Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: History of Chanuka - Assimilation and Rectification

[Music] okay hi everybody it's uh good to see you and thank you for coming uh this year tonight uh so dedicated for the aliyah the shama of binyamin yasrov and halevi the young man that we darvened for for over a year sevilla bastavid and ruvain ben yosef and here the specific sponsor is a friend of mine from new york josef kalimi and he also dedicated the honor of the rav but okay whether deserving or not but we appreciate all of the socas torah of the people that have dedicated the shiorim and they are divreitorubi nish matam in addition reforeshleima hashem there's no specific column that are mentioned but there's always we pray and we dive and then we learn for all of those who are ill whether it's from corona or not corona whether it's inoculated or uninoculated and for any other holla that all of the torah should be a reforeshalema for all holy israel and also a shamira for those who are still bor hashem in a healthy state i thought given the fact that we are a few days before hanukkah although we will also have mirth hashem as you just heard i'll talk a little bit about chanukah tonight uh the truth of the matter is i have a lot of stuff on hanukkah i could probably give at least five classes on hanukkah so i have to talk fast or whatever it is so i certainly uh do at least need at least two shiorims i'm going to speak tonight that mr shem going to speak uh next week maybe even after khan i can talk about hanukkah uh it's interesting that you know in the united states particularly among the less religious communities the conservative or reform there's actually a phenomenon that's known as the december dilemma because hanukkah happens to coincide with a major christian holiday and therefore there are two different cheetos in the reform movements how to deal with that some cheetahs are you have to build up hanukkah to be as important as the christian holiday so our children shouldn't feel deprived so you make hanukkah a real real real big deal because that way our children do not feel they're being cheated there's another shita that says oh wait a minute hanukkah is not a yamcha of course the reformed movement doesn't keep the real young and tough either but chanukah is not a yamcha if it's not ashram it is a distortion of the torah to build up hanukkah or even rabbinic tradition to build up hanukkah to be such a major holiday so there's actually a counter-reaction to diminish the importance of hanukkah and badafka make it not a big deal because after all we don't want to distort the priorities within the halaq system now obviously this is because people are debating how do you deal with the christian holiday you know if you're a religious jew you don't really think about that let the christians have their holidays and we have our holidays and uh you know the twain don't have to meet in that way but the truth of the matter is hanukkah is an enormously important holiday enormously beautiful holiday a very meaningful holiday the concept of light vanquishing darkness the concept that even when the assimilation pressures are enormous we can stand up for what is right and hashem will give us yeshua it's a very very meaningful message and therefore it's true that technically it's not a yamcha technically there is no prohibition of work or whatever it would be but the meaning of chanukah is very very relevant you know the maharao marathon safer very beautiful safer and chanukah it's called near mitzvah it's not a big book and i believe there are even some translations of it it would be around uh 30 35 pages in hebrew again again like everything that morale writes it's not a simple book but it's a book that one could look at and try to understand different things and the main thing that the book talks about is the four exiles that according to rabbinic tradition based on safer daniel and some other passages in tanach the jewish people are going to undergo four exiles until the coming of mashiach we have the exile of babylonia that destroyed the basa mikdash and then babylonia was conquered by the persian empire and that's the story of purim and then persia was eventually conquered by alexander of macedonia alexander the great and that created the greek period and that included the chanukah story and then eventually the hasmonean dynasty which was a jewish kingdom but nevertheless khazal actually counts it as part of the greek because they themselves became hellenists we'll talk about the irony of that and then finally there is the roman exile which ghazal said would be the last exile until the coming of the mashiach and technically we are actually in the roman exile now even though the romans are long gone and the romans destroyed the base amicus in the year 70. why are we still in the gulles of of asav because rome is said to be connected to asa simply because asa or rome may be gone but the corban and the goddess that they perpetuated are still here so we're still in the goalless of ending we've spoken a number of times i'm not going to talk about it tonight that according to pirkei republizer there's actually a fifth golos that'll be the final final galas before mashiach and that is the goddess of ishmael which are the arab nations and indeed the morale himself explains that the fourth gulas is the goddess of asaf but yeshmael will kind of augment asap and it'll actually refer to the two different trials that the jewish people face before the coming of mashiach asav represents western civilization right that's the successor of rome rome is essentially the foundation of western civilization which they got from greece but but rome is the one that packaged it and sent it throughout the world so essentially we get hit on both sides we get hit with the hedonism and the decadence and the immorality of western civilization acknowledging the progress that it's made and then we get hit with the religious fanaticism of islamic fundamentalism which is from ishmael so essentially it's asav and yeshua el that are hitting us at the same time and that will be the final gullus but the morale is mazbear putting aside the ishmael for a moment that each of the four goliyots represents a distinct type of danger the goalless of babel was servitude enslavement and persecution what did the babylonians do they destroyed nazar destroyed the temple and conquered and enslaved the jewish people right so golos bhavel is persecution and enslavement we then come to persia persia is genocide hashem it was unsuccessful genocide but persia was haman who wanted to obliterate us of course let me remind you that modern-day persia is iran and iran remarkably has a very similar agenda so paras represents the goddess of potential obliteration and genocide yavan represents a very different type of nissan antiochos in some crazy way was not anti-semitic antiochus was not going to discriminate against jews jews were 100 welcome to full economic and social rights as long as they gave up the distinctiveness of their torah and of their mitzvahs antiochus was very different than haman harmon is like hitler hitler didn't care if you're religious or non-religious in fact hitler actually didn't care if you were halal jewish and not allah jewish because based on his definition of a jew with one-eighth blood many people who were rounded up in concentration camps who weren't even halal jewish but they were jewish enough for hitler's purposes haman was kind of the same way haman didn't care if you're religious or non-religious harman wanted to kill you because you're jewish antiochus is a very different type of guy antiochus was fighting the jewish religion antiochus was fighting torah antiochus was therefore calling for assimilation and in point of fact if you assimilated everything would be fine you wouldn't be persecuted you wouldn't be harmed right so it's very important to remember that although hanukkah does commemorate a war so obviously once you're fighting a war there's physical dangers but the danger of hanukkah was not a physical danger the danger of hanukkah was a spiritual danger and therefore the gulles of yavan yavan greece represents the goddess of assimilation assimilation to a culture to a philosophy to an ethos whether it's greek philosophy greek literature greek poetry greek athleticism the glorification of the body and the gullis of yavan is especially pernicious and the reason why it's pernicious is that not everything is evil in the goddess of yama the goddess of yavan or yavan has a lot of wisdom a lot of insight cause i'll say in the madrish echa that if one says there is wisdom among the game tamin you believe them so with yavan it's not an all or nothing you know that's what they say they say that people who are addicted to different things so sometimes you could be addicted to food so a food addiction is the hardest addiction to break because it's the one addiction that you can't go cold turkey forgive the pun on that everything else you know give up cigarettes give up drugs give up alcohol so you go well you give it up no that's very hard of course it's very hard but at least you're not you can create a life where you're not connected to it with something like food you've got to be connected to it so therefore the addiction is going to be very very hard so when you're connected to something it's hard to know when are you crossing the line and therefore yavan is a dangerous type of gulas because yavan has wisdom and insight that we can incorporate in our abode of hashem but we also have to know where to draw the line that's what refers says you know if you remember noah at the time of the after the flood so when noah got drunk and noah was naked so his son kham called his brothers to look at their father's nakedness and shame and yephes walked backwards with a blanket to cover their father's nakedness and when noah was awake and he realized what was going on he gave yephes a special bracha and he said yaft ali kim liefest it's a pun may god give beauty tfs yaffe yaf de la kim lee fest the yishkon be olay shame and he should dwell in the tense of shame now in english that sounds very bad the tense of shame but shame was no accent dwelling in the tense of shem i should say shem is a bracha rav shimshin of al hirsch offers a very beautiful explanation of what's going on and this is i think shito shall mikra yfs is the ancestor of yavan yavan is a child i don't remember who's a child or a grandchild of yephis shame is of course the ancestor of avraham shame and yes were given two different missions in the world shame was given the mission of teaching the world kedusha teaching the world about hashem teaching the world what you would call ethical monotheism the idea of believing in akadeshwar yes was given the blessing of beauty in all of its different forms physical beauty such as arts and sculpture and literature and poetry and music intellectual beauty philosophy and mathematics so noah is saying the human race is given two missions in this world there is the mission of spreading hashem and there is the mission of generating beauty what noah is saying is i'm giving the bracha of beauty to yephs which was taken over by yavan but only if the fs dwell dwells in the tent of shem in other words yepis's beauty is beautiful when it is subordinated to the monotheism and the belief in god of shem so the israel hashem according to refersh is defining when is yephs's beauty beautiful indeed it's beautiful when it dwells in the tents of shem when it separates itself from a moon and hashem and becomes an autonomous separate force then it can become evil and destructive now it is also true that making a statement of the ishq and bial hashem says it's legitimate to live within the tents of sham meaning we as the descendants of shem through avraham can bring this beauty into our houses and that's what khazal means when they say if someone tells you there is wisdom among the nations but you see that creates the challenge of golos yoven because i'm connected to it i draw from it but i have to know how to integrate it with my surface of hashem and not allow myself to be drawn away now so again this is really the middle of a morale start with some elaborations bavel is the goddess of persecution and enslavement paras is the goddess of genocide and murder yavan is the goddess of assimilation where it's the ideas that entice us because remember antiochus the truth of matter is although antiochus tried to give death penalties for people but the truth of the matter is most of the jewish people adopted his agenda without the coercion there were some estimates this is hard to believe that 90 of the jews were hella nice they rejected the torah that the macabre were only and their followers were only 10 of the jewish nation you know people sometimes say there was never a time in jewish history where jews were so assimilated as they are today with the inter-marriage rate in the u.s being 70 percent but the truth of the matter is i don't know if that's true it could very well be at the hanukkah story you even have a higher percentage of assimilation right so now you understand above el persecution enslavement paras genocide yavan assimilation so what is edom so what is the gulles of rome the gulles of rome is this really mongolis hasn't ended so the morale says the gullus of rome is a composite of all of the other three godlesses at the same time and that is the following idea there is the bavel of rome there is the paras of ram there is the oven of meaning to say in the very long galas of rome there are going to be times and places where the jewish people are being persecuted and that's called the bavel of adam there are times in which the very lives of the jewish people are going to be threatened such as the holocaust that is the paras of edding and then there are going to be times where physically we are secure physically our lives are not being threatened and we're not being enslaved but we face the nisayan of assimilation and that is predominantly the situation of jews in western countries so there are jews in the world who are still being physically persecuted but for the most part the u.s et cetera again i understand that ishmael complicates things because they introduce the element of physical danger as well in fact the morale says amazingly that yeshua will connect to paris to engage in genocidal activities i mean i mean wrote this in the 1500s you talk about arabs joining with iran iran is an isla islamic country iran is not an arab country right right so it's really porous and you smile writes about it so you see therefore that the relevance of chanukah which is the liberation from the goddess of yavan is precisely the situation that we face the nissan of jews in the world today by and large is not physical survival the nissan of jews in the world today is facing assimilation whether it be into marriage whether it be leaving the torah and by the way i want to point out that even those of us who keep the torah and we hope we hope we keep the mitzvot you know we're assimilated too to a greater or lesser degree i think i quoted last week ref hersh's statements about 19th century orthodox jewelry and it applies even more so to us today he said we're the opposite of the muranos of spain the mirandas of spain were on the outside but inside they were jews we barak hashem are able to be jews on the outside but what's our insights this is a very very serious question even if a person is keeping the mitzvos hashem that's a wonderful wonderful thing in a world where so few jews keep them the commandments it's a wonderful thing if any jew keeps the mitzvos in fact i tell people people come to me sometimes and they say oh my son is not religious and he's marrying a non-religious girl and you know how can i go to the wedding i say if he's marrying a jewish woman you go to the wedding and you dance because in these days for a jew to marry a jew if they're not religious is nothing short of a miracle it is a miracle for which you have to give thanks to al-qaeda whether they keep or not again obviously if they don't keep a luck it's very sad and we try to do what we do but when there's a jewish home at least there's a hope okay so assimilation is so so so powerful and even those of us who are religious we fall prey to assimilation in terms of what is our value system what is important in our lives what gives us passion what gives us geshmaq i think i mentioned to you i don't want to repeat the whole story that uh sometimes you know i remember giving it to fiomi very late at night or relatively late at night and people were falling asleep and in the middle of the sheer somebody came in and announced a super bowl score so all of a sudden i've seen if people ask me how do i know this resurrection of the dead how do i know there's amazing it says i know because i saw it i know there's a mason because that's sheer night there was theresa mesa oh good now as i say i think i said it last week okay i don't want i don't want to put anyone down uh the super bowl is not my atari but there are other things that might excite me politics or something like that i might have the same reaction in some things so all of that is also assimilation assimilation is not only i stopped keeping the torah even if i keep the torah i do so without passion i do so without kishmake so therefore if we were to characterize what stage of galos are we facing in our day and age so you put a label on it it is the yavan of adam we are in the goddess of asaf but our primary nissayon is the yavan of edom now let me go back to even a more basic question so again it's very important it's an obvious point but it's important to keep this in perspective hanukkah is not a celebration of a military victory hanukkah is a celebration of the triumph of those who believed in torah against all of the forces that tried to assimilate the jewish people and take them away from the torah look in the al hanis in prayer that we recite in the shimon ashrae la shkiham tora sakha the ivanim's goal was to make us forget the torah and hashem gave us the strength and the courage to fight against those enemies and establish the primacy of torah it's very very important it is true that the hashmonoyam established an independent jewish state that is 100 ms that they did establish political autonomy but the celebration of the victory was because of the spiritual primacy of torah that was reestablished now because of this hanukkah has a very ironic twist in a way it's a very tragic twist and that is the hashmanayam established a jewish state right they liberated themselves from the rule of antiochus whereas antiochus was was kind of dead by the time they won because again the hanukkah miracle of the candles occurred in the beginning of a war but the war continued for a number of years but eventually what happened was that hashmanayam established a jewish state they liberated themselves from the ivanim and they created a malchus they created a monarchy that lasted for around 150 years until the romans came in and these are this is the hasmonean state you might remember a book by george orwell uh called animal farm now animal farm is actually a parody of the russian revolution right because the russian revolution wanted to overthrow the czar create liberty create freedom create equality and of course what happened with the russian revolution was that lenin and certainly stalin were really not much of an improvement over the tsar and what happens in revolutions is that the revolutionaries often become the very enemy they try to destroy this of course happened in the french revolution rove's pierre was was no improvement over louis the 14th or 15th whichever one whichever one it was pol pot who murdered millions and millions and millions of people in cambodia certainly was not a beacon of liberty and freedom for the oppressed and the conceit the imagery in in orwell's little novel was that the animals rebelled against the oppressive owners and eventually some of the animals became domineering and oppressive tragically this is exactly what happened in the hasmonean monarchy an amazing amazing thing the hashmonaem rebelled against yavan against hellenism against assimilation against movements that tried to take people away from torah and remember most of the jewish people thought that khashoggi were crazy they were not supported by their people they were treated as fanatics etc so the whole purpose of the hanukkah war which lasted for more than 20 years was to overthrow that assimilation and to liberate torah jews from hellenism and the initial hasmoneans were righteous the maccabees who fought in that war they were righteous people but what happened to their descendants their descendants became the very enemy that they had overthrown they became hellenists they behave they became advocates of greek culture they became persecutors of the sages including killing many of the in fact this may be a a a support for feminism the only bright light in the 200 years of hasmonean rule 150 years was a brief period of time when a woman was in charge of the jewish state this was shalom see on hamauca and she created a golden age where torah was respected and the built up unfortunately she became the ruler at a relatively advanced age after her husband janae young i was a russia she was married to her when yanai died she took over and that was the golden age i think it lasted for less than 10 years then she died and her sons took over and her sons unfortunately followed their father's ways rather than their mother's ways so although it's so interesting that there are many many halachic issues is a woman allowed to assert assume the powers of head of state locus but i want to say like it didn't want to i mean it's a fight they didn't want to discuss it because she was so good in every possible way that they kind of felt listen better to have a righteous woman even if it's halachically questionable than to have men who were evil and perverted and were doing bad things so shalom considered to be a very very respected figure uh in uh her her greek name was salome alexandra that that was their greek name but shalom sean hamaca was her jewish name her brother was the head of the sanhedrin shimon ban shettach and her brother had to go into hiding during the reign of yana himala wanted to kill him and shalom siana mauka brought him out of hiding and was a and she enabled him to reconstitute the sanhedrin and follow so it's a it's a tremendous paradox though that by and large were hellenists and that is why when the count the four exiles they don't consider the hasmonean monarchy to be a brick they say there was babel and then there was persia and then there was yavan and then there was rome well why are you saying that between yavin and rome we had a jewish state there was a jewish state so why do you say we went from yavin to rome the answer is a little disheartening because the hasmonean monarchy is counted as part of the exile of greece it is not considered a redemption which means in a sense the vision of chanukah became a failure chanaka was a celebration of the triumph of the primacy of torah over the forces of assimilation and hellenism but it petered out the potential that it should have actualized was never actualized now this explains a very interesting point that many meforshim notes and that is you look at the mishnah the mishna was composed around the year 200 of the common era now during roman times more than 300 years after the hanukkah story right so chanukah was already a festival in the mishnah there are discussions of purim we have a whole tractate on the celebration of purim this is masak but chanukah is barely mentioned in the mishnah at all i'm not going to say it's totally omitted there are some mentions of it but what's interesting is every mention of hanukkah is an out of the way reference it talks about hanukkah if you're late and bringing your bikoram around chivuas you have until hanukkah to bring the first fruits i mean nothing to do with hanukkah hanukkah is just a date for the bringing of bikurim or the kumar the mission of akama discusses a crazy case where if i have a camel that has long uh pieces of flax on its back and you're a canvas you're a storekeeper that has a light a fire outside of your store and the flax gets ignited by the fire and the flax sets fire to a building who has to pay for the building the owner of the camel or the owner of the fire who shouldn't have left this fire there and the gemara says it's the owner of the fire who had no right to leave a fire outside but if it was a hanukkah light he's putter because that's where you're supposed to light that so a very like side point why is hanukkah so de-emphasized in the mishnah it's almost as if we don't really celebrate it that much why is that so so i'll give you i'll give you two reasons one reason might be a matter of political correctness and that is the following the mishnah was written at a time when jews were dominated by the romans who had mercilessly destroyed the temple in the year 70 and then the barcocca revolt in 135 was even worse so the romans are looking at the jews as kind of a rebellious people that have to be submerged now we like chanukah candles and the roman guy asks why are you lighting this hanukkah candle says oh this is celebrating the overthrow of foreign domination over the jews and eric israel that's kind of a dangerous thing to say so the jews kept kept the mitzvah of hanukkah but they didn't want to talk about it that much because the romans might persecute in fact that's the meaning of the gemara the gemara says originally the hanukkah candles were lit outside but when it became dangerous it was taken inside what does it mean when it became dangerous dangerous because the romans would interpret it as a call to insurrection by the way the mach lokis today do you light outside like many people do in jerusalem or do you light inside is actually a mahlokis how to interpret the gemara the gemara clearly says the original was outside and because of sakana they said move it inside so the question is was that a permanent change or was that a temporary change those who lied outside say the halacha of lighting outside is always there it got suspended when it's dangerous to do it outside when it's no longer dangerous you've got to go back to the original way and that's the minute mainly in you shalom where people light outside the other interpretation is once the sages changed it from outside to inside it remains so i'm not here to pass again whatever your minogue is there is halachic source for it so one reason why the mission doesn't mention hanukkah is because hanukkah is a dangerous holiday to mention in connection with the romans but the other reason is that ravita hanasi the author of the mishnah in retrospect sees chanukah as a bit of a failure because all of the dreams that the khashoggi wanted to accomplish turned out to be up in smoke every single thing the independent jewish state we lost that with the romans a jewish monarchy we lost it the primacy of of torah over hellenism themselves at least the descendants after the first generation became hellenists so as a result what is it to celebrate now this explains of another very interesting dichotomy and that is there is what you might call hanukkah version one and there is what you might call hanukkah version two 1.0 and 2.0 the significance of hanukkah underwent redefinition with the passage of time we have a historical record of the whole hanukkah story in much much more detail than probably you would be interested in and that is we have something called safer hamakabim the book of the maccabees now what is the book of the maccabees called seifer hammacher bim this is in the apocrypha meaning this is not part of tanakh this is what is called swarimkhitsanim we do not consider safer hamakabim to be holy it is not a product of kodesh or divine inspiration because the age of prophecy already stopped but just because it is not a holy book does not mean it is not a reliable book that we shown him commentaries like rashi will quote from the safer hamaker bin because it is a more or less contemporaneous history of the chanukah story now it doesn't just give you the little story about the bass and mikdash it gives you every single battle over 20 years fought against antiochus and the successors of antiochus in fact if you're interested in military history which you know many people are not it actually gives you a battle by battle by battle by battle account and i'm actually i i think i once heard years ago that uh in west point and in other military academies they look at the book of the maccabees for military strategy and i'll tell you why it's so relevant because here you have the greek empire of antiochus the serially syrian greek empire the seleucid seleucus empire which is the most powerful empire in the world at the time and their and who is fighting against them a small group of untrained unprofessional jewish soldiers who are really engaged in guerilla warfare and essentially from a military perspective which is not the religious way we look at it it really shows you that a guerrilla force can defeat a well-trained massive army which if you remember your american history of the 20th century was exactly the situation of the united states in vietnam so i'm told that during vietnam and after vietnam the people at west point are looking at the book of maccabees to kind of develop counter strategies against guerrilla warfare uh and and the like so be it as it may in the book of the mac actually there are four books of the maccabees but in the book of maccabees one which is the main historical chronicle the reason for the holiday of hanukkah is a celebration of the military victory over the evening and the establishment of a jewish state as well as the rededication of the temple it actually does not even mention a miracle of the oil so why is chanukah holiday we are commemorating our liberation from yavan that's what the book of maccabees said and yet when you look in the gemara in massachusetts the emphasis of the of chanukah as a holiday is to commemorate the miracle of the oil that was only supposed to burn one day and it burnt eight days in other words there's a shift in the emphasis of hanukkah in the book of the maccabees the emphasis of chanaka is on the victory against the evanim and by the way the book of the maccabees is picked up in the alhanism prayer the al-anism prayer is all about the victory against the iranian it is not about the miracle of the oil and yet in massachusetts we emphasize the victory of the the miracle of the oil so what i want to suggest to you is this is hanukkah version one and chanukah version two the original holiday of chanukah was the triumph over yeoven but by the time the mishna was written that triumph had dissipated and it was no longer meaningful and even the spiritual triumph was not succeeding so the emphasis was on the miracle of the oil which is a sign of god's divine providence and protection again please understand me i am not asserting as some secular people assert that the miracle the story of the miracle of the oil was made up later no no no that's not the point there was of course the miracle of the oil nobody is questioning that but that wasn't the reason for the holiday they did not make a holiday because of the miracle of the oil they made the holiday because of the victory over yeoven but later the victory receded in its importance because of the betrayal of the hasmoneans and therefore the miracle of the oil became front and center the dominant emphasis of hanukkah so that's really the idea of chanukah underwent a redefinition of what is and in fact if you think about it the word chanukah means dedication really it was a celebration of the dedication of the base of mikdash it was not necessarily connected to the lighting of the candles that became dominant much later and in fact this also answers the book of the maccabees actually also answers what is the one of the most famous questions it is the most famous question about hanukkah and it's one of the most famous questions in judaism generally and then as everybody asks the question this question is asked by ravi yosef cairo if if the reason we have a holiday of hanukkah is because we only found enough oil for one day and a miracle happened and it burned for eight days so hanukkah should only be seven days because the miracle is only seven days it's not eight days why is hanukkah eight days so i'll tell you there are at least 500 answers to this question because i have a saver that has 500 answers to this question now lamai said they do cheat i mean you know they kind of because some answers are virtually identical with one like tiny little thing i would not call it separate answers but at least there's a hundred good separate answers at least even with all of the combination that you should make but i want to point out that sometimes historical analysis give you a good answer because if you look in the book of the maccabees and remember the book of the maccabees does not mention the miracle of the oil the book of the maccabees mentions the re-dedication of the basa mikhnas and it says just as the mishkan of moshe in the torah was dedicated over a eight day period they wanted to dedicate the basa miktas for eight days in other words the book of the maccabees is beautiful in this connection the eight days of chanukah in its inception were not because of the miracle of the oil the eight days of chanukah was the dedication ceremony of the bay samiktas to be modeled after the dedication of motion so now so again as i say this is a beautiful simple answer to a yosef cairo's question and of course that's why the day is called hanukkah the dedication of the basa mikdash so now though i just want to add a little something of my own to this and that is okay moshe rabbanu's dedication of the michigan was eight days that's in the hamish but hamelech's dedication of the first base of mikdash was 14 days that's in the book of malachi so if the macabre and the kashmir name are rededicating the bayat cheney why are they following the eight days of moshe why don't they follow the 14 days of why are they looking at the michigan as the model so i would suggest an answer based on a medrush besikta the medrash besikta tells us that when basale was constructing the mishkan in the midbar he actually finished its construction in kisslife and the mishkan should have been dedicated in kisslife but hashem told moshe i want to delay it until nisan because nisan is the month of redemption and the month of the birth of yitzhak so i want to connect it to the avos so the month of kislev whatever this means exactly felt bad the month of kisly felt it was cheated so hashem promised the month of kiss life in the future you will be the time of rededication of khanukah so it turns out that the khanukah the rededication of the miktash by the kashmir nayam was making up to kiss slave because it missed the dedication of the mishkan so now you understand why it's eight days because the dedication of the michigan was eight days and this was a makeup for that particular dedication okay so now it's it's very very medium by the way there is a book of the maccabees two and it's interesting the book of maccabees one and the book of maccabees ii overlapped they actually cover the same period it's not like malachi maleficent base that goes further rather these are two alternative versions of the events and there are going to be discrepancies and differences and i do want to point out that maccabees one has a different emphasis than mac and b's two although both are true maccabees one talks about military prowess and strategy although for spiritual for spiritual reasons it talks about in others the model of the heroes in maccabees one are the soldiers who valiantly fought against the evonim in maccabees two the heroes are those passive martyrs who gave up their lives al-qaeda for example the story of chana and her seven sons who died rather than reject god they are in maccabees too so maccabees one is the story of military heroism and maccabees too is the story of what you might call spiritual martyrdom and as you know when people study the holocaust we also have these two different models you know one of the i don't want to elaborate on this too much but everything in israel is controversial everything everything there's not a single decision made in this country uh that does not involve some controversy and yom hashowa holocaust memorial day is actually controversial i think less so today than it was but certainly back in 1948 or whenever they adopted it as yomashawa it created a lot of contrary let me explain why the minor controversy is that it's the month of nisan and the month of nisan you're not supposed to have sad days okay i mean that is a halachic issue all right but some people care about a lot of some people don't but there's a deeper controversy and that is why was that date in nissan chosen to be o mashallah because it is the date that commemorates the fall of the warsaw ghetto and you have to understand in the early years of the state of israel which were right after the holocaust there were some zionists who were ashamed of the jews who went like sheep to the slaughter they looked down at those jews they said why didn't you fight why didn't you you know attack the nazis why did you go passively and they talked about the fact oh that's the godless mentality that's the old-fashioned jew of europe but we are the new jew that we stress heroism we stress self-sufficiency we stress bravery and courage so we don't want to glorify or even commemorate the jews who went like sheep to the slaughter but we will commemorate those people who did fight back namely of course uh the brave people in the warsaw ghetto now there's no question that obviously the jews who fought in the warsaw ghetto were great and worthy and they deserved to be commemorated but for a lot of holocaust survivors the decision to emphasize the military heroism along with the rhetoric that those who gave their lives without fighting were like sheep was actually very very deeply hurtful it was hurtful it hurt them it basically delegitimized them so as a result um the issue of the warsaw ghetto being the day that you commemorate uh hurt a lot of people again unfortunately uh the number of uh holocaust survivors that are still alive are getting you know smaller every day there aren't that many around now but in the 1950s this was a very very powerful controversy especially when you connected to the the zionist vision that the siege was like a sheep going to the slaughter and we have to be a new type of jew and we have to be strong and we have to be self-sufficient and we should not emulate or even admire those jews of passive resistance well i would suggest that the same controversy that we had in the 1950s about yomashawa may have been a controversy between the authors anonymous authors of maccabees 1 and maccabees 2. maccabees 1 emphasizes military heroism and maccabees ii emphasizes spiritual martyrdom but i want to point out both books it's important to remember this both books are positing that this was a spiritual struggle okay both of them have a common denominator that the fight was against assimilation and hellenism maccabees one does not displace the spiritual purpose of the war okay don't misunderstand that however uh who is the fighter that you want to admire in maccabees one it is the soldier and then maccabees two it is the martyr and again i find it very very fascinating that that is exactly the controversy in yomashowa now as far as i'm concerned this should not be an either or preposition i think all the different ways of resistance against evil deserve our admiration and certainly deserve our compassion uh whether it was the people who actively fought or whether it was the people who were not able to fight they didn't have the resources but they went to their death with dignity and ammuna and faith in hashem they too are deserving so it shouldn't really be as they say everything in israel tends to become binary thinking it's either this or it's this when in reality uh the truth of the matter is it's both and uh you know one one does not exclude exclude the other but so that's one difference in maccabees one in maccabees two that's very very interesting i think there's another interesting difference and that is where do you get the eight days of hanukkah the common denominator between the two books is neither book mentions the miracle of the oil as the reason for hanukkah neither book mentions it so in maccabees one the reason for the eight days is the dedication of the basa mikdash that took eight days just like the mishkan of moshe that's maccabees one maccabees two gives another reason that's kind of crazy it says that since the evanim were in control of the bassamidas for three years by the way i mean we don't realize this the ivanim controlled the bass on mikdash for three years during those three years they desecrated it by building idols in the temple they sacrificed pigs on the mizbayach to the idols they had houses of prostitution on the temple grounds they desecrated they violated the basa mikdash for three years by the way the three years literally run from the 25th of kislev to the 25th of kisly meaning the day that antiochus soldiers got control of the base on mikdash was the 25th of kiss life three years to the day is when the basa mikdash was liberated so at one point the 25th of kiss day was not a happy day the 25th of kiss day was like a dish above but hashem three years later so for those three years the basan mikdash was desecrated it was violated and then the kashmir were able to redeem it they were able to liberate it so it turns out that for those three years the jewish people were not able to keep the shoulders regular they were not able to go pay sakshvu sukkas so the last pilgrimage festival that they missed was sukis now sukis is well sukis right after circus is a holiday called shimini yet serious so sukis is essentially an eight degree i mean technically the eighth day is not circus but it's sukis so hanukkah was enacted says maccabees too as a replacement just like pesach so they made chanukah to be a substitute for sukkos and therefore they made it eight days just like and sukkah and serra's is eight days and in maccabees two it is recorded they even took lou love and esrog during hanukkah as a way of making up for what they couldn't do during is that abroad right presumably now what's interesting is that there is no mention in ghazal to connect chanukah meaning apparently looked at this and they saw this as an illegitimate minhag that amiratsum started meaning this did not come from rabbinical authorization this was a folk thing that people were doing so that's why ghazal do not look at the connection to circus at all but i would suggest there is one mocker in ghazal that indicates that there is a connection in chanukah and sukis and that is the famous machlokas base hillel and bait shamai which we'll discuss next week as to how do you like the hanukkah candles if you remember basilo does it like we do it you light one candle night one and then you add candles right so one second knight two et cetera that's base hello that of course all of us follow base hello but bait shamai has a very different way of lighting bait shamai lights eight candles on the first night and goes down instead of one two three four five six seven eight he's eight seven six five four three two one and the gamora ponders like why does beisharma go down basil goes up because in holiness we always want to go up why does bay shamai go down so one answer the gemara gives is oh he wants to follow the way corbanos are brought on sukis on sukis there are 70 bulls connected the umota alum as if to say we want god to either bless them or keep them away from us that's another maklocus are you bringing it for them or against them okay and in sukis it goes down in descending order 13 12 11. so bait shamai says ah we should light the chanukah candles just like the carbanos of sukis but that doesn't really answer anything what's the comparison between circus and chanukah the gemara doesn't explain why is shamai looking at chanukah as sukis for the model of hanukkah my answer is that this may be an allusion to maccabees too that the original idea of hanukkah which got lost in time it got lost in time was it was a makeup for sukkas but bechamai preserved that original connection in the way the candles were lit it's kind of like a fossil almost it's it's like a fly trapped in amber that the retention of an original connection to sukkos was found in beijing's minute of lighting in basilo's minute you actually don't have it and basically you don't have it right but in bishop you at least have it okay so uh those are some things to think about the final point i want to make is uh the following so we have this war against the iranian which involved military victories it involves casualties it involved martyrdom like khanna and her son but at the end there was triumph now the way most of us have this picture is that the regaining the basa miktas where the miracle of the oil occurred and the military victory over the iranian happened the same time in other words the typical picture we have is oh we won we got independence and we rededicated the base of mikdash in other words it happened all at once and the miracle of the oil is after the military victory meaning after the military victory we're able to purify the temple we have oil for one day and it lasts for eight days the rambam seems to look at it that way the rambam seems to understand the chronology that we fought this war against the oven and we uh gained the base on mikdash and when we cleaned it up we found one jar of oil and it burned for eight days which would in other words according to the rambam's understanding of the history the miracle of the oil occurred after the final military victory but in the book of the maccabees there's a very very different story i had mentioned that we regained the basa mikdash after three years but that was not the end of the military struggle the military struggle went on for almost 20 years after that point in other words the miracle of the oil was not at the end of the military victory it was in the middle of the war now you may say okay so what wha why why is that important i think it's profoundly important because essentially let's look if you were a maccabee you were a hasmonean and you're fighting the greatest most powerful army in the world and you don't have the support of even your fellow jews who think you're crazy they think you're fanatic you know they'll say to you why can't you be a modern first century jew night like people obviously that's not the language that they that that's not the language that they used and you look at the struggle in front of you and it seems so hopeless impossible what's the point of going on one could imagine if i'm a maccabee what are the chances i'm going to do anything so what does hashem do in the middle of the war he shows them a jar of oil that only has the power to burn for one day and we light it and it burns for eight days what is hashem telling the jewish people you think your efforts are ineffectual you think your efforts are useless you think that your efforts cannot possibly produce victory going to show you a miracle that that shows you if you do what you can you light the little bit that you're able to like hashem will bless your efforts beyond what you think is possible now if this would have been at the end of the war that would have been a nice frosting on the cake but in the beginning of the struggle imagine the message that that's communicating it's telling the beleaguered khashoggi don't give up keep fighting keep struggling and that is why hanukkah is really such a profoundly beautiful holiday because that's the life that we have you know we live in a world of darkness on so many levels ignorance assimilation persecution there's also the darkness of people's personal problems the darkness of depression despair illness and a person often feels they want to give up what's the use what can i accomplish hanukkah says don't give up light the light that you can even if you think it's insignificant even if you think it's not going to last even if you think what's the use of doing something that will last only a short time and then disappear what is the purpose of that hanukkah says you never know what hashem will do with your puny efforts and turn them into something beautiful and that's why to me it's a very powerful idea that we got that message in the beginning or at least towards the beginning of a protracted struggle because that was the message that gave them the courage to go on you see if it would have just been after the fact it would have been just like another nice thing that god did for them but to get it in the middle of the war that's exactly the message they need don't give up the fight against the darkness so we want to wish everybody a phrasal channel maybe a hanukkah of light and and joy and goula and the music we'll talk more about it next next week [Music] is