Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Celebrating the Freedom to Serve God

[Music] heard this is some significant dates today until skia had been the 19th of kids late 19th of Kislev a very very important day particularly for her bad but it's called rosh hashanah la casa dos even though it's really only a bad event and this is when the alter rebbe got out of cyrus prison and the reason why they make such a big deal because the truth of the matter is every Subodh Rebbe has been in in prison in fact even would have menachem mendel even the last one in factory barracks all of a check used to tell a story they were students together at the university of berlin and one poram the Rebbe was just a student then got a little sugar and he was giving drew shows in public and the German system is so regimented that you know you needed a license whatever it is so he was actually arrested for disorderly conduct and he was in jail for one night and the roughs olive a chick bailed him out so he told the young Renata Mendel now I know you can be ready because every cop library has to be in jail at least one one day the story's recorded you have stories recorded town first oh great you used to say I prophesied that he would become the Rebbe one day but the reason why you test his labor is so significant is this was in the early years of the Hasidic movement and there was a tremendous opposition from many corners such as the Vilna Gaon and alike and I see them interpreted at least in retrospect that the Rebbe ease imprisonment was really a mock locus in shamayim whether casitas deserved to be spread or whether it should go into oblivion and when the victory when the Rebbe was released from imprint from prison that was seen as a divine imprimatur that the teachings of casitas would spread and in fact that people say there's a market difference in the Rebbe in the altar Ruby's teachings before before his release and after his release that after he's released they became much more profound more Kabbalistic deeper because he saw this as a divine permission to spread the secrets of the Torah which by the way was controversial even among others scenic leaders the alter rebbe was criticized not just by Miss Magnum he was criticized by Chassidim the story goes that under the the arrangement he was supposed to be released into the custody of a goldstein who had been who is about who the cousin of the alter rebbe but instead there was a mixup and he was released into the custody of another goldstein who is a great mr. gates tremendous opponent and for around four hours this Goldstein was telling the alter rebbe that's to see this is stupid and it's worthless and the author ever had to spent four hours in the guy's house until the other Goldstein came to pick him up and the alter rebbe said afterwards that the four hours with goldstein number two were a lot worse than the imprisonment and the in desires of the nars prison so that's your that's your test kiss life again a very significant day in the Chabad calendar Rosh Hashanah casitas for those of you who learn Tania every day this is the beginning or today was the beginning of the Tania again the other thing going be cuts Ellicott says Texas where a person announced that the next Tuesday night because of Hanukkah we're not having our Shearer and someone pointed out that happens to be December 24th and that triggers another discussion of a very very interesting minute that some people have and that is Gaddafi cannot to learn Torah the night of the Christian holiday December 24 and exactly why that came is an interesting question some give deep Kabbalistic idea because that was supposed to be the birthday of yashka therefore there are spirits of impurity and they get fed they get nourished by the brook Gnaeus that we generate and we don't want to feed those evil evil powers now there's a lot that's kind of wrong with that idea number one the actual birthday was certainly not December 24th and doctor under the old Russian calendar was a different day and and the like and therefore the cloud does not fit the birthday historically number two the idea that somehow learning Torah could create negativity in the world is momís contra to everything we believe we believe that Torah creates holiness in the world and even though there are times we don't learn Torah like on the night of of that's not because of any Kabbalistic idea of feeding evil powers that's simply because we're not supposed to rejoice that much and tisha Bob and therefore tourists considered to be simply so as a result among the non Hasidic world this custom is totally not observed and one should generally learn and even a mantra see them now you'll often be told unless this is my mafia tradition it's not something you beat Africa take on now historically there may be a much simpler reason for that minute and that simply was it was extremely dangerous for Jews to be outside in the street Christmas Eve because there were programs and the like so as a result the birthday Midrash and the synagogue's were often simply closed for the night with the intention that you just remain at home now that wasn't saying don't learn at home but keep in mind that because of the poverty in Eastern Europe the average person didn't necessarily have any real swaram at home didn't have a shot like today everyone as a Jaa's so as a result it turned out to be people many people didn't learn because they weren't supposed to go out to the show and they didn't have anything at home but but to make a whole Kabbalistic idea of not learning may in fact been it may have been a mistaken extrapolation from a de facto custom that was based on security this reminisce a little bit of an old Hasidic story that a certain Rebbe had a minute during her cuffs that whenever people reached a certain point of the show they would always bow down low and they kept that manag for generations and generations and generations and no one understood why and the Rebbe said this is my grandfather did and what his grandfather did it turns out that the original show going back 200 years had a low chandelier so in people we're going in a circle they so even though the new building didn't have the chandelier the manag was the minute the custom was the custom so that's sometimes what happens in fact I'd want to aggress too much and this you know one of the most controversial customs Habad has and it's a very very controversial custom although it's it's a very very very specific one and that is they do not sleep in the sukkah during circus now many people don't sleep there but generally speaking the the most religious elements will tend to breed Africa sleep in the Succa this is the halacha of the Gomorrah this is the walk of the show Canaris and yet Habad has a thing that they do not sleep in the sukkah and they'll give you all sorts of explanations it's the mahkum of the shekinah its qodesh kadosh IAM how can you sleep when you sleep you lose higher consciousness how can you sleep in the presence of God and the reasons are fine but the problem is they do contradict and explicit howl often the Gemara my suspicion is that the reason they didn't sleep in the Succa was because in Russia it's you know 30 degrees below zero and your partner from sleeping in the sukkah they then transpose it to a much more temperate climate and they kind of make a religious thing out of it when in fact it was not a religious thing and the proof is that in the alter rebbe show Canara in the Shannara of the valve italia he simply writes of course you have to sleep in the Succa unless it's cold or whatever so how it turned into a thing we've adopted don't sleep in the Succa one one has to wonder whether that was just this you know taking on a historical fact and miss applying it to a different environment okay so that's kind of peripheral incidental things what I want to talk about tonight though is Hanukkah and I want to start off with a little history about the sources of Hanukkah and we know that Hanukkah is something that occurred during what is known as the Hellenistic period as I'll teach us that there are four exiles that the Jewish people are going to undergo until the coming of Messiah this is after we got to where to sell so we're not counting mitzrayim which in a sense is the precursor of all exiles but we have the Babylonian exile where the temple was destroyed and then we have the Persian exile the story of ahave rose and that's when the temple was rebuilt and then the biblical period ends with Persia the Last King that is in Tanakh is Darius the second Darius the second aryama shochet knee is the king under whose rule the second base on mikdash was built and according to hasanul this is not explicit in the biblical narrative Darius the second was in fact the son that a Koosh Koosh had from Esther Homolka so interestingly enough the Persian king who enabled the building and dedication of the second Rick - happened to be a Jew it's kind of like a Jewish Pope no did he identify as a Jew not at all clear the Gemara discusses that perhaps he was not even a righteous Gentile or yet cetera but how logically he was obviously obviously Jewish now the biblical period ends there it ends there with the reign of Darius the second and it ends I think the latest state is the 32nd year of his reign so we had a long reign immediately after the biblical period and this is not int enough we have the conquest of really the entire Middle East by Alexander of Macedonia who is called Alexander the Great and in Fazal he is termed Alexander möchten Macedonia and that inaugurates the Hellenistic period now Alexander is quite an interesting figure his father was Philip of Macedonia but Alexander basically conquered virtually the entire inhabited known world at the time he had a superlative education just to show you that the money can buy you the best teacher his private tutor was none other than Aristotle Philip actually hired Aristotle the most learning non Jew in the world to be Alexander students Andrew became a great warrior as you know he died as a very young man he at age 32 I think and legend has it that he died of heartbreak because he said I have no more world's to conquer more most probably he died because of some plague that he contracted in in Africa and when he died without wife or children many say in fact he was homosexual but he certainly was not married at that of any children there was of course a major succession crisis who is going to take over this huge Empire and the Empire I'm going to be very general and simple here the Empire was divided among four generals who succeeded him for purposes of Jewish history only two of those generals are significant told me PT OLM ey Tao my and Seleucus and the division basically was that Tom I took Egypt and not in the rest of North Africa and Seleucus took Syria Turkey and what's called Asia Minor and if you could picture this in your head you can understand that Erik Israel is right in the middle between what we came up became known as the Tom aook Empire and the Salukis Empire and as a result we're going to find that the history of that period Erica saw was a constant football because the Tom a ik dynasty and the Salukis dynasty were constantly waging war now from our perspective it almost didn't make a difference who was the winner because whoever won was not that good for the Jews but there was a constant state of war those of you that have learned the Book of Daniel now Daniel is we believe is a much earlier book Daniel was written even before they destruct well after I was written apps in the destruction of the first base on Mick Dodge parts of it before parts of it after but there are prophecies there and in Perak you Dolloff in Chapter 11 of Daniel there is a long long narrative in great detail between describing the struggles of the king of the north and the King of the South how they're fighting and once in a while there's this secure that victory our commentaries say very very clear that Daniel is actually giving you a blow-by-blow description of the various decades of war between the Tomek dynasty and the Seleucid dynasty out of Syria exclusive is the king of the north tommye is the king of the south and if you look in a commentary like the Abbar bunnell he matches up literally every single detail in that very obscure lengthy prophecy with the events that happens happens much later now in the timaya empire the major jewish city was none other than Alexandria Alexandria was a huge huge city in which the Jews were very prosperous they were very politically well-connected they were very assimilated could they that it is said that Philo who was perhaps the most learning Jew in that in the Ptolemaic Empire perhaps some have speculated did not even know how to read Hebrew he wrote commentaries on the Torah but his primary source may have been the Septuagint the translation of the Torah into Greek that was made under the rule of one of the Tomek emperors and the lot so be it as it may whether it was Tom Meyer Seleucus or their various successors Alexander himself had initiated a process that became known as hellenization now one has to understand colonization was not anti-semitic per se I think sometimes when we tell over the story we we envision the Greeks are targeting the Jews that really was not what hellenization was about colonization was a political decision Alexander made number one he personally loved Greek culture although himself was not a native of wreath he was Macedonia and he felt he wanted to spread its philosophy its wisdom its literature its science its mathematics its athleticism he wanted to spread it throughout his vast culture and most importantly he thought it would then the political stability of his empire if he could unite all of these different cultures in a more homogenized way so the hellenization of Alexander's Empire which was started by Alexander and then spread by Tony and Seleucus was essentially a voluntary process in which Jews and all of the cultures were exposed to this and many gravitates one has to understand that Hellenism was with sureno quite successful way before Antiochus came on the scene Jews were assimilated somewhere intermarrying many were not keeping the mitzvot and the like you may remember from the gomorian suka that the Gemara describes the great opulence the fantastic wealth of the great base Knesset the great synagogue of Alexandria it says it was so huge and they couldn't even hear the husband when the cousin said a Brooklyn that wasn't because of talking we have that problem sometimes in some of our shows but it was so huge that the shamash had to wave a flag when it was time to answer I mean and the like well one has to understand a little bit that kazow are actually poking fun at the community they're not this they're not describing this with admiration they're basically saying all those people cared about was money they were Jewish ly illiterate that's why the Mishnah discusses all sorts of crazy questions can you write the safer Torah in Greek now you wonder like who would think of writing a safer Tory in Greek like why why are we discussing it the answer is because of some of those communities they needed a safer Torah written in Greek and when hazael are describing the great wealth of Alexandria they're really drawing a comparison between the poverty of Eric Israel which was rich in Torah and mitzvot and righteousness versus these wealthy spoiled assimilated Jews who are full of money and power and don't have anything else one has to understand that in many ways the description of the fantastic wealth of Alexandrian jews was somewhat in the nature of cynical parity rather than kind of an admiration as to what they represented just to give you a difference in perspective you know we all know the story that tall nigh we don't know which town might because they were all of the successors were Tom I Tom I wanted to translate the Torah into Greek and the reason was he created a library like the National Library here or the Library of Congress in which he wanted a copy of every book in the ancient world there were fewer books in those days but he wanted everything and as a result he wanted to translate the Torah so the Gomora tells us that he gathered seven the elders seventy Jewish elders put them in separate rooms and they all came up with the exact translation and this is known as the targum Hashim or the Septuagint the Septuagint and in the bobbly we read that the day that the Septuagint was completed darkness came into the world it was a sad day it was a tragic day now the Gomora doesn't say exactly why was it so tragic but the simple idea is that number one the fact that you've made the Torah accessible to non-jews who are now free to distort it is one problem number two the fact that Jews needed a crutch because they could no longer follow the Torah in Russia now kodesh is also a tragedy and number three all translations are incomplete because they can only capture one nuance they can't capture all the nuances so cuz I'll did not like the targa much even at all and yet Philo of Alexandria happens to record that Alexandria jewelry would make a party on a young turf and the anniversary of the completion of the target machine so what was our regarded as a tragedy was actually a simple a mama among an Alexandrian Jews because of the difference in the nature of the community I remember when the art scroll series first began the very first art scroll book in English was McGillis Esther which goes back I think to 1978 quite quite a long time ago it was interesting with Mayer's la de Witts the colonel of Raqqa was a graphic artist that was his pen he did wedding invitations on Casillas but a close friend of his died and he thought to memorialize the neshamah of his friend he would do a quickie commentary and McGillis Esther a one-shot thing then he then he would go back to invitations and that was the beginning of arts grow which keeps on going and going and going and going ends and going so I remember that people were congratulating arts grow wonderful that you're now you're making Tour classics available in English but somebody pointed out remember that when the Septuagint was completed which was a time of crying and mourning and darkness so on one hand we have to be very very happy that such translations exist and we have to be very very sad that there's a need for such translations to exist so there's kind of a simultaneous happiness and a bit of a disappointment that unfortunately so many of us are not really able to access the Torah in the Lashon Hakodesh so these are different communities so hellenization was making very very significant inroads in Egypt for sure Alexandria but even in Eretz Israel to a lesser degree for example we read about that's to give the statuses and we normally assume statuses were just a sect or a group that did not believe in the oral law that's true but one has to know that they were predominantly wealthy aristocratic and Hellenistic so it all goes together it isn't so much that they had some religious philosophy rejecting the Oral Law essentially there were assimilated Jews who didn't want the burden of rabbinic interpretation of Scripture to limit their actions so the sukham were much more of a political movement than they were as a religious philosophy and in like and there were times when the Helen Iser States to Kim controlled the sanhedrin they actually controlled central institutions and alike so this is all before untii office one has to remember Antiochus you know is a guy who came on the scene and we'll talk about that in a moment but this is a process of hellenization that began all the way back from Alexander and erik estrada was going back and forth between the king of the north and the King of the South but the sahastrara is no matter who the king is the same process is going on so it almost made no difference to us so now very often depending on them yeah absolutely absolutely the whole story that there were times they control the Sun Hedren and eventually they got removed but but it was a long process so now we come to Antiochus basically in the political football of constant war at some point we have a king Antiochus the fourth the fourth and he was a very very successful warrior soldier and he captured air at ul and he gave himself the title Antiochus Epiphanes Antiochus Epiphanes means Antiochus the great so when you read an install history book Antiochus the great that is the Antiochus the great villain the villain of the Hanukkah story Antiochus was despised even by many of his own subjects non-jewish subjects and they changed his name a little bit instead of calling him Antiochus F P fondness which means Antiochus the great this was the title he gave himself they called him behind his back Antiochus F P Magnus they took out the pH and put in an M and Thiago supreme others means Antiochus the crazy Antiochus the insane and antiochos had an agenda his agenda was also hellenization but it was hellenization by coercion he thought that the process of assimilation which actually was working quite success and that's something that's very painful to us he thought needed to be accelerated so as a result he promulgated anti religious legislation that Jews were not allowed to practice certain mitzvahs now one has to understand this was absolutely unique in the ancient world you know we're used to lumping all the bad guys together oh there's pyro and there's the rule cutting that sir one has to understand that Antiochus was very unique on Theophilus was the first King in history who specifically passed laws targeting religious observances pyro in metrium let's say didn't care I mean I don't know people watch filamentous before mountaintop I didn't care if you'd abend if you learn Torah you were a slave you got to do your job what you do in the privacy of your home is your own business even the book hotnet sir who destroyed the base of McNish was not targeting religious observances he wanted people to drive out to him etcetera but he didn't really care if you kept kosher that wasn't his affair the very first thing was that one humming hum and certainly didn't care right home and didn't care if you were firm or not from home and wanted to kill every Jew religious or not and Hanuman is the prototype of the enemies of Israel like Hitler the very first king who specifically targeted the Jewish religion was Antiochus where upon pain of death he prohibited the observance of Shabbos the observance of conscious the sanctification of the new moon the Jewish calendar that determined the holidays and if someone was caught doing this they would be high of misa and the story then becomes familiar most of the Jews had already abandoned the Torah and there were a few more that did so out of fear of persecution but then we have the small band of people under the leadership of matticchio it was towards the very end of his life they stood up they they hit to the caves they withdrew they started a guerrilla warfare against the most powerful army in the world but it's important to emphasize again and again and again that the motivation of what is called the Maccabean revolt was not political independence although it did achieve political independence it was the desire to obtain the freedom to be able to observe the Torah without persecution there is absolutely no question at all that the revolt against Antiochus was a religious revolt this by the way let me let me point out the contrast with the revolt of the Jews against Rome that's culminated in the Corbyn by a Shanee in the year 70 keep in mind that our sages were against the Jewish revolt against Rome reveal containment czaka our sages took the position that okay we're under Roman rule Rome is persecuting us but Rome at that time was letting Jews keep the Torah the motivation for the revolt against Rome was in fact a political and economic one and the sages took the position that let's live under these difficult conditions because at least we can keep the Torah and we have the base on McNish and if long destroyed the base I'll make this that was a result of this revolt which the harkaman did not approve of at all and all of the stories we hear again here in the game are about Rome made all these decrees that if you learn Torah you know you're gonna die in the death of Rabbi Akiva keep in mind that was asked after the Bar Kokhba revolt that was more than 50 years later meaning if you were to transpose yourself to Eretz Israel right before the Corbin of the first temple you know Rome was a very very I'm sorry the Second Temple Rome was a cruel ruler I mean there were taxes that were very heavy and many Jews were reduced to poverty but you had religious freedom realm didn't make any particular Rome was not into the same homogenize ation as Greek culture Rome said do what you want you know we I don't really care if you're learning Torah it made no difference to us Rome was so religiously hypothetic they just didn't care about any of those things so one has to understand that the Maccabean revolt was a totally different type of war than was the revolt against Rome the Maccabee in revolt was motivated for religious reasons so what eventually happened was in fact by the way the The Maccabees again just to clarify this there are two terms we use for the army we call them Maccabi em the Maccabees and we call them cosmonium so there is a technical difference between them Hashem oh not him again the word is not the origin of the word is not so clear but many say freshman name is the name of mati ciose family and they were given that family name because their origin was a town in Eric Israel called Josh Mona so cosmonium means the family that emanated from Josh Mona and that is only a designation for the family of Matisyahu including the Kings who later ruled in the Hasmonean the cosmonium dynasty Maccabean on the other hands was the name of their entire army the army was the army of the Motta beam and the etymology of Maccabee you know there are two famous it was not a kabocha column there are two standard origins of Maccabee some say it's an abbreviation on their banner Meachem Oh Carla mash em who is like you among the gods Hashem and they went into battle with the Maccabee better and others connected to McKevitt which is hammer that they were able to smite the enemy like a hammer now there is a difference in spelling because if it's mica mocha by ulama Shem the second letter will be a huff just like the coop article name spells it that way that's how we spell it but if on the other hand its McKevitt McKevitt is a cook so you might wonder how could them a foursome debate if MacCabe is with a cuff or a cuff let's just look in the book of macabees and see how the word is spelled the answer is we don't have a Hebrew original book of macabees we only have a Greek original book of Maccabees and in Greek you can't really tell what the Hebrew consonants would be so as a result the commentaries are in disagreement what the origin of Maccabees are now the Hanukkah story takes place in really a relatively small window we have on Theo curses persecutions we have the Maccabee revolt led by the five brothers sons of Montezuma Theo died very was very old and he died at the very very beginning of the conflict at a certain point the Greek armies meaning the Syrian Greeks gained control of the base on McNish and when they gained control of the base on mikdash they contaminated it they built houses of prostitution they sacrificed pigs to avodah Zarah they set up idols they didn't destroy the McNish but maybe something gets even worse they contaminated they desecrated it they were Mahalalel shame shamayim and you know the day that they gained control of the McNish was the 25th of Kislev in the year 188 BCE now there was the day that became Chronicle later you'll see in a moment was the day of the entry of the Greeks into the base of mikdash and their contamination of the basin McNish three years of fighting and on the 25th of Kislev exactly three years motley yet Yehuda Maccabee led the army of the Jews and they regained custody and chelita over the mikdash and then we have the Hanukkah then we have the Hanukkah story three years me Ethel yet the temple was liberated purified and redeemed on the very day that it had been desecrated and captured three years three years earlier by the way the the military story of the Maccabees if you if you like military history most of us are not that interesting is very very instructive because if those of you that remember the United States involvement in Vietnam well know that essentially no matter what the u.s. says they kind of lost in Vietnam and it's kind of Apella how do you have the most powerful army in the world losing to these these peasants and these farmers who had no real training at all and the answer is that in guerrilla warfare even small groups of people who know the terrain and they can hide out in the caves can defeat huge armies which simply don't have the skill to maneuver in these small isolated areas and the historical precedent to that was the Maccabees defeating the Greek army so I am told that during the Vietnam years and afterwards the book of the Maccabees was a mandatory reading assignments in West Point's this kind of trained American soldiers how to understands guerrilla warfare tactics because the book of the Maccabees goes to go to the military history very very extensively so now what I want to show you is this what are the historical sources to the story of Chanukah so the oldest historical source we have is a book that is called safer Hamato BIM and they're actually four of them there's Maccabean Maalouf naka bimbettes Malcolm Gitmo Martin rim valid but Kimmel and Dollard are not historical given dollar more philosophical so really its maka boom Alif maka bimbettes are the sources of the story of Chanukah they were probably written originally in Greek because that's the earliest version we have although some do say there may have been an earlier Hebrew Hebrew original when were they written they were written we don't know exactly but they were written fairly soon after the occurrences of Hanukkah which occurred 185 BCE was the liberation of the temple let me remind you I think I mentioned it last week this was not the end of the war against Antiochus the war against Antiochus and then his successors lasted another 25 years so Hanukkah is not the end of a military conflict Hanukkah is towards the beginning of the military conflict but it's so significant because we liberated the base on McNish that actually has a very very deep spiritual significance and I'm going to get into now the book of Maccabees does continue the war so it was probably with no earlier than 30 or 40 years after the Hanukkah story after the wars were completed who wrote it we don't really know anonymous authorship but it is considered to be it's not part of our Tanakh it is not a sacred book but it is considered to be a reliable source of history so that even the reshow name uses in various translations such as Raja Rambam Toa Rambam etc they did draw the book of the Maccabees as a source of history so here what's very interesting is the following if we ask ourselves why was a holiday of Hanukkah instituted so all of us are familiar with the answer because they found a jar of oil that was not contaminated and there was only enough to burn for one day and it burned for eight days and therefore hanukkah's eight days that is in the gomorrah and i'll talk about where we get that from but that is not what the book of macabees says in Maccabees one it simply says the following when we consecrated the temple when we rededicated the temple we celebrated a dedication ceremony of eight days just as when Moshe Rabbeinu dedicated the Michigan there were seven days of consecration followed by the eighth day which was the final day of celebration so it's very very clear there's not even a mention of funding this miraculous oil it's very clear that Hanukkah that's the name Konica means that kanika dedication Hanukah was an eight day celebration for the liberation and dedication of the base hamikdash and redeeming the temple from the foreign hands to which it had fallen and of course that's symbolic generally of the ability to serve Hashem without a foreign power trying to stop you from doing so okay so and this by the way answers well I'll go back to that moment okay that's what Maccabees one said Kanu cots high bias and that makes sense that's the name a new table is the dedication of the temple and the eight days is not connected to a miracle of the oil in the eight days is because Moshe rebellion is coming gotta buy it was eight days Maccabees to which largely goes over the same history singeing Maccabees one Maccabees to are describing the same events but they do have an interestingly different perspective on events it's this is very very fascinating Maccabees one emphasizes the military prowess of the Maccabees their military strategies their successes Maccabees to emphasizes a different type of hair the heroism of martyrs who gave their life al-qaeda sham so for example the famous story of picanha and her seven children who died before they would worship avodah Zarah so it's interesting both both the Kurds but Maccabees one emphasizes the heroism of the heiau and Maccabees two emphasizes the heroism of those who died rather than violate the Torah this is so fascinating because there's a there are contemporary controversies even today about what is the most suitable way of memorializing the Shoah everything in Israel is a controversy there's nothing in Eretz Israel that does not turn into a my focus and y'all not show up at least in the early years of the state for sure was a major major source of some times acrimonious bitter controversy you all must show of course is observed in Neeson that itself is a hell of a problem you're not supposed to have sad days and these are so the Robin Hood gets kicked in both directions you're not supposed to have your matsumoto rings Veera because you have to be sad and you're not supposed to have you know much go out during Neeson right so you have to reverse it so we should have no mashaallah a year and y'all might smirked Anissa maybe that would work out I mean it wouldn't be the right dates but why was yo Michonne chosen it's a date in Nissan because that is the anniversary of the fall of the Warsaw Ghetto and it commemorates two heroines I suppose officially its official name is Yom Hashoah have a hog of Olga you have to understand that in 1948 which was a scant three years after the end of the war and the Holocaust there were many many Jews who again I hate to even say it this way who were a bit ashamed of the six million Jews who died in the slaughter they went like sheep they represent the gullets mentality they represent the old-fashioned Jew that is victimized gets pushed around and that's not the type of Jew we want to honor we want to honor the heroes those who fight those who don't allow you to push them around so the question is if that is your orientation how do you honor victims of the Shoah and at the same time put up as your model that of heroic resistance well the answer is you choose the one outstanding event where Jews took an active role in armed resistance against the Nazis and that of course is the Warsaw Ghetto now the people of the wars together were were were absolutely heroic and they're deserving of commemoration but there were people who felt deeply hurts because they saw that by glorifying the Warsaw Ghetto to some degree to the exclusion of those who did not fight there was a subtle message that was being communicated that the people who were passive you know are not so deserving of our respect so obviously I mean the point is that I just want to point out that Maccabees 1 and Maccabees 2 reflects the exact same tension that we had in the caveat of youma show up in which Maccabees 1 wanted to emphasize the guevara and Maccabees 2 wanted to emphasize the martyrdom now obviously both are true I mean this is not an either/or choice but the question is which is the thing that you want to talk about more ok but going back to the reason for Chanukah Maccabees one says the reason of Hanukkah is Chanukah bias Maccabees 2 gives a reason that frankly may even sound a little bizarre and that is since the oven M had possession and control of the base on McDuff for 3 years obviously the Kadeem in terms of their carbon out were not observed through that entire period of time so Claudia Israel wanted to have a make up ceremony for the last cog that they missed the last hog that they missed was Sukkot some cuts is what Sukkot itself is seven days but immediately after so God is meaning at Sarat so they made an eight-day festival of Hanukkah as a makeup for Sukkot actually they talked that in Maccabees - it says people took lulav and etrog for the eight days of Hanukkah and again Maccabees - does not mention any miracle of the oil nor does it mention that they look they look Hanukkah the observe chronica was they took a little bit extra now how luckily that behavior makes no sense at all because you cannot make up Sukkot there is a limited way you can make a pestle even then you know make up SF totally but you can if your tummy you can bring the carbon pesos a month later expressive Shaney but Sukkot you can't make up through college by six weeks later taking a Louisville Metro candlelight and because of this cause I'll make no reference in other words this aspect of connecting Hanukkah dis to cut is extinct meaning Casals simply do not refer to it but Linnaeus Dottie I would like to suggest that there's one ramus in rabbinic literature to this Maccabees to which means even though because I'll dismissed it ha luckily it survived in one way all of you learned over the years the famous mark locust base Shama in Beit el Oh what is the order in which you light the Chanukah candles according to beit el el which of course what we do is you go up in number you start with one and then you go up two three four ascending number according to beit shean my i'm i actually says strangely enough nobody follows I'm right but I'm I actually says you start with eight and you go down and one of the reasons the Gemara gives is why this Michonne may say you go down because he compares the Hanukkah candles to the bowls to the pot him that are brought on Sukkot and Sukkot we bring 70 bowls can negate the nations of the world and we bring them in descending order 1312 sobayed Shammai says just like the Purim of Sukkot are descending then they wrote of Hanukkah are descending I will discuss next week what's the spiritual message of that is or not next week but the way they're two weeks and all the commentaries go crazy with what's the connection between the Bulls of Sukkot and the neighbors of Konica there's no connection and they develop thematic connections but I would like to suggest that maybe just maybe this is a historical connection to Maccabees number two in which the origin of Chanukah was connected as a makeup for the festival of Sukkot and therefore the had locket on a wrote mirrored the pareja tonic as if to say we couldn't bring the parea flag of Sukkot when it's not to code but we lit the candles to correspond to the pareja be it as it may what is so unusual here is that whether it's Maccabees one a new kitab ayats or Maccabees to make up for Sukkot there is no mention at all of the passion of the miracle of the oil right doesn't mention that at all and let me point out that in the alchemy same prayer that we recite in benching and in shmouna Ezra there is also no mention of the miracle of the oil he talks about the struggle against the oven which was a spiritual struggle because they wanted to take away the Torah from us and Hashem allowed the pure to be victorious over the impure and the few over the many and those who keep the Torah over the regime and that tsadikim over the rich I am and then we liberated the temple but there is no mention of a miraculous burning of the oil it does say it says simply his LICO they wrote the cutthroat cachaca they lit candles in the courtyard of the temple now that's not miracle that basically says among other things they did the menorah again it doesn't say there was a miracle so it it's pointed out that at least in three very important sources there is no mention of the parish Eman the package Eman is not mentioned in Maccabees one it is not mentioned in Maccabees - and it is not mentioned in the Allen Easton prayer it is mentioned in moussaka Shabbos which quotes a bracer from a safer that is called McGillis Thomas now McGillis Thomas is a very early safer it is earlier than the Mishnah it is a list of the days that Jews are not allowed to fast because their festive and it gives the Hanukkah story and it mentions that a jar of oil was found and it was only able to burn for a day and miraculously it burned for eight days and the hanukkah's eight days now Magilla time it was written before the Mishnah but the Megillah Thomas was written approximately thirty of the Common Era meaning forty years before the destruction of the temple so figure this out the Hanukkah story is 185 BCE Magilla tonight is thirty Common Era in other words Magilla Tom it is more than two hundred years after the Hanukkah story so at least in terms of a written record the first reference to the package Eman is around 200 years after the Hanukkah story and the polish Eman is not mentioned in Maccabees 1 Maccabees 2 now I am NOT going you might be suspicious where I'm going with this I am NOT going in the standard academic mahalo which which we believe is clearly the standard academic model maybe I shouldn't say it in the field you stand on camera now he says Papa Sherman was a made-up story didn't happen therefore that's why there's no record of it that's why it's not mentioned until later because it was made up hots for Shulman that's not what I believe and that's not what I'm saying we believe there certainly was a miracle of the package Emmett but let me share with you the thought of the morale the morale says this on his own whether the rile doesn't even say this in reference to the book of the Maccabees humanity may not have seen the book of the Maccabees but the morale on his own says it's a dove or push it to him that's a holiday of Hanukkah was enacted not because of the miracle of the oil but because of dedication of the baser mikdash and the defeat of the Yvon him as the ala Nissim says and as Maccabees one and the morels argument is the following because we don't make young M Tove him over miracles unless they pertain to the survival of the Jewish people or the liberation of the mikdash something that applies to our ability to serve Hashem so to simply say Oh a miracle happened and the candles burned for eight days okay a miracle happens but we don't make youngnam toven just because a miracle happened we make youngnam program when we're liberated from our enemies we make youngnam tougher when we can serve Hashem so the morale on his own says on his own actually writes the holiday of Hanukkah is a celebration over the ability to serve God by the liberation and purification the Beit HaMikdash now if that's the case the Morrell says so why was there a miracle of oil like that's not part of the holiday and yet we commemorate it by lighting they wrote so here's what the morale says that God did a supernatural miracle to remind us that our military success was not a result of our own arrogance and pride now the tower repeatedly warns us that when we will be successful against enemies that are very powerful we will attribute our success to us that is called Kofi vo T mu D my power achieve my victory and the Torah warns over and over and over again not to be arrogant not to be prideful not to attribute to your successes to your abilities it all comes from God so the morale says the miracle of the megaliths was the perspective that made us realize that the nice alone of the mill Hama comes from God in a supernatural way beyond our own abilities so you see what the morale is saying and this I think is the thinking of the book of the Maccabees we didn't make the object because of the miracle of the candles we made the young canoe kotsaba yet again the reference to circus that's ignored indeed that the morale doesn't even pick up on but let's look at Maccabees one man that could be still Maccabees - is an anomaly but Maccabees 100's are biased liberation of the base of Nick - The Ahwahnee 'some says robe ornithology of a sofa right your children came to the temple and they purified it but we needed the miracle of the narrows so we understand that just as the miracle of the neighbors was a supernatural intervention of the divine we must regard our military victory in the same way so it's a necessary part of the Chanukah observance but it's not the reason for the field of the HUD now with this this actually provides a beautiful answer to the most famous question of Chanukah the most famous question of Hanukkah is regulative Kairos question the base Joseph's question and that is if there was enough oil for one day and the miracle was that it burned for seven days so the miracle is seven days why do we celebrate Hanukkah eight days in order to be a seven-day holiday starting from tough-love in in his life right now there are at least 500 answers to this question because I have a safer that is 500 answers to discuss now of course I think the author cheated a little bit because when you start looking at the answers you see that some of them are very very similar so answer 351 is similar to 469 so you know the truth of matter is if for some reason a white yeah he wanted I'm trying to remember why did he 1 500 naira become a tree is 250 so he had some kuchma you wanted double ner so if you're looking for a number you start taking answers that are very similar and making them different but there are plenty of answers but the morale himself says if you understand the structure here you have a very different answer the eight days of Hanukkah are not because of the eight days that the oil burns the eight days of Hanukkah are because those were the eight days of the dedication of the base on McDuff just as motion of being about eight days the navigation of the Rings so the fact that the miracle of the oil is seven days is not relevant because that's not why sonica is eight days anyway it's a brilliant answer accordingly understanding the eight days of Kronik is not smoke Usha to the neighborhoods and then they wrote are simply giving us a perspective so based on that idea me just finish them quickly based on that idea the significance of the narrow is to negate the coach Evo Samadhi the idea of arrogance which brings in our egotism you know I don't want to get into delicate territory but some people have posited that you know after the Six Day War which was a truly miraculous victory many many people did shave a lot of a lot of people were inspired to see the hand of God but there were others who basically said this proves where the no nobody can beat us where the most powerful soldiers in the world and we're invulnerable and then a few years later we had the very very sad Yom Kippur War in which there were many many casualties and unfortunately Israel did not do very well and obviously I'm not a nothing and I'm not expressing my opinion but I'm just saying that there were people who said that Hashem was kind of sending a message that when you attribute your success to yourself you set yourself up for great great failure later and the Yom Kippur War was a very humbling in a very tragic way a very humbling experience for the for the Jewish states and therefore we need the neighborhoods to negate the arrogance of cofee fioat Samuel D but I would like to add that I think there may be another message as well and here it's extremely important to remember as I said before that the miracle of Hanukkah was not the end of a struggle it was the beginning of or not the beginning was towards the beginning of a struggle that was named shock for more than 25 years now think about this if you're a Maccabee and you're confronting the most powerful army in the world and you're not trained you just have a few people and your own Jewish people think you're fanatic and crazy fewer than 10% of the Jews we're keeping the Torah keeping the mitzvot supported the Maccabees most looked at them as fanatics you would be prone to feel what's the point of going on I'm so small I'm so puny I'm so ineffectual so what is the message of the may heart look at this oil this oil can only last for one day it's insignificant but you put it in you do what you can and then God blesses your efforts beyond what you thought was possible to do what message is that giving the Maccabees themselves keep on going don't give up you think you're ineffectual you think you can't accomplish anything that oil couldn't accomplish what it did either but it did it in a way it's much more powerful to get this message at the beginning of your struggle than to get it at the end because that's the message of hope that's the message of not giving up and that gave the Maccabee of the encouragement to keep on going now there is a sad end to the story ultimately the when the meconium did establish a Jewish state has Moni in States what eventually happened was they became the very enemy that they were trying to defeat they became Hellenistic and the like is very similar to George Orwell's Animal Farm in which the animals become oppressive and that's the parody of the Russian Revolution where Stalin and Lenin were certainly no more benign than desired the worst Tsar was and the like so there is a whole secondary story of the Cushman arm which we're not I'm not going to get into now but at least initially those lights are such a beacon of hope that a Jew doesn't give up and that has a modern application because we live in a world that is filled with darkness on many levels ignorance hate violence just was it last week the Jersey City Jews got killed policeman got killed trying to to apprehend the person and a world of violence hate anti-semitism a world of ignorance assimilation intermarriage the private darkness of depression despair loneliness and it's our job to bring light into the world but we think our light is so ineffectual our light is so weak and the story of Hanukkah is you light the light that you can and then a sham takes over and therefore that's the great message of hope that Hanukkah represents then they thought gave hope to the Maccabees to continue against odds that were unimaginable and they continue to give hope to us to continue to try to bring light into the great great darkness that envelops the world so I wish you all a very happy and joyous and lift the gift Attica Attica full of light and simcha and may the famine could be a harbinger of our future Redemption [Music]