Rav Yitzchak Breitowitz: Chanukah Insights Beit Hillel and Beit Shamai What's the Difference?

[Music] okay hi everybody uh first I do want to add my own congratulations to uh Rabbi rson Poston and really the entire Community uh such a beautiful beautiful Community Center as I mentioned last week uh if you get bored you can even take a nap in the there's a side bedroom here with with a bed uh and um I just hope that once again this should be a center that will uh be makad sh Shay that will sanctify uh the name of God we'll bring people to Torah and aod and G which are the three pillars upon which the world stands and uh once again it's wonderful thing that just as khaka celebrates the rededication of the bikash so on kanaka we are you know dedicating this community center of Torah and and Mitzvah It's really because in a sense this is also a when we don't have the these they are says they are the miniature bik that brings God into the world so ASU said when the Mish was dedicated May the divine presence rest on what you've done what you've created here and uh let me just read our dedications the shear uh tonight is dedicated uh praying for the as always praying for the victory of raim in Gaza Lebanon and now Syria uh for the lasting Unity of the am Israel and for all of those whose help has been affected by the war a for bar Bena and B Ben fi and for the AL of K benzer and Shalom Ben uh the as you obviously know the new eanet community center is now up in beginning and uh please sign up for the newsletter on the website in order to be updated on projects events classes and general sh information and as was also announced but I guess I'm doing it for the YouTube video uh tomorrow morning be which will be uh the seventh day of Kaneka uh we will be starting a relatively slow weekday shakas minion 7:45 a.m. a delicious breakfast and learning program afterwards dedications and contributions are still needed and can be made to the eanet website and I wants to thank all of those who have already contributed and uh it is a tremendous to give to such a wonderful wonderful organization and once again I think all of us want to give e great for all of the good work that it does uh we're still in khaka so I do want to continue to talk a little bit about Kaneka uh and I want to take a passage in M shabas you know there is unlike the story of PM which has a whole tract dat devoted to porim Kan there is no there is no track date devoted to Kan rather the whole discussion of Kana in the Babylonian talmud are a few pages two or three blots in m shabas in the peric dealing with chabas candles so from chabas candles it goes on to khaka candles and and the like uh there is a whole discussion Inon why does kanaka get such little emphasis in the gar and maybe we'll mention that later uh but thefor do talk about that but the gamorra quote a br from a book that is called millas Tanis now this is interesting in and of itself uh a book called migil tus or migas Tinus a scroll of fast uh it's a very misleading name migil Tinus is actually a document that's earlier than the mishna that goes over all of the days that you're not allowed to fast because during the second temple period they were festive days most most of those days involve different types of military victories over foreign oppression and most of those days are no longer observed as but KH is and Kana is actually described in migan migan as I said last week is not the earliest source for the Kaneka Story the earlier source is the book of mbes and the like fact Mill tanet is a late source that dates to shortly before the destruction of the B mikdash almost 200 years after the Kaneka story uh nevertheless it is the First Source that mentions the miracle of the oil and that again I talked about that last week but just remember that we know the miracle of the oil not from the book of macbes we know the M nor from Josephus we know the book of the O the miracle of the oil only from millas Tanis which is the Bria that is quoted in Mas chabas and the BR mentions there are three three different ways you can fulfill the Mitzvah of commemorating the miracle of khaka uh there is basic there is mahadin enhanced and then there is Mahin Mahin the beautiful of the beautiful this is a familiar vocabulary from the hashan restaurants right you have plain raban and then you have mahadin then mahadin mahadin and this is a term that was actually taken from the NEOS of Kan what is the basic the basic is surprisingly only one candle every night one candle every night it's a funny thing kanah everybody is a sadic I've never heard of a person who only lights one candle every night of Kana and yet you would be y the Mitzvah with one candle every night that's all now then there's a middle level mahadin I'm sorry I'm sorry mahadin is one candle is lit for every member of the family that's still not what we do that means if I have 10 people including myself night one 10 candles night 8 10 candles but then there's a higher level that's called mahadin and here we have the famous m b sh and B you want to indicate the days but do you do so in descending order 876 or in ascending order 1 2 3 B Shi says you start with eight and you go down we'll explain why in in a few moments basilo says you start with one and you go up and as is normally the case in as is normally the case we follow the view of B and that's the universal practice of kanaka but again not everybody realizes when you like let's say night you lit seven candles you were not just doing the Mitzvah you were doing mahad mahadin I mean I bet you you didn't know you were that from Mahin right so so many M we say I just want to be y say I don't have to go beyond the law here you're going two levels beyond the law everybody mahadin Mahin now I don't want to be too much in in technical I just want to mention one Quicky little thing and that is that there's a big among if you're doing the highest level of Mah Mah do you include the intermediate level of each person R in the maintains that if you're doing at the highest level if you're doing level a let's call it level a you BFA shouldn't do level B meaning only one manur should be lit you shouldn't have a manura for every member of the family and the argument is because if you have too many minoras people who walk by are going to see 50 candles they're not going to know the Yim so therefore if Yosef Caro actually pasin and many many many follow r that if you're doing Mah Mahin only one manora is lit and not separate Manas uh that is rifo the Rama however which is the posim brings that Mah mAh should also include the intermediate level and therefore every member of the family should light their own manora however within the Rama there are a number of sub so for example husband wife uh would husband and wife light separately if you follow the she of the Rama most opinions say no because of another principal isto kago husband and wife are like one person so even like the Rama all the kids will light their manora but husband and wife will have one manora that's what most postum say on the other some postum say husband and wife should actually like to Manas to be mahadin mahadin and then there's even a m about unmarried daughters who are living at home now logically uh unmarried daughters who are living at home should be like unmarried sons and uh logically they should light if you follow the Rama's view that every body lights their own manora and indeed a number ofos say that but theam s brings that the Min was uh in his time that unmarried daughters did not like separate minoras uh the reason he gave is a little bit of a do and the reason he gave was the following since the original of lighting Kaneka candles was to light it outside which is still widely practiced in Yim it was not necessarily SOA for women to be lighting outside so even when as it was the case in Frankfurt and prur they moved it inside they kept that original custom again I'm not here to to PK in anything uh if your minog is that uh your daughters light separately that with a braa that is perfectly fine uh that is legitimate if your minog is they don't light separately that's also perfectly fine uh meaning this isim and anyway it doesn't go to the basic Mitzvah because the basic with one man it's only going on the interpretation of Mahin Mahin according to the according to the Rama because again and according too uh even as a mahad a mahadin only one man is going to be lit you don't like multiple Manas okay again I say say I don't want to get into too many technical Halos other than to just give you a little background on the different minhagim now I did say most farum do follow uh the rose Caro uh that only one Mana is lit but not all SW uh many Moroccan spom actually follow the Rama's view of everybody lighting separately and that gets into a fascinating bit of mlo Raji y had something against the Moran hanos because raaj maintained he was a big Roso person he says allm are obligated to follow of ysf caro and any who deviate from that are acting under pernicious ashkenazic influences and he he accused the Moroccan rabet of being influenced by kabad shim who took over the education of their Moroccan children and introduced uh ashkanazi minhagim uh the Moroccan Rabin it was very offended because they claim that they weren't following the Rama they were claiming they had the Mas was a thousand years old before the Rama so this became a little bit of a rivalry between the Moroccan of Mor Leo for example was was Moran sometimes had run-ins on these these particular particular issues okay but without getting into all the technicalities the one thing that you clearly see is that khah is connected to hior doing the Mitzvah in a beautiful way we have multiple levels of heo why is that so now it's true that there's a general principle in all mitzvot of doing mitzvos in the most beautiful way possible this is called H Mitzvah and this is derived from a PK in aashir Zak this is my God vianu and I will glorify him and the Rabin interpretation of how we glorify God is do your in a beautiful way so of course there's a general concept called Mitzvah but it's very clear that n is Way Beyond the parameters of H Mitzvah generally it's it's a unique aspect of Neo how do I know this I'll prove this arithmetically the gamar in bakama and in Suka discusses how much extra money do you have to pay for Heder mitz let's imagine you could get a kosher esrog that's not so beautiful for x amount of money how much more do you have to pay to get a beautiful one so the gumar basically says uh you pay uh the equivalent of a 50% increase meaning to say the following if I could get a kosher es I'll use American figures here if I can get a Kosher esic for $20 I'm only M to pay $30 for heer meaning thear calls that oneir but in modern language we would call that a 50% increase meaning if a mahud s rug would cost me40 or $50 I wouldn't be to pay for it now by NEOS Kana okay I I understand candles aren't very expensive but Lisa they cost some money if I could be y say the basic mitah with eight candles for all of kanuka and instead said I light 36 candles multiplied by the number of people in my house I'm going Way Beyond 50% I'm going by a 2,000 or more 3,000% increase so the point I'm making is yeah I understand it's not a lot of money but the point is that the the inion of hedor by neosa is not the general concept of Mitzvah but it's it is something that is special and unique to Kana so I just want to explore right now what is it about Kana that is so connected to the notion of beauty and hedor mahadin and not only that but you see that in many many mitzvos H is regarded as kind of optional you know either I'll do it or I won't do it but everybody everybody does what is mahadin min mahadin you never hear anybody who does less than mahad Mah so I want to offer three relatively short answers uh to this question answer number one we know of course that Kaneka is often described as the war against the Greeks the Greeks under antias the Syrian Greeks wanted to cause assimilation wanted to cause us to forsake the Torah wanted to abandon chabas and roses and BR and Mikvah so this was not a war War the war of the jonian was not a war of political Independence although we did get political Independence it was not a war against taxation without representation it was a war to be able to keep the Torah and thus during Kaneka times you're going to hear you have heard and you will hear still countless musim about Greeks bad Jews good meaning Greek philosophy represents materialism it's corrupt it's degenerate it doesn't have ethical value it is not subservient to the rebon alol and the light of Torah dispels the darkness of Greek philosophy while that may be true and of course you know it largely is true but in some ways it's a oversimplification it's a bit of a caricature because khaka is not just about Torah good Greek bad rather there are aspects in what Greece represents that are actually positive even to our spiritual identity let's go all the way back to Noah Noah of course had three sons shame and ye and if you remember After the flood Noah got intoxicated and uh his nakedness was revealed and wanted to point it out and and mock his father and his two brothers shame and yeas took a blanket and they walked backwards and they covered up their father's nakedness and Noah gave those two sons a Braha and the braa for yees in particular is very importance the BR that he gave to yees Wasim it's a Biblical pun God should give Beauty to y that he should dwell in the tents of Shame now in English that sounds like a very bad expression but shame is no sonal who of course was the progenitor of a great movement called toor so you'd expect this but one of the seminal discussions of Torah der is precisely In this passage and he says the following he says Noah envisioned two missions for Humanity One mission was entrusted to yees and one mission was entrusted to Shem the mission that was entrusted to Shem eventually carried out by AB Aina who of course is shem's descendant and the Jewish people is the message of bringing godliness and spirit spirituality into the world to teach people about Holiness about submission about the nature of God that's kadua Shem was given the mission to teach all of humanity that there is a God and there is an ethical standard yees who is the father of yavan yan is Greece was given the mission to create aesthetic and Beauty in the world now we know that Greece generated Greek uh Greek culture Hellenism generated much Beauty in many many areas whether it's art whether it's sculpture whether it's the athleticism of the human body whether it's drama whether it's music whether it's philosophy whether it's mathematics which are also described as beautiful by mathematicians so Shem is given the most important mission of godliness yees through his child Yovan is given the mission of beauty when Noah says to your beauty is beautiful and it shall dwell in the tents of Shem that is both a message to yepes and it's a message to shame the message to epes is your beauty is beautiful but only if it is subordinated to the service of God when your beauty is used to augment and to deepen religious sensibilities and deake us to Hashem that's beautiful meaning when is your beauty beautiful when it dwells within the morality and the monotheism and the amuna of Shem and if it's outside of that it can become evil and destructive that's the message to yis the message to shame is open up your tens and let that beauty in meaning when we talk about defeating Yovan we're not talking about like the Taliban smashing all of the statues and the Art of you know of a thousand years we're not talking about destroying Beauty we're talking about reclaiming Beauty and by Beauty I don't just mean physical Beauty I mean including uh philosophy I'm including um literature all of those things so consequently when kanaka celebrates the victory of the mission of Shem over the negative forces of yavan we don't commemorate that Victory by disparaging yofi but we claim the victory by utilizing the Yi and that's why Kaneka specifically requires that we incorporate the Aesthetics of yavan into the aod because that's the true Victory the true Victory is let the beauty of yees which is yavan dwell in the tents of Shem by the way there a little uh aside I heard a very very nice thought from Rabbi Le a few days ago he pointed out if you look at the word yava yavan is very interesting word it repres it's really three parallel lines of unequal length I mean imagine this y long small medium long or large and parallel lines never meet right the nature of parallel lines they go in so he says the nature of yavan although each branch of yavan may be very beautiful there's not an integration into a harmonious ho R Torah kind of takes all of the different branches and combines them towards a central core of affirmation as opposed to yavan all the branches of kma are like parallel lines that never meet that's why uh in all of its letters and all of its sizes yavan represents uh that which is not connected unintegrated it's not brought together but Noah's BR was the beauty of yav must be incorporated into the tent of Shem so that is answer number one I'm going to give you three answers I said answer number one why uh mahadin is so important for Kaneka answer number two is from theim who was the first G one of the great great rebies of the 19th century and he starts off with a well-known Kasha that is asked and the well-known question is this the miracle of the candles is described as they only had pure oil that was enough to last for one day because all the other oil had been contaminated by contact with dead bodies and and and the light and uh so they lit what they had not and it would take eight days to get pure oil and lo and behold hasm made a miracle that that one day of oil lasted for eight days now I'm not going to talk about the B Jose got to be seven days not eight days world's most famous question there are you know when I was in yes wow there are 50 answers to that question well got news for you there is answer inflation in Torah publication uh there are now books that give you a thousand answers to that question so I'm not I'm actually not going to address that question tonight but the kadu asks a different question and this is actually a question that the early commentators asked as well and that is what's the problem let's assume we would have run out of pure oil let's assume we lit the oil for one day and the next day it went out what would we do the actually is you are allowed to light the manura with impure oil why is that so even though normally things that are impure are not brought to the B mikdash but when it is a communal offering not a private offering when it's on behalf of Cl is there is a rule that's called tumra the laws of impurity are inapplicable when it comes to the congregation so in a sense there was no need for the Kaneka Miracle at all yeah we couldn't get pure oil for eight days okay and we only have pure oil for one day but there's plenty of impure oil so if we ran out of pure oil T would allow us to light with imp pure oil so who needs the miracle this is actually a question say the ask theha Etc so the says the following answer the answer is although there was no need for there to be pure oil but will doing a Mitzvah with Purity is a h Mitzvah it's a beautification of the Mitzvah so God gave gave us a miracle so we would serve him be Mitzvah so now you understand if the whole miracle was that we should be able to do the Mitzvah beor IE by pure oil rather than pure oil so mid mid we show our gratitude to God by doing the Mitzvah in multiple levels of mahadin such as everybody lighting a manora and the like it's mided maid because the whole nce enabled heer MIT and another Rim points out the following we know that often love and a deep friendship are often shown by things that are less essential for example if you have somebody you don't like without discussing whether you're allowed to hate somebody but let's say you have an enemy and the enemy is starving in the street even if you don't like the guy I'm not talking about a terrorist just a Jew that you you don't like you know you you'll give them bread and water you don't want him to die of starvation but you're not going to make him a steak or you're not going to make him a you know whatever it's a lemon merang pie or whatever it is because that you'll make for your friends for your enemies you'll give them enough to keep them alive now although the bread and the water is more important than the cake but the cake kind of shows a measure of love that the bread and the water doesn't so says the rim when God gives us what we need Our Lives that's a wonderful thing but it doesn't yet show God's love God's love is most shown when he gives us things beyond what we need H Mitzvah he gives us things beyond what is necessary and that shows God's great love so that's answer number two the reason why there is mahadin by Kana is because the whole Mitzvah was the whole sorry the whole miracle was there to enable H Mitzvah now I'm now going to give you answer number three and answer number three comes from a person that may be not so familiar to to many people uh this is a person called the Magid he was the preacher of Kellum Kellum was a city on the German Lithuanian border and I need to say right off the bat do not confuse the mid of Kellum with the altar of Kellum the altar Kellum the old man of Kellum Wasim Sim and he was the closest disciple of RIS salandra if anyone could be called the successor to RIS salandra it probably would have been the alar of Kellum and we can talk about Kell muser it's a fascinating fascinating discussion about self-mastery well okay let me digress a little bit although the the the mag of Kum is not the AL of Kellum but once I mention the AL of Kellum I just got to tell you one story about this uh Kellum the school of Kellum uh was focused very much on the notion of self-discipline it was a notion of training people to be disciplined not to give into their first moods or emotions so the story goes rakov kineski as a young boy of 15 went to Kellum to study to learn to learn muser and the like and the first day of Kellum uh was a day of and there was no Coen in the show so they were going to call up butakov keski noticed that aen had just entered the Bish so he went over to the Gabi and he told the Gabi here's a Coen so after daving the Gabi went over to rakov kineski and said to him thank you very much for telling us uh you owe the Yeshiva a Ruble so he said why do I owe the Yeshiva rubal because a a b in Kell was not supposed to look around during daving as to who comes in so you know you violated the practices that we try to have it was that type of discipline type of situation where you you know even if there's an explosion in back of you you don't you don't turn around uh they say stories of people who had left umbrellas in the Yeshiva and they came back 20 years later and the umbrella was in the same place you know basically whatever it was so rakov said about his experience in Kellum he says every Jewish boy needs to spend six months in Kellum but then he said but no more it was like okay now that's the alar of Kellum okay but I'm talking about a different person the maget of Kellum who also was a disciple of R salanter uh but he was older he was kind of a what we callid a student colleague and he was not as close is the alar of Kellum but he was a very very gifted preacher very dramatic speaker and risel encouraged him to go around the different communities to awaken people to chuva and the like so he also wrote a saish and in the saan he says a really kind of neat insight about this the P was sealed with the Seal of the cohain godo right that's the one that we used now here's the question the co G was not the custodian of the oil of the manur if you look at the Mish there was a position in the basa Mikes person in charge of oil right so why would there be a jar of oil that was sealed by the Coen G so the so the mag of Kellum hypothesizes it's only speculation that this jar of oil was not Mana oil at all but rather every single day the co God is supposed to bring a meal offering this is called the word for omelet in Hebrew comes from one of the nice things about modern Hebrew is that so many words are in fact derived from thees and and and and and and the like know even uh the semi profane you know it's derived from the goats so anyone that says that is connecting to the Kish so the was a meal offering that was baked and boiled flour mixed with oil no eggs in it though that uh the Coen guttle brought every day and that was the Coen gut's own private oil so what they found in the P was not manora oil it was oil but wait a second here if that's the case you immediately have a problem because the quality that is needed for manira oil is a much higher quality than the quality that is needed for kavan oil manora oil has to be grade A the first few drops without sediment or solid Olive pieces M Oil meal offering oil you can crush and have sediment so if the was of Ean oil how could it be kosher from monora the answer is the anonymous coming gutal who prepared that jar must have wanted to do his Mitzvah in a beautiful Way by using great a oil even for thean in other words the miracle was enabled by the heer Mitzvah of the Coen otherwise we wouldn't have even had the one day of oil therefore the whole Miracle came from the HED Mitzvah of the co that's why we commemorate it with HED mahadin mahadin now the thing is I want to compare the's answer with the mag of kum's answer because I think it brings out two very beautiful P complimentary perspectives about what we think about when we look at the Kaneka candles the R is emphasizing the of in enabling us to fulfill a Mitzvah with Beauty by allowing the the the oil to last for eight days even though we could have used impure oil but Hashem gave us the opportunity to do something be so that is emphasizing the loving kindness of God in giving us opportunities to live our lives in the most beautiful way that we can the maget of Kell's answer is emphasizing the M nephesh the devotion of am Israel and how they serve god with devotion and commitments now when you're looking at the candles there are two things that you're really looking at on one level the candles are a symbol of the light of the Shina that permeates the world um in Caba it's brought down that the 36 candles that we light during Kaneka not counting the shamish right if you add up all the candles 36 candles 44 with the shamish but 36 candles actually corresponds to the 36 hours of daylight that preceded the fourth day because the sun was not created until day four and yet there were 12 hours of light yon Yen y sh so what was the light of the first three days of creation since it was not coming from the Sun it is said it was the light of the sh that once the sun was created that light was hidden and concealed to be revealed only lios mashia and the like so The Zo says and the mum say that the 36 candles of Kaneka bring into the world the 36 hours of the Hidden light of the sh that was nnas that was concealed that is why there is such an inion of staring at the candles there is a thing it is proper to literally sit now you're not allowed to read by the candles that's why you have a shamish or electric light but there's an inion of gazing at the candles you're absorbing God's light in a permissible way so the idea that kanaka is a celebration this is what comes out of the Kim's understanding of Hashem giving us life giving us Beauty giving us the ability to serve him in the best way possible is looking at the nro as a reflection of the sh the 36 hours of the or the concealed light but there's another aspect to the candles and that is thek says in Mish hasem a human soul is called a candle that is lit by God that's the source of a yarts side lamp Etc fact the says elsewhere that the very word for nees Soul could be an abbreviation the nun is n now n does not mean candle in modern parlot but N means a receptical for oil a cup n is p isil Wick Shin is sheeman so what is a nees I'm a nir I'm a receptacle so to speak with a wick and oil waiting to be ignited by God who will give me life so when I look at the naos I am seeing a mirror into the greatness of the human soul and that comes out of the maget of kum's perspective that we're celebrating the devotion of kohanim who tried to do a Mitzvah in a most beautiful way so all I'm suggesting is that the perspectives of the Kim and the mag of Kellum regarding the H Mitzvah is it God that gave us the miracle to enable either Mitzvah or is it the cohain who did his Mitzvah in the most beautiful way am I celebrating the benevolence of Hashem looking at the candles as the divine light that suffuses the world or am I celebrating the greatness of am Israel and the missish now again these are not contradictory perspective these are simultaneous aspects that one can look one could see at the same time the candles connect us to Hashem and the candles are a mirror of the radiance and beauty of our soul but that's not a contradiction because our souls themselves are the breath ofes when I see the beauty of my soul it is because of the beauty and Perfection of ofes so those are some perspectives on why Kaneka has a central concept of mahadin so I gave you three different answers one was connected to a Greek culture incorporating the beauty and hasem and the two others are connected to is the origin of the H Mitzvah Hashem giving us the ability to do the Mitzvah without using T oil or thees of the co who used great a oil for K even though he could have used great B oil but now I want to move uh to the next aspect of this and that is the do you go down or do you go up right B Shi says you you go down 876 basillo says you go up so the Garian chabas itself gives two explanations and essentially what I'm saying is is nothing more than an elaboration and an explanation of the two explanations the gamarra gives but you won't necessarily find this explicitly in the gamarra but but it's there and that is the following we normally identify you know the different approaches of be shami and B as be shami tends to be stricter and be tends to be more lenient that's not 100% of the time but it's a pretty high percentage of the time right be shami we sometimes Envision as the mean guy or the mean school and B is the nice guy okay again it's a caricature but Ina at least it kind of works out that way now if it's a question of strictness versus leniency that seems to have no connection to the Kaneka because they're both lighting the same number of candles who cares if it's 876 or it's one two three and yet in a very uh in a beautiful article written by the great gone r scho y who tries to analyze the common denominators in all the in and he actually connects kanaka to Thea thing in a deeper way and he says the following the Torah says bous barim in the beginning God created the world now the the name of God that is used is Elohim according to kazal Elohim is the name of God that connotes midat had so what is Rashi say hashem's original plan was to create a world based on strict Justice that would be the ideal strict Justice you do a Mitzvah you get reward you do an a kaput ra he saw that the world could not endure on a standard of mid so we had to combine ra and and that is why later it says Hashem elim seen in that way B sh so to speak is rooted in God's original plan and B which in some ways is the ideal right you could say B Shi is an idealist in the sense of Bei is rooted in the way things should have been B is rooted in the way things are by the way this is a deep process we don't mean this on any conscious level in other words when B sh and b or H and Sham as people adjudicate they don't have a self-conscious agenda that I'm supposed to be lenient or I'm supposed to be strict rather they're looking for truth that's all what they're looking for but the prism through which you determine truth is inevitably connected to the root of your Nish but it's very important to understand this was not a conscious process but this is the spiritual nature of how we perceive truth so in a sense bami is rooted in the kak the potentiality of the world and B is rooted in the actualization and that's why one is m one is make now is exactly the same thing since B sh focuses on potentiality so let's look at it on day one of kanaka even though we didn't know it at the time Hashem put into that oil a potential to burn for eight days by day seven there was only a potential for seven days by the last day of Kaneka the potential is down to one so B Shi who looks at potentiality he will describe the Kaneka process as the potentiality diminishing Bas Hillel who looks at actualization so the other way the actualization increases day one I see it burning for one day day two I see it right so it's it's a very ingenious explanation that if you have a deeper understanding of leniency and strictness as actual as potentiality versus actualization it actually translates to the Kaneka story it's a bit of an abstract thought but it's a very very incisive observation in fact he goes through Other M of sh and which are not connected TOA but he shows potentiality versus actualization is behind it okay but then there's a second explanation for be and B Be Shi says you know why I go down because thebot go down there are 70 bulls that are brought during suus day one it's 13 day two it's 12 so just like the B of suus go down goes down that's all the gar says b says well males when it comes to Holiness we want to go up so on this explanation the question that immediately hits you ear okay I get bill which is good because that's how we pasin you go up in Holiness but what is B Shi bringing in the Carbono of suus so last week I I gave you a history hisorical explanation based on the book of macbes which you know you can go check that one the idea that when I look at the neighbor of I'm also looking at my own the now why do theb ofus go down so kazal tell us that if you add up all of the Bulls they add up to 70 there are 70 nations of the world that try to destroy us even though the general assembly has more than 70 members but a lot of those nations are divisions whatever it would be and it goes down because as we approach the GAA the powers of evil get weaker and diminished and even if it seems sometimes in the short term there's a certain ascendancy that is like the flame that before it goes out it has one last jump even a human being right before death there's a certain activity so the represents the diminution in Evil by its gradual destruction so here's what Bashi is suggesting the same way that the parim of sukos represent the diminution of external evil over time as we approach Redemption the nro of Kana represents the extermination of evil with Within Myself theid repairing my mid and therefore he looks at fire through the prism of that which burns away impurities therefore if I look at the manora as a mirror of me in my attempt to become closer to God and I look at fire as a medium of burning away impurities the trajectory of schut would be it would diminish in time meaning I start off with eight things I got to fix and then I go down as I get Holier and Holier I have fewer things I need to work on so that's the connection to is the diminution of externalized evil and the N is the diminution of internalized midra and the like using fire as that which is Burns and destroys so what space hill Point Basil's point is that to say that my growth of my growth in my relationship to God means I surgically have to examine my negatives and burn them away that can work for a spiritually strong person if a person is very spiritually strong I can confront my demons and stare them down but for many many people that type of focus on negativities can backfire I focus on my negativities and instead of working on them I get depressed I get despondent I lose hope so what basill is suggesting is instead of using the fire as a symbol of burning away the negativities let's use the fire as increasing the warmth of light take your strengths take the goodness that you're capable of doing capitalize it meaning sometimes darkness is best attacked not by attacking the darkness but by generating light and then what happens is as you generate light you get spiritually stronger and then the evil either vanishes or you're able to deal with it and therefore you could even say this is this is a great oversimplification so in all respects that this is Theus between and mus people ask the question a lot that in the 18th and 19th centuries there were two movements which were Jewish spiritual Revival movements you might call it uh we have theic movements uh which is earlier it's older than than Revis and then we have the musim movement of the 19th century uh both of them were devoted to spiritual growth and people often ask what's the difference betweenus and muser so again as I say what I'm going to say is a stereotypical oversimplification and uh it's not entirely accurate but there's a certain kernel of Truth is exactly this will often say confront your flaws and work on them theid might say say don't think about your flaws that much focus on your strengths build yourself up and the will be of course given the fact that the and he's interpreting Bas Hill to follow teachings you know again I mean that kind of fits that orientation but again I as I say I I um it is an oversimplification because there there are schools of muser that do emphasize the greatness of a human being that's the alar of slatka and there are schools of kasas that emphasize the depravity of a human being such as Kut and the like so there are intermingling on all levels but nevertheless theas says very beautifully that be Shi is looking at fire is that which burns and destroys the negatives B is looking at fire as that which warms and illuminates and both of them are looking at this as dealing with internal evil bad midot and the question is what is the appropriate D so B looks at the Paradigm of where the externalized evil is destroyed and diminished Bill looks at it as growing in kadua now in truth um you know all of us uh who are going through our own spiritual struggles and those of us who are parents or those of us who have students uh these are issues we have to confront all of all the time you know there's plenty of negatives uh we could put on people and even put on ourselves and nobody's perfect all of us have many many obviously including myself we have many many many many flaws but the problem is if we focus too much on our deficits and our limitations it often does not lead us to constructive change it often condemns us to Despair and therefore there is a certain place in life not to focus on the negatives until you're in a spiritually stronger place now eventually when you are in a spiritually stronger place you're able to then confront the things that need to be corrected but it's not necessarily the first step and the truth of the matter is this idea can actually be found as early as rabenu Yona R is one of the great Ron him who who wrote a classic book called sh Chua the gates of repentance where he indeed makes this very point that a person has to start with recognizing his goodness and his greatness and only after he's internalized that can he then focus on what needs to be corrected so again Kaneka as I say Kaneka is not an official yum in terms of having M restrictions but there are so many messages of Kaneka messages of Hope and resilience and courage uh that it's a very very beautiful and important time and I hope that all of us will look at those candles and internalize both the hidden light of the sh and the hidden Radiance and goodness of our own Nas which are reflected in those lights uh this is a story at the B rebi in the uh the first night of Kaneka in Bergen bellson uh in 1944 so remember this is December 44 uh World War II was over uh April 1945 so this was the last Kaneka so to speak in Bergen bellson and if you remember the Hungarian the the massacre of Hungarian Jews was very rapid the Germans knew that the war was ending and they killed at a much faster pace Hungarian jewelry and this was the first night of Kaneka Bergen bellson it was very very dangerous to light kanuka candles the Nazis would kill you on the spot so they waited till 3:00 in the morning and hundreds of people gathered in absolute silence and they took a string from their pajama thing uniforms and a little rancid margarine to light a candle and hundreds of people are there and the blizzard of a rebi who himself had lost uh children in the in from before he made the first in a whisper and then he made the second and then it was a time to makeu and he looked around he seemed confused he looked around then he made so there was in the group a freethinker a person who had lost his faith because of everything that went on and he went to The Bu of a rebi and he said you know reie listen I don't believe in this stuff if God cared about us why would we even be here okay you believe it I don't begrudge you so you make a that candles okay you believe that that's fine you even make a br that God did miracles in the past you believe that that's fine but I have a question how can you make the BR ofu thank you God for letting me be alive don't you know how many people go to bed bed or wherever not not even a regular bed hoping they're not going to wake up people who have lost their wives their husbands their children their parents people don't want to live people want to die and you're saying thank you God for letting me be in Bergen belon how can you make a so the bubi did not say she aorus get out of here The Bu Reby said you know you're right I felt the same way I didn't know what to do on one hand the says the first night of Kaneka you have to make a and I follow the on the other hand God is a god of Truth he hates lies how could I say a to hasem that I didn't feel I didn't feel grateful so he said I looked around and I saw all of the faces of Jews who had lost so much and had suffered so much but still came to keep Kaneka in a place that had no hope and I said to myself what a privilege it is to see such righteous and holy people and he said for that I could make a to has thank you God for letting me see me the greatness of the Jewish people and that's why I looked around so once again that's a also a good message uh you know we have our and sometimes I have to say you know the letters they have to write they have to write these letters in case they die Etc and unfortunately many do die and uh we read you know the letters are made public I'm just I'm just in awe over the greatness that is expressed there it's not just yeah they fight of course they fight and they die but there's a spirituality there's a Holiness there's really really really a greatness and you know I I think all of us can stand in awe over the greatness of the Jewish Nish and that's what the bz rebbi said that even in Bergen bellson I can make the so that's that's what I want to share with you de [Music]