cassette tapes. So uh it'd be nice if we could advertise it, you know. But uh every now and then, people go back and start at the beginning. They suddenly discover it and they start from episode one and whatever I have to say is is clearly timeless and um so uh they start at the beginning and suddenly, they stumble on that uh very first uh rant that I did cuz I was relatively well-behaved at the beginning and then I had people complaining that said uh you know uh why you talking about these different things it's it's not a you know it's not a sheer I'm coming to listen to a sheer and I stressed that's why it's called the Rabbi Wolasky Show. We talk about all kinds of different things here. So yes we give a course Torah and yes we give a course chizuk but sometimes I'll talk about whatever I want. Before we begin so we do have a sponsorship for this episode. Baruch Hashem sponsored by Yoel and Ahava Schmel. God bless you guys we love you and honor of Rabbi Wolasky sake of his sharing your Torah with us and we wish you good health Hashem. Thank you so much and right back at you. It's so nice to have you have you as part of the Rabbi Wolasky Show family. So so this is the Hanukkah and I have of course an important message for Hanukkah I want to share but first every you'd be surprised how often more often than one would imagine I get emails saying how come you don't give any more recipes. So um it's really it's really interesting. You know when it comes to Hanukkah there are essentially two foods of choice. Yeah they're basically latkes and and there are sufganiyot jelly donuts. Um jelly donuts are just too much of a mess. I I I don't make jelly donuts. I can buy jelly donuts. I have a general principle that I do not knock myself out to do something that I can buy the equivalent that's just about as good. Yeah and my usual example of this is potato kugel. All right I I know everybody is very proud of their potato kugel but I've almost never made in all my whole life a potato kugel that was as good as one that I could just buy at the market or at the takeout place. And it's a lot of work. There's a lot of peeling and and grating and and there's a special kugel knife. Half of it's grated, half of it's mushed up. You have to mix it all together, you know, at the end you have the same kugel that you buy at the market. So, I'm I don't waste my time on those kind of things. In fact, um one day I'm going to put out a cookbook. My children have really really asked me not to. Because it is a cookbook for dummies. That's why I'm putting out this cookbook for people who you know, want to do it on the method that my mother taught me, which is fast and easy. That's it. Anything that's a poshka we don't do. We don't do those here. Uh when we first got married, so my wife, of course, who was raised to be an intellectual and to study and to do homeworks and write reports, I was raised to be a housewife. So, I had to teach her how to cook. She didn't really know how to cook. So, she was a little sensitive about it at the time, you know. So, I happen to be flipping through looking for a green bean recipe. I said to my wife, "Oh, you would never make this." And she was immediately offended. "So, why not?" I said, "Okay. Shell the almonds. Blanch the almonds. Peel the almonds. Sliver the almonds. Fry the almonds." You know, "Okay, I'm done." There's six steps and you're still not done with the almonds. There's nothing to talk about. We're not doing it. So, I agree. Agree 100%. So, um uh So, I you know, I put out a cookbook, but um uh on the uh on the section of side dishes, you know, I have different side dishes. Um and so, uh one of them is um um easy potato kugel. Uh go to the store, buy a potato kugel. That's my easy potato kugel recipe. Cuz it's just not worth the time. That's my opinion. Yeah. So, sufganiyot, my kids all make sufganiyot, and it's a tremendous amount of work and effort, and I don't That's not one of my things. I can go off and buy them, and okay. So, if you go to uh Angels. I don't know if I'm allowed to mention places, you know. I haven't bought from Angels in many years, but it used to be that you'd go to Angels Bakery and you'd buy them, and they were basically old challah rolls, you know, that had been soaked in oil long enough if you put a wick you could recreate the Hanukkah miracle, you know. And then they sprinkle a ton of uh you know, a powdered sugar on top of it. It doesn't speak to me. But, uh for example, there's a bakery here in Har Nof, Nugatin. Uh! Unbelievable. Delicious. Or if you get the bat chalav, I guess those are the caramel ones from Berman's, you know, when they first come out and they're fresh and mushy. Uh! Delicious. So, I'm not going to spend my time doing something I can buy. That's my general principle. You know, so But, uh latkes, it's very hard for me to find really good latkes. Yeah. Um Uh I could give you the recipe, but you can just look it up for yourself. I take it from the classic kosher cookbook, which was put out by uh Sarah Finkel, who of course was Nosson Tzvi Finkel, the Rosh Yeshiva of the Mir, his mother. She put out a cookbook. You know, Nosson Tzvi Finkel grew up in Chicago. He went to actually a coed high school. But, people would tell me, bachrum, they would they would um they would uh meet his mother, you know? And she'd say, "Yeah, where do you Where do you learn?" He goes, "The Mir." He goes, "Oh, you know, my son, Nate?" He goes, "I I don't know who Shure it is He's the head." He goes, "No, no, he he works there. Nate Nate Nate Finkel." And they're like, "Nosson Tzvi, the Rosh Yeshiva?" YEAH. NATE. UH THAT'S WHERE YOU COULD HAVE KNOWN HIM IN BROOKLYN we referred to his brother of Yakov was a Shiva and they as well as Jack. I says yeah, my brother Jack. I uh it was a different time. It was a different time. You know, I mean this is what told me he was driving once with uh with uh you know, with Mesha Shapiro when he goes, "Menachem, do you remember when you were Manny?" Yeah. Uh do you remember you know, when this guy was was Adam? Remember when this guy was Mike? I remember Mesha goes, "Ah, those are good old days." I went to Yeshiva. I mean, what my day everybody had English names and they all came to Mesha Yeshiva and I had to change them around, but you know, they still they still uh uh stick with us to these days, you know. It's amazing. Anyway, but um uh so that's the recipe that I use. Uh I'll just give you um the the my one hint is always grind up when you put through the food processor the potatoes, let them sit and pour off the extra liquid. That's that's my that's my little let it sit again let it sit again, squeeze out the excess liquid. That's what I I deal with. That's I think is an important step uh in in it. And then add the onion because if you squeeze it out when the onion's in it, you'll end up squeezing out most of the onion flavor. So, add the grated onion after you squeezed out the potatoes. The second thing is make sure that the oil is hot hot hot hot. Otherwise, you get the mushy ones instead of them coming out and being crispy. Very important. Um My kids, who are much more foodies than I am, when they fry something, they always put it onto a draining rack. I haven't got the patience to set up a drying rack and I got slotted rack that you put it on for the for them to drain, not me. I use paper towels the way my mother did. Put them on. So now I'm I'm going to share with you uh uh something that just occurred to me this year that I has been a quandary for me for years for years. And I finally decided this year I have to come up with a solution. Um a uh there is a minig to have a Hanukkah mesiba uh you know, Hanukkah party, Hanukkah get-together. The written halakha there's no din to have a seudah on Hanukkah. But there is a um uh an inyan to have a seudah as a reason for shiras v'sishbachos to Hakadosh Baruchu. Since Hanukkah is l'hodos ul'halel, this gives us an opportunity. And uh we eat milchigs. Why? Because Yehudis gave the general milk to eat and then he got thirsty, she gave him wine, and then when he got drunk, she chopped off her head. It's very interesting. Uh we say in the Gemara ein simcha ela b'vasar. Meat has happiness. Uh ein simcha ela b'yayin. Wine has happiness. Fruit, you bring the bikkurim. You know, uh vegetables, you bring trumah and ma'aser. Um almost everything has significance in Judaism except for milchigs. The only time you find milchigs used is before you get someone drunk to cut off their head. That's how Yael killed Sisera. That's how Yehudis killed him. The significance of milkings is to get someone to chop off their head. Just to put it in perspective. Talk about LACTOSE INTOLERANCE. BUT ANYWAY, SO WE make a milking meal and you know, here's the thing. When you make a fleshy meal, you know exactly what you're making. There's a main course, there's a side. Milkings, you just keep eating. You keep adding, you know? So, I make an unbelievable lasagna. I use American lasagna noodles. I don't know these Israeli lasagna noodles. I don't know what they are. I tried the pre-boiled ones. I don't like them. I boil up the them beforehand. And I basically take little containers of 9% cottage cheese that they have here in Israel. In America, they don't have 9% cottage cheese. I think there are laws against that. There's only so much fat that a person is meant to ingest. People use ricotta cheese, but I always find it has a different kind of a taste. But anyway, so I use that and eight of those little containers, somewhere between eight and 10, and I add an entire bag of grated cheese, mix them up together, add a little salt and pepper. If If I've got some some dried parsley, I mix that in, too. Mix it up together. And then I use tomato paste. I don't use sauce. My mother used to use sauce. I use paste. And I usually bring over one of my grandchildren because it's too much work for me. Because I have to open up all those little containers and scoop it all out. And of course, my father brought me up to be frugal. My son Yakov says that's a fancy word for cheap. That's okay. We don't waste anything. When I crack an egg, I put my finger on the inside and remove whatever is still clinging on the inside. And when I take a container of cottage cheese, it takes me forever till I get all of it out. Then I have to scrape off the part on the top, you know, and find uh eight to 10 containers uh and a thing of cheese. And so I have my my uh my grandchildren do that part for me. And uh and I have those sauce open. I'm all ready. But I do that before I cook them noodles because otherwise you have the noodles end up getting sticky. So I drain the noodles and immediately Yeah, spray a little oil on the bottom of a 9 by 13 pan. I line up uh I use Ronzoni noodles. I have three three noodles. And then my grandson goes over it with the tomato paste. And then I add a layer of filling, and then three more noodles, and then tomato paste, and filling, and three more noodles, and tomato paste, and sprinkle some uh extra grated cheese on top. That's it. It's unbelievable. Um I make a mac and cheese. Uh I find that the best mac and cheese that I ever had was uh was in Honky's uh pizza in West Hampstead. Uh It closed down and reopened someplace else, but you know, I remember there and I I remember I I asked Richie, who who ran it, "How do you make your um How do you make your uh mac and cheese?" He says, "I'll tell you." "Now first of all, if you can get American mm macaroni, it's a lot better. And the Israeli ones are too large. But you know, get the small ones. And uh you put it in about a container of milk. I'm saying like a quart of milk. A whole milk. And uh you bring it to a uh low temperature, and then you just keep adding in slices of American cheese. I have somebody bring it back from America for me. I don't know if it works with another cheese. I use American cheese, yellow American cheese, cuz otherwise it doesn't look like mac and cheese. And I just keep adding pieces and I stir it up and I see if it's creamy enough and then I keep adding more and I stir it up. I keep adding it. I keep melting in the cheese. And then you add some salt and some white pepper. Now, salt is to taste. I I often err on the side of salt and I add too much salt. I I got to going to have to taste it. Make sure that it's not too salty and salty enough. You pour it on, mix it up together, put it into a pan, stick it in the oven with a little slice a couple slices of American cheese on the top, cook it. It's unbelievable. So, that's it. So, those those are the pasta dishes that I make. Um there's uh uh we make different types of fish, you know. Um we have uh I have I have my onion soup. I think I gave the recipe for that before. I gave my uh I do my orange soup and I say my orange soup, but full disclosure, I also took it from my Taste Buds recipe uh cookbook that I bought years ago. It's a um butternut squash sweet potato soup and it's absolutely delicious. Uh I know I gave a shout out uh to Taste Buds uh about their chocolate chip cookies that that apparently um on on the Instagram. I don't have Instagram, but she she uh she mentioned that I mentioned it. So, now I'm giving a shout out about her orange soup. Uh and in fact, when Taste Buds was still open, the the cookbook just came out, I I had read it in the Mishpacha and I couldn't find the recipe. I didn't have the cookbook yet, you know, it didn't come to Israel. I called her up in the restaurant. She gave me the recipe. You know, I remember the time she says, "I think I put in too much nutmeg." I don't think so. But um uh so, my orange soup, delicious. Vegetable soup, I mean the the uh onion soup with cheese and nuts. Okay. Um my daughter makes fresh hot cocoa and we don't have whipped cream in a little can here in Israel. They just don't have it. So, we have to whip up our own whipped cream, put a little dollop of whipped cream, we get some little mini marshmallows, you know, at the end. And then we go straight to the hospital to have our stomachs pumped. A dick and a couple shots of insulin. Cuz if you weren't diabetic before this meal, you will be afterwards. Anyway, one of the things I serve, of course, at a Hanukkah mesibah are the latkes. So, the problem is even if I set up two frying pans and I can't really do that because there's a lot of stuff cooking. And I you know, so I end up with one frying pan, but even if I have two frying pans you know how long it takes to fry latkes for 30, 40 people? You know, can I know how I've got nieces and nephews here. I've got I've got just my immediate family is is close to 30. You know, it's it's a big crowd. And and and there's nothing like a latke when it comes right out of the pan. So, you're trying to cook them and everyone's grabbing them right off of the plate so you can never like bring it out cuz as soon as they cook people grab it right out of the little plate. It's it's it's a challenge. So, I'm trying to figure out how to make the latkes in advance. And I discussed it with one of my food foodie friends. I'll give him a shout out, Yitzy Shapiro, who's a good friend of the of the show and he's he's into all kinds of stuff, you know. He's he he has a sous vide, he has you know, smokers, all kinds of stuff. I don't understand any of these things, you know what I mean? I have a pot, a frying pan that I understand. So, I said, "Can I fry them in advance and then like just quickly re-fry them beforehand?" Again, he goes, "No, they'll get soggy." So, he says, "But, this is what you could do." This is his suggestion. And I'm going to try it this year. We'll see how we do. Fry them beforehand and then freeze them in layers with like uh you know, wax paper in between in the free- then take them out when they're frozen and get like a pot of oil, get it really hot, and drop them in for just 20 seconds. They should pop and cook and come back to life that way. So, I'm going to try it this year. If it doesn't work out, I will report back to you. And then I will give you his number if you decide to try it also and it doesn't work. And we can all call him and tell him how we feel. Anyway, I felt that was important just to uh to talk a little bit since people have been complaining I I where are the recipes, you know? In fact, we actually uh toyed with the idea of doing a cooking segment for Hanukkah, but uh you know, we'll save that till we get a a little more uh maybe maybe we'll we'll save it for before Purim or we'll make uh holopches. I'll show you how to make my stuffed cabbage cuz I've gotten much better at it, you know? So, we'll uh we'll see how we do that. Uh Brian Regan has a hysterically funny routine on cooking shows. He says, "You know, I I wouldn't mind cooking if I had all the ingredients on the counter in pre-measured little bowls and I just pour it into the pot." He says, he says, "If I made a cooking show, it'll be like I suddenly realize I don't have any eggs. Come with me now as I go to the store to buy eggs." There's always ingredients you forget. You have to try to put things together, you know? But, to have everything all set up in little measured bowls, you know? He goes, "And after they pop it in the oven, there's a cooked one already in the second oven. They just take it out. Why did I waste my time making this one if it was already a cooked one in the oven? I didn't know you could do that. Anyway, so uh we'll see. We'll see if maybe we'll do a cooking episode. All right. That's just a little Hanukkah treat there I I put on I hope this looks like a Hanukkah-ish tie. I looked for a Hanukkah tie. Anyway, so um uh let's let's I I give a Hanukkah idea that I think is extremely important. There is what's called the famous Base Yosef's kasha. Cuz the Base Yosef has the kasha, but of course it's answered by Rishonim. And that's always interesting when you see that, you know, this Rishon gives an answer to the Base Yosef's kasha. He lived before the Base Yosef. But it became known as the Base Yosef's kasha. That's that's how it's known. The Base Yosef's kasha is the following. Why is Hanukkah 8 days? Instead of 1 day we get presents eight crazy nights, right? Why is it 8 days? So one of my kids once said, "Cuz there's eight holes on the Hanukkiah." That's that's as good an answer as any. But um uh his question is like this. We know the story. Uh they uh finally captured the Base of Mikdash and they wanted to rededicate it and the first thing they wanted to do was light the menorah. They didn't even have a menorah. They had to set up bunch of uh uh shpudim to be able to use as a temporary menorah. And uh they had to search to be able to find tahor oil. And they finally found a tiny amount of of tahor oil enough for one night. And they filled it up and it burned for eight days. That's the miracle. So, asks the Bnei Yissachar, if it was enough oil to burn for one night, then that wasn't a miracle. It was the next seven nights that was a miracle. This is the Bnei Yissachar's kasha, and there are a lot of answers. The answer is, you're right. The fact that it burnt for an extra seven days, that was a miracle. The first day we're celebrating the Chanukas Ha uh uh Mishkan. Chanukas Ha Bayis Sheli David, the fact that we rededicated the Beis Ha Mikdash. And by the way, Chanukah is seen as the dedication of the Beis Ha Mikdash. The Bnei Yissachar discusses this. That um uh He brings uh from Tehillim, and pasuk uh that puts together uh basically uh Tishrei, the the shvatim of Tishrei, Cheshvan, and Kislev. And he says, uh what's the reason for that? So, he says, well, the Mishkan, as we know, was finished on Chanukah, but it wasn't put up until Rosh Chodesh Nisan. So, uh it was made up to Chanukah, says Bnei Yissachar, that the second Beis Ha Mikdash was Because the first dedication that took place was not a real dedication because the Persians were in charge of us at that time, and and uh and Cyrus the Great, Koresh, was uh was supervising uh what was going on. And so, uh wasn't considered unique. Here, we finally achieved an independence, and we were able to dedicate it. And that was made up to Chanukah because it missed the dedication that should have taken place by the Michigan. So, to the first base of Migdash was finished in Cheshvan and uh it wasn't dedicated until Tishrei. And therefore, Cheshvan will be when we dedicate the third base of Migdash. And the Aish HaTorah brings this down um in Cheshvan. But uh but the the idea that Hanukkah is the dedication, that's what we're celebrating on the first day. The first day is the dedication, and the next seven is called the nice of the candles. The other answer is the fact that they found this pach shemen, the little cruse of oil that was still tahor after the Greeks worked so hard to metame all of our oil. That was part of their battle plan. Upartzu chomos, chomos migdolai, vetim'u kol hashmanim. They set out with forethought and malice to be metame all of our oil. Yeah? Spartacus, Eratosthenes, hepatitis, everyone tame the oil. Tame it, tame it, tame it, tame it, tame it, tame it. General, I found a barrel, stick your hand in. Yes, sir. Yeah? So, the fact that we found one with a seal that was still tahor, that itself was an unbelievable nice. Yeah. Um the other answer is this unbelievable victory that we had over the Greeks. It was a rabim biyad me'atim. It was a small group of of uh Kohanim and we're not fighters. And they were going against the Greeks, the greatest military machine that the world had ever seen. The fact that we won that victory was a miracle. That's the first day. Uh there's a beautiful answer. And that is that um the everyone the Gamorah with R' Chanina bar Dosa. R' Chanina bar Dosa was very, very poor. Even though the Gamorah says the entire world was fed only in his chos, he himself had very little money and lived on a small amount of food from week to week. So came time for the Shabbos candles, there was no oil. He says, "What do you got?" He goes, "We got vinegar." He says, "Burn vinegar." He says, "Vinegar doesn't burn." He says, "The same God who says that oil can burn says that vinegar can burn." Because when my kids went to science class, um the first thing they write in their notebooks is hateva in gematria is Elokim. Uh what we call nature is God. There's two ways that God runs the world. A systematic way and a non-systematic way. The systematic way is what we call uh nature. Teva. And the non-systematic way is what we call miracles. So the first day we're lighting and celebrating that oil burns. And then that the oil continues to burn miraculously, that's just an extension of the of the nature that Hakadosh Baruch Hu made. So these are different answers to the question. There's another answer that a number of meforshim give. And I want to focus just for a moment on um on the Pnei Yehoshua's approach, how he answers the question. And I'll put it in the context. The context is the following. How do you light the menorah? Braisa. Second perek Shabbos. How do you light the menorah? Says mitzvah ner ish u'veito. Every house lights one candle. Every day. Mahadran, everybody in the house lights one candle. Mahadran mini Mahadran, uh that's already Mahlike is Bais Shammai. Bais Hillel, which is what we do, the first day you light one candle, the next day two, then three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And uh Bais Shammai says the first day you light eight candles. And then you light seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Why? Says Bais Shammai, post galach. You keep getting lower like you see by the um bulls that we offer on Sukkos. The first day we bring 13, then 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7. So you go down. Says uh Bais Hillel, that's a fine svara, but we have a rule, al hakodesh we go up, we don't go down. When it comes to holy things we go up, we don't go down. Um It's very interesting. Uh Yonoson Rosenblum, who's one of the major speakers on behalf of Orthodox Judaism in the world. So he told me that uh at some point he decided to grow pais. He didn't have them, but he grew pais behind his ears. And he went to America to speak, and one of the other major uh Jewish Orthodox leaders there said, "Why would you do this? We have a hard enough time as it is with with our beards and our dark clothes and our hats, you know, that we're already standing out. Now you have to add to it?" You know, I'm a chiyuv to do it. You never had it. So he came back and he thought maybe okay, so maybe I'll cut them off. I just I just started. And he asked his rebbe, Reb Moshe Shapiro, who said, "Ma'alin b'kodesh v'ein moridin." We go up, we don't go down. Once you go up in something, you don't go back down. I thought that was such a fascinating insight. And that's why I've never grown my payos behind my ears. And that's also why I will not wear a frock in Hamburg because without the payos, it looks really ridiculous. So, uh that's why I I I always try to trim my beard for two reasons. One is my my beard turned white right away because it was sort of a reddish brown. Reddish brown turns white. My hair is brown, it's slowly turning gray. I say slowly uh because that's what people tell me, but I think it's growing getting gray faster and faster, but but my beard very early on turned white. And uh when it grows out, I it adds at least 10 years to me. I look very, very old. And uh you know, we live in we live in a society that uh um values youth. So, someone said to me once, you know, well, you're getting on in years a little bit. And I ain't kosher, you know. I'm at retirement age, too bad I don't have a job, otherwise I could retire. But um they said, "Why don't you grow your beard out?" I said, "Cuz my beard doesn't grow with the rosh yeshiva beard. It curls in, so I come out looking like the Wolf Man." So, you know, I'll come out looking like a Wolf Man Santa. I mean, it's just not going to go, you know, so so that's why I keep my beard trimmed, you know. But uh ma'alin b'kodesh, you go up, you don't go down. That's the principle. So, um uh that's what Beis Hillel says. So, says the Pnei Yeshua, why in the world would you learn from the parsha of Chag? Now, I have a whole shiur on why you might cuz other people do give an explanation why you would learn out from Sukkos over here to Chanukah and the connections between them. In fact, um I have uh as I was looking back at past podcasts that I've given on Hanukkah, I noticed that I gave one on the Sukkot Hanukkah connection. So, if you want to go and do a search wherever you watch or listen to your podcast, hopefully that one is there and you can see it for yourself. Or why listen to it for yourself. But but Finnegan says, "No. The only reason they shall I is mentioning this is to show that in response to base hill, who says I'm already then there is a example of where you can go down and not go up." But it doesn't explain the reason. He says, "What what's the reason of my base on base hill? What are they really arguing about? They're arguing about whether or not you should follow the the balls that are offered on Sukkot or not. That's not the base of the market. It's base of the market has to be something else. He says, "Base base hill is just bringing a riot to respond to base hill, who says that you always have to go up and could do so that you can't go down. He says the market is like this. And he brings the base hill to discuss it. And he says, "Why is it 8 days if there was enough oil for for one day?" He says, "You understand there was no way they could have just filled up the menorah and lit it and it burnt for uh 8 days straight. Because there's a din of chumisa deshan by the menorah. That every day you have to clean out the menorah, take the ashes and things like that and you put it by the side of the misbe off where it gets swallowed up by the earth. And you have to set them up again and then you light them every day. So, if they just poured in all the oil, comes the next day, they would have to clean it out and put in more oil. That wouldn't have helped. So, he says, here was the nice of Hanukkah. You took the card shaman and you filled up the nearest completely and you look at it and you say, oh my gosh, it's almost full. I would say I only used about an eighth of the of the oil that was here. Remember the Wesson commercial and it all comes back except for one tablespoon. You said. So, it's it filled up completely and I still have 7/8. Do you realize that at that moment they already understood the nice of Hanukkah? And now I know it's going to be eight days. Cuz on the first day there was 1/8 of the oil that burnt the entire night. And then they pour in another eighth and another eighth and another eighth. And so, it lasted eight days. So, says Beis Shammai, that's why you light eight candles cuz right away at the beginning they knew the Hanukkah was going to be eight days. That was the unbelievable understanding. And as each day goes by, it becomes less of a miracle because they're just watching the card shaman. They're watching the little clay slowly begin to run out of oil getting lower and lower and lower as we go along. That is the miracle of Hanukkah, says Beis Shammai. If you will, the miracle that we are celebrating is the card shaman where we watch the oil slowly starting to go down. Says the Pri Yeshua, Beis Hillel says, you're right. But nobody saw that except for the cohen who was filling up the menorah. Klal Yisrael just knew that we found enough oil for one night and that's it. What's going to be tomorrow? I don't know. Suddenly comes the second day and it's still burning. And the third day, and the fourth day, and they knew it was going to take eight days to get oil. Either because they were tameh mace and it would take them seven days to become tahor and then one day to make the oil. Or because as the Gemara says, they would get the olive oil from Gush Halav, which is a four-day journey from Yerushalayim, so it would take four days to get there and four days to get back. But they knew it was going to take eight days. So they said, "Okay, they found the kad shemen. It'll burn for one day. Hey, it's still burning for a second day, for a third day, for a fourth day." Each day was a greater insight into the miracle that was taking place. Says the Benei Yisrael, "The essence of Hanukkah is whether you're looking at the menorah or you're looking at the kad shemen. Are you going down 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 to parallel the little container of oil or the insight that the Jewish people got every day, look it's still burning, look it's still burning, and it's increasing in intensity? Two ways of looking at life. Because we look at what's there. We don't look at what's inside of the kad shemen. I've quoted this beforehand. My wife says, uh we have eight girls, so when they would go to high school, you'd say, "Girls high schools only want girls who don't need high school. A high school should be a time where a girl gets to develop and turn into a young lady and develop as a person. I could say the same thing about Yeshiva Ketana. What in America they call high school. You have Yeshiva Ketana, which is a Yeshiva Gedola only smaller. The people are smaller, they have smaller hats, they have smaller chairs, they're smaller Gemaras, and everything is a little smaller. It's otherwise exactly the same. Three star of Gemara, you know, exactly nothing different. It's not an opportunity for a person to grow into somebody. It's That's it. You're now You're now a Yeshiva Bachur. It doesn't make a difference if you're Yeshiva Ketana or Yeshiva Gedola. You're exactly the same. As opposed to sit down and say, "What should a Yeshiva Ketana be doing in order to develop this Bachur so that he could be successful in Yeshiva Gedola?" It's a process. People are supposed to go through a process. So, that's what we do. We go through the process. But, uh a lot of people don't want the process. A lot of people just want the finished product. You have to be perfect now. I told the story beforehand. A friend of mine told me he met a Yeshiva Yeshiva Ketana. He says, "We take only the best boys." So, he says, "Well, that doesn't say much about you as a Machanech, does it? You only know how to have work with the best boys. You're so limited as a Machanech. You can't help anybody else." And what exactly is the best eighth grader? That's one of the most brilliant lines I've ever heard, yeah. What is What do you What is the best eighth grader, you know? Yeah, process and develop. One of the principles of Chinuch that my wife heard from a friend of hers that is was our mantra when we were raising our kids is the purpose of Hinukh is not to raise good kids. It's to raise good adults. As a process. So, we live in a world where we have to respect the process. All right, Kalish from Waterbury, that's one of his famous lines. Respect the process. There's a process that you have to go through. You go from 1 day to 2 days to 3 days and you watch it getting brighter and brighter and brighter and building to a crescendo. You know, the Gamara says that in this world we pass like base hill, but in when Messiah comes in the world to come, we'll pass like base shamay. Because now we don't appreciate potential. If you look inside of the Kad Shemen and you see from inside there what people can't see. And you can see the entire miracle taking place. You know, uh people get married. Uh they only want to marry a a finished product. Um it can't be you have to hustle until you get married. Or as the expression goes, um when you get married, until you get married you're not complete. After you get married, you're finished. But it's a process. You have to invest. Brokho looked at a 40-year-old uh poor, ignorant shepherd who didn't know how to read olive base and said, "Yeah, he's going to be the greatest Godol Ador that ever lived." Going to be the greatest Torah scholar in Jewish history. She saw it. She saw Rabbi Akiva in the ignorant shepherd Akiva ben Yosef that nobody else saw. She saw what was of the par sherman she saw what was happening underneath the surface. That's hard for us in this world. In this world we we look at the external. We look at what we can see. Um potential is uh is not something that we appreciate so much. I uh I've thought about this my whole life. Um I was working someplace and one of my Russia Yeshiva said to the guy who I was working for who knew me when I was in Yeshiva. He says, "Is he effective?" He says, "He's tremendously effective." And he shook his head and said, "I never thought he'd amount to anything." Now I appreciate that. Because I had dyslexia and ADD and all kinds of different difficulties and a person who looked at me said, "This person will never amount to anything." I understand. I understand. It's difficult for us to understand but I've heard this story already from several people that they said Reb Chaim Kanievsky when he was younger he had uh he didn't have a head for learning. He was I heard it from somebody who was in cheder with him. He was shocked that he turned into Reb Chaim Kanievsky. And that's why they wanted to make a colel for only for the elyonim and the Chazon Ish says, "No, you don't know where Torah is going to come from." You know? You you look at somebody and you think, "He's never going to amount to anything." And if only anybody had looked inside of the par sherman and said, "No, there's something more here that I'm not seeing. That this person can maybe go on and be successful. And that becomes the terrible challenge and and our job of being Rabbis Tyra and in raising children and in working with people is to see the potential inside of the person and figure out how to make it work. There's an article in the first Chicken Soup for the Soul which I cannot wrap my head around. I still can't. Uh I I read it a couple of times. This teacher was in Harlem and there were these black kids who were not succeeding uh in uh in their studies. And he decided what would be a great idea is make a chess club. LET'S MAKE A CHESS CLUB. HE TEACHES them chess. To make a long story short, they go on and win the national championships and come in second in the international championships. And one of the kids at the end says something that that's how the article ends. He said "We were stupid until Mr. C told us we were smart, then we were smart." You to be able to see that potential. There's studies that have been done that when I was growing up there was the A class and the B class. The A class was all the smart kids and the B class were the people like me. Anyway, so one year they told the teacher the B class was the A class and the A class was the B class and that year the A class got average marks and the B class got exceptional marks. Cuz people saw the potential and helped them to realize it. That's the miracle of Hanukkah. You can look at the pure sherman and know the miracle is taking place before it even happens. Or you can wait until you see it shine in the menorah. And in this world, very often we have to wait till we see the person succeed. Right? What's the expression? Uh success has many fathers and failure is an orphan. When I took over Long Island NCSY, they had gone through five directors in 2 years. It was worse than nothing. If I was coming and starting from scratch, okay. But like this, our credibility was so shot. And I went from town to town and I spoke to different people and they all explained to me why it wouldn't work. It's not going to work in Long Island. It's not going to work for this reason, for that reason. And they were all right. And uh the first year we built it up to 100 paid members, then 300 paid members, then 500 paid members. We made sports leagues, we made publications, we made all kinds of things. And once it was successful, everybody told me how they could have done it better. First they told me how it couldn't be done. And after I did it, everyone told me how they could have done it better. That's how it works. So So if you have the ability to see the potential, to see what's there and have a little imagination. When uh when the Pnei Menachem of uh I think it was Yechiel Saarna, he took him out to Bnei Brak and he started showing him, "Here I'm going to build the yeshiva and here I'm going to build the Bais Yaakov and here I'm going to build, you know, an orphanage. I'm going to do this, you know." And it was just sand dunes. This is the story I heard. I didn't check it out. I'm not Pnei Menachem. He went back to Jerusalem and he sent a psychiatrist to go and talk to him cuz he thought that he lost his mind. You know, in Europe with the war and everything. He's building buildings in the middle of the desert? But he looked and he saw the Pnei Menachem and he saw what was inside. He understood the miracle that could be created if you can look underneath the surface. So mir Hashem, when we light the menorah, every day, you're right, we're going to get a deeper insight with each added candle. But take a moment to think about the pach shemen and understand the miracle is already there in the potential waiting to come out. Okay, and that's it for our regular program. And now we come to the question and answer program. And we have a sponsor for the question and answer sponsored by Yona Shum. I don't know if that's Sham or Shum. I'm going to go with Shum over here. Yeah. Who says anything for Rabbi Rilovsky? I love you. I'll Shum all. Okay, first question. We have some Hanukkah questions here by Baruch Pearl. With Hanukkah on the way, was the miracle of Hanukkah a {quote} waste of time, so to speak? The Hashmonaim themselves mostly ended up becoming Hellenized anyway. Yeah. If you're looking for a happy ending, you're in the wrong religion. In my unpublished book, the last book you read before you assimilate, I have a chapter on Jewish history. And at one point I write, and then the Jews lived happily ever after, which in Jewish history is about 40 years. So, if you're looking for the happy ending, that'll happen when Mashiach comes. I mean, look, you know, the Yetziat Mitzrayim ended in that entire dor dying in the in the midbar and never making it to Eretz Yisrael. If you look about the dor we came in there itself, they built the base of English which was destroyed and they went into the gallus. They came back and built the second base of English which was destroyed and they went back into the gallus. So, if you looking for a happy ending, we don't have happy endings, but that doesn't mean you don't celebrate Pesach. That doesn't mean you don't celebrate the occasions. And therefore, on Hanukkah, I'll tell you what the Gamora says. The Gamora says it beautifully. The Gamora in Shabbos which discusses my Hanukkah, so discusses everything that happened and they lit the menorah and it burned for eight days and it says, "And the next year, they made a holiday." What does that mean the next year? Why didn't they do it immediately? My answer is because was this a one-time miracle of which there are miracles? We don't celebrate when the sun stood still for Yehoshua, although that was a tremendous miracle. Yeah. There are There are all kinds of miracles that we don't make a holiday about them. Only if the miracle represents something greater. Let me give you an example. Um the Tamidim of Rebbe Akiva stopped dying on Lag Baomer. So, is Lag Baomer a happy holiday because they stopped dying? So, the Maharal says that they died for 33 days spread out from Pesach to Shavuos. That's what the Gamora says. It says they died between Pesach and Shavuos. Doesn't say they died from Pesach to Lag Baomer. They died for 33 days. We condensed it. And any day there was a special day they didn't die. They didn't die on Shabbos. They didn't die on Pesach Sheini. They didn't die on you know, on on Rosh Chodesh. And they didn't die on Lag Baomer. Which means that's not that Lag BaOmer is a happy day cuz they didn't die. They didn't die because Lag BaOmer is a happy day. We just didn't know it yet. So, after they saw this tremendous miracle, they waited till the next year with that ability Bnei Bina Yemei Shmona Kav Ohr She Ohr Naan Im. Bnei Bina, those with that Bina Mavin Davar Toch Davar, they waited to see when the next year came around did they feel that power of Chanukah even though there was no miracle that year? And once they did, they said, "Wow, this is not just a one-time miracle. This is something that's built into the Briah." And then they said, "Hey, look at that. The Mishkan got finished being built on the 25th of Kislev. I didn't realize that was significant. Hey, look. The 25th in the word word in the Torah is Ohr. 25 Ohr. I didn't realize that." And suddenly they start finding Chanukah references all over the place. And when it lists the Masaos, the 42 journeys that stops the Klal Yisrael made, the 25th is called Chashmona. So, there's the there was a significance to the the day that was integral. It doesn't matter whether or not it lasts or not. Doesn't matter how the Chashmonaim end. It doesn't matter if the Mishkan and the first base of the Mishkan and second base of the Mishkan destroyed and all of these things. If there's something inherent built into the Briah called Chanukah, that's what we gain from Chanukah. And the fact that the historical uh we're not celebrating the Chashmonaim per se. We're celebrating Oh Nissim V'Oh Niflaos V'Oh Tshu'os V'Oh Milchamois that we fought. Bayamei Haheim Bazman Hazeh. Yeah, we're still fighting those battles against the Hellenists. Yeah, we're still fighting against the Greeks. Yeah, we're still fighting against Plato. Somebody asked me how I couch them. Says, why do you Jews have a problem with Plato? I said, you know how hard it is to get out of the carpet? Anyway, the point is that, you know, we don't look just at the event itself, but in the greater manifestation that was Megale through this miracle. And another Hanukkah question. Why is it that some dreidels have a shin and some have a pay? Does it change the rules of the game? So, I have a whole shear on this. You can look it up uh wherever you you look up your Rabbi Laskin shearum. Wherever you came them from. It might be called Nes Gadol Hayah Sham. It might be called the secret of the dreidel. I talk about this at length, but I will give you be kitzur the the dreidel answer. Um It always said in the a shin. It didn't necessarily stand for Nes Gadol Hayah Sham. That wasn't the uh main reason. These four letters have all kinds of significance. For example, the Bnei Yissachar says in the Haftarah of Hanukkah in Yehezkel, it says, you'll take a piece of wood and write Yosef. Take another piece of wood and write Yehudah. You'll put the two of them together and they will become one. So too, Klal Yisrael will come back together. And he says, the essence of that is all about Hanukkah. It's the essence of the two come together. You can go take a look at the Bnei Yissachar to see where that is. But he says, when do two pieces of wood come together? When you spin it. And that's why the pasuk says that Yaakov sends Yehudah to Yosef Goshnah. Goshnah are the letters that are written on the dreidel. So, these letters are significant for a very long time. So, came along at some point in the '70s, I guess, and some Israeli had the clever idea of changing it since it means Nes Gadol Hayah Sham, changed the Shin to a Peh and say Nes Gadol Hayah Poh cuz we made it here in Israel. Now, that's ridiculous because the first dreidels in the Hanukkah story took place in Israel and it already said Nes Gadol Hayah Sham. Because the word Sham is very important to Hanukkah. Yeah, Shmona Chashmona'im, Shemen. There's a lot of Sham words there. Uh so, the the Poh is just silly. Just silly. Well, you listen to the whole sheer explain why it it's meant to be Sham and not Poh. But, uh but as far as the rules go, so, um uh when I was in school, so they used to give us a little dreidel and you know, we'd play with it and it was like you get to miss class and you get a free dreidel and you get to play during school. I mean, I it doesn't get much better than that, you know. So, one year I get my dreidel and I said, "Rebbi, it's defective. It has a Peh." He says, "This is a new improved dreidel." I said, "That's ridiculous. I want my old dreidel." He says, "No, no, it makes sense because when it lands on a Shin, what do you do? So, it makes more sense to have a Peh." This is one of the ridiculous things that people say that if you say it quickly enough, you know, it sounds like it makes sense. Like someone was giving a spirited explanation of why we should all celebrate Thanksgiving. You know, because it's a day of giving thanks. And what do they eat? They eat turkey. And what is turkey in Hebrew? Hodu. And which means to give thanks. So, you see, you're You to eat turkey on Thanksgiving? I, okay. Anyway. But, uh, they changed it. Uh, the main reason I would give is because of amaratzus, because most people have no idea what they're doing. I remember during the 1970s when we were out marching for Soviet Jewry to get them free, that they should be able to be let out. And, uh, we would go and have demonstrations. I was in I was in the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County. They would bus us to the Russian consulate in Glen Cove, Long Island. And we would make a demonstration, and I was very in favor of this because we got to miss school, and we get on a bus, and we don't have to have class. I mean, except for getting a dreidel, it's just as good as Hanukkah. And we would chant, "One, two, three, four, open up the iron door. Five, six, seven, eight, let our people emigrate. What do we want? Svoboda!" That's freedom in Russian. I think, I don't know. Um, anyway. So, uh, so the Triple S J, the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, came up with this brilliant idea of adding a fourth matzah to the Seder, the matzah of hope for Soviet Jewry. And even I as a teenager thought to myself, that's got to be one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. You mean there aren't enough references to freedom in the Seder that you have to add another matzah? How long do you think that's going to last? You know? And of course, eventually even anybody who might have been doing that stopped it because it was silly. And, uh, and this is a problem when you create something that is just made up and isn't real. So, uh, at the risk of being politically incorrect, you know, the state of Israel has what they call Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day. Now, we've had that for many years. It's called Tisha B'Av. Because that's when we remember the Holocaust and the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades and every tragedy that the Jewish people gone through. But they decided to make a public day of mourning for the Holocaust during the month of Nissan when you're not allowed to have any public mourning. So you understand it's it's not going to go. And and the reason they chose that day is because that was the day of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising because that fit in with the general Zionist philosophy. Holocaust survivors who came to Israel hid the fact that they were Holocaust survivors because Israelis called them sabon, soap. Like you guys just went like sheep to the slaughter and you didn't fight. Therefore, the only worthwhile people were the ones in the Warsaw Ghetto and like that who rose up and fought. You know, but if you went to your death or like the Belzer Rebbe who kept kosher during the entire Holocaust, he's not a hero. He's a martyr, but he's not a hero. That's why it's called Holocaust Remembrance of Heroes and Martyrs. If you had a gun, you were a hero. If you just, you know, died because you were a Jew, you were you were a martyr, but you weren't a hero. You know, we we call those people heroes. Anyway, um so when Yitzhak Rabin was uh prime minister, I guess it was the early 1990s. And um he had a education minister who was from Meretz. And I remember he made a big announcement where he said, "It's no longer is relevant to just focus on the Holocaust. We shouldn't have one day just to remember the Holocaust. We instead we're going to make Yom HaShoah a day of the suffering of all people. The slavery of the blacks in America, the Armenian genocide, the suffering of all people. Means it didn't take very long for something that everyone thought was going to be tremendously significant to become insignificant. When the Twin Towers went down, I remember reading quotes. Was it a Newsweek or Time interviewed various famous people for their quotes and one of them was the Novominsk Rebbe, the head of the Agudah. And his quote was, "The world will never be the same." Two months later, I was speaking in a girls' high school. I won't mention where. And I said, "What should I speak about?" They said, "Anything except 9/11. The girls are sick of hearing about it." So, the world was changed forever for less than two months. And then it went back to everything else. So, when the Hakhamim make uh something, it's a significance. As Noach Weinberg always said, "We Jews have been accused of everything over the years, being communist, being capitalist, you know, drinking the blood of Christian children, all kinds of things. The only thing no one's ever called us as being stupid." So, when you find a Jewish minag, you have to be very wary. So, if we always had those four letters on the dreidel, to change it, you change Jewish tradition at your peril. And that's it for this week. If you want to find out more about the show, you can go to my website, rabbialovsky.com. You can sponsor an episode. You can sponsor a question and answer. You can sponsor a 5-minute parsha. You can ask a question. You can leave a comment. Uh you can sign up for one of our online shiurim, the daily daf yomi, the Monday Mesillas Yesharim for women, or our tefillah class that we have on Sunday night. And that's it for now. Until next time, I am Rabbi Orlovsky. A lichtiger Chanukah to everybody and for all of Klal Yisrael. And uh this has been the Rabbi Orlovsky show. It's the Rabbi Orlovsky show. Torah and Simcha wherever you go. The Rabbi Orlovsky show. Knowledge and wisdom will help you grow. Lots of fun in every episode. And we don't have to rhyme. No, we don't. It's the Rabbi Orlovsky show. Orlovsky.com Torah anytime, YouTube, and more. It's the Rabbi Orlovsky show. Torah and Simcha wherever you go. It's the Rabbi Orlovsky show. Till next time till we meet again. The Rabbi Orlovsky show. It's the Rabbi Orlovsky show. It's the Rabbi Orlovsky show.