The Omission of Chanukah from Al Hamichyah | Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

sound a little odd but it actually does have a justification um it is connected to Kaneka which I understand is past uh but but you'll see that it is connected to a much more general idea which is very very relevant and that is uh let's talk a little bit about let's compare birat which we recite on bread with Alika that we recite on MOS wine or on fruit of the seven species the sh right there's there is Al now in reality we know that B on bread is a Torah commandment that's the PK for the other things is unless there's bread there is no of but we know that Al is supposed to be so to speak a summary an encapsulation of the longer beatas so baton uh originally had three Bros and then a fourth BR was added so what are the three Bros that were the original part of bat braa number one is the BR of H that thanks Hashem for food and that was actually written we are told by Moshe rabenu at the time that the M was falling every day to thank Hashem for the M the second is a for the gift of is right and that ends with and that was authored by Yeshua benun when we entered ER the Third braa asking for hashem's mercy on and on the B mikdash ending with was actually written part of it by Dav and part of it by schl now keep in mind obviously it had a different form in those days meaning it didn't say rebuild J but it was thanking hasem so the BR got modified after theban but the third braa which is asking for mercy on and the B mikdash is from d and Sho and for a long time after from the time of schl that was the end of meaning ended and in fact that's why the is there because for certain Mitzvah when you finish a Mitzvah you say amain uh now the fourth braa was added much much later the fourth braa was not the part of the original batone the fourth braa was added in the aftermath of betar to remember the chronology here a little bit the second B mikash was destroyed by the Romans in let's say the year 69 or 70 there's Aus anywhere between 68 and 70 is theban BAS sheney and a few decades later we had the Barba Revolt which was the attempt to overthrow Roman rule and indeed to even rebuild a third B some there's AR there's archaeological evidence that of some on the harab itself of of attempts to build a third Temple and it makes perfect sense because remember rabi aiva himself thought Barba was mashia and as a result RAB AKA felt there was warrant to rebuild a third B mikash it turned out that he was not that gets that gets us into a whole other question was RAB AKA wrong or was it simply bar could have been mashia but the generation was not worthy meaning as they put it is bar a false mashia or a fails mashia right different ways of looking at it I don't want to get into that uh but uh what happened was uh um hadrien as pasionis quer uh was very very uh sick and tired this was the second major Revolt that had happened in less than a hundred years and hadrien was determined to crush the Revolt mercilessly and we had a massive massive massive massacre at betar the numbers was also on the nth of nth of and the numbers that were given for arug betar in the gamor are literally in the millions and the mforum say that they're exaggerated numbers but it was a tremendous catastrophe much greater in number of deaths than theb b mikdash itself and the Romans did not allow the Barry the bodies to be buried for three years they wanted the bodies to decompose and to rot hundreds of thousands of bodies and a miracle happened for three years and a week the corpses remained unburied and they didn't decompose it was truly a supernatural nce after three years and a week in other words the ofb was the nth of three years and a week later is the 15th of [Music] har because there was no point anymore at this point it became a miracle if anything the Romans were discredited so theug betar were allowed to be buried and to commemorate this Sim in spite of the tragedy enacted the God is good and God does good that the bodies didn't decompose for God does good that the bodies were given a a burial and that is the fourth and that ends with the words which is why once again we answer aain to that and that is actually the end of benching the that come later are technically not part of benching they were added uh much later and that's why if you're benching on a cup of wine so you the person who's benching holds the cup of wine until and then puts it down because is finished that is why Hally you are allowed to talk after that point you can't talk in you're allowed to talk after Al now because the AL are technically not part of the benching the Von actually said you should not say because you're asking Hashem for things outside of the misar of and one does not ask for personal requests on chabas I understand that there are some yesos that do not even say the har during the week because they say if it's not part of benching for B Torah uh we shouldn't prolong the benching I always find that very very uh not convincing because you know if you were like the V go who by the way said the har during the week but you were measuring B in terms of minutes okay but come on uh the Haram are going to add the haran are going to add two to three minutes even if you go slow to Bening T you know we're not going to prolong Bening well I'm sure there's a lot of other conversations that if you have to make Cuts so to speak there are other things you can uh you can cut but okay um so that's the structure of benching and by the way just to point out in benching itself you see an ascendancy of the depth of gratitude meaning the first braa is thanking Hashem for the obvious miraculous things like M the second is thanking Hashem for ER Isel that requires a lot of human effort but you still see the hand of God the third is to thank Hashem even when there's destruction and Devastation asking AEM to rebuild the Temple and the fourth brother is the greatest Mish Calamity death har imagine this hundreds of thousands of corpses around the ground and yet kazal saw that we have to Express gratitude that we could give them a Jewish burial that's a very very high level of of being grateful to aadesh even with the greatest adversity now this is the structure of birat Al which we recite for mizono for wine and for any of the seven species uh is considered to be a summary of the blessings of birat now its name in kazal although it's not an accurate name is called may shal it is a summary of the three blessings but obviously just like the name Shimona is not accurate because orig it was 18 then became 19 so in reality Al is now may it is a summary of the four blessings but the name shal is an earlier time it's a very old name that predates har so now let's look at the of I'm sorry I didn't bring my PowerPoint presentation and let's identify what corresponds to theim of so we start off saying sustenance uh so that refers to that's thanking God for food in general then it says on the beautiful expansive land that corresponds to then it says that corresponds to the ending with the sentence now the fourth bra is picked up at the very end that picks up now one thing that I do want to focus though is in the AL summary that corresp responds to the third braa there are certain deviations changes that are that are somewhat interesting let's compare the ra of with the of and you'll see a little bit of a difference says based we ask God to have mercy on the based of it now first three are the same but then we omit bed of it and we add on your altar does although it's a different wording it does correspond to B so you see two things you see that in Al we [Music] omit a reference to the restoration of and as we don't have and on the other hand we insert a special bakha in addition to the B we insert a special not just that's the and such a reference to does not appear in so in the paraphrase or the summary of the of there are two differences between the AL for formulation and the one is picks up and that's not picked up in the and the second is OMS which is mentioned in uh so there wasn't a that that that might be a possibility now uh in fact that might be good because I don't I don't really have a good answer for that one I I do have an answer for why does Al highlight when does not highlight there's a a nice terce from rev hutner that says the following he says that Alik is not limited to bread in fact we don't we don't recite Alik for bread but Al mik is always connected uh to the seven species of because first of all even MOS wheat and Etc is one of the shiv and wine is grapes one of the sh and really any fruit is so is connected to all of the seven species of Isel unlike which is only connected to grain to bread now raut points out that there is a special Mitzvah connected with the sh when the B and that was the Mitzvah of bringing BM the Mitzvah of bringing your first fruits uh actually applied to the shasam wheat and barley as well now when you brought your BM to the B mikdash the ceremony was you brought your basket with fruit you gave it to the co and the Coen put it down in front of the m and then you recited the verses that we know from the of P that the tried to destroy my father and he went down to MIT and God took a out of M you recite that many history so since when we say the AL we think of the sh and the sh the Mitzvah of sh the shim had a special Mitzvah called B and B was connected to the so therefore we kind of remember the idea of asking Hashem to restore the m so we can express our gratitude for the shim not only in but in the Mitzvah of bringing Bim themselves now since is not intrinsically connected to the so there's no reference to M there's only a reference to the Bas of mikash as a whole this is ruffner's answer however rutner only answers one of the two questions meaning he answers why we insert m in Al but he does not answer why we omit a reference to malus bavid that appears in benching so the answer that you suggested might be a very interesting one that perhaps this emanates from the time of the which was a time in which we didn't have based of it but in a way the argument almost goes the other way around if you don't have itka is when you ask for it unless you're going to say the themselves didn't allow it which would be kind of a censorship argument well again you know obviously we're we're kind of reluctant to assume that an official of was affected by censorship but it wouldn't be the only time you know the the 19th BR of the amida I mean it's not the 19th in position but it was the last Edition the last one that was added which is the against the Heretics underwent quite a lot of censorship in fact the that we say today is not the original in the days of the original was much more denunciatory and negative and they talked about the evil empire Etc now much later although this is not from kazal the last stanza of Mo right Mo spells out Mor not the mor por but the anonymous otherwise Anonymous author of Mo uh his name was Mori and each stanza spells out his name a letter of his name but the last stanza expose your strong arm that's kak be strong uh that is written right each stanza is connected one of the guses the first stanza is General Hashem saves us the second is mim the third is Babel the fourth is Persia uh the fifth is y that's and the sixth is against the Roman gas that we're still in uh and that was censored uh by censors over the years because it referring to the church Christianity what whatever it would be so soos do undergo censorship so who knows perhaps your suggestion is right but okay now so so the point basically is that with some differences that one needs to think about the is a summary of birat by the way there's one other example of something that might be summary and that is the Friday night Z of which in the sedur is the last a lot of people don't follow orders but technically zirus have an order although most people don't follow it in particular andalo is said to be the Z that is sung before Bening fact that's why it ends Al we're going to thank God on a CO that's a to benching and if you look at it every stands up corresponds to a of uh now because of this it is said that one shouldn't say because it could be on a d level they have fulfilled bat because the exact text is not a and therefore it's improper to fulfill your benching other than the that gave you so he actually was against if you didn't have yeah yeah yeah but but but but again check I don't have it in front of me but check every every benching every stance that corresponds to a of it is the is the segue into into B of course uh you know lvx don't like to sing anyway so they always look for it with I mean uh the grow was against Shalom for other reasons because uh at least the St that says you're not supposed to ask angels to bless you only Hashem blesses you right so there are different things that that get attacked even inas at the very end of uh there's a paragraph We ask the the bring our prayers to God so once again the was against that because he says a Jew never prays to anyone anything other than we don't pray to we don't pray to intermediaries uh when you go to which the grow was not so much in favor of anyway but you know you pray to Hashem that in the Merit of the sadic Hashem should bring a Yeshua one does not direct their FAS to the sadic itself yeah that's um if you're going to tell me is that the way everybody practices it the answer is no and there's a a lot of problems in this area but at least in principle we only direct our to our KES so now now so now let's move this to point number two we know in B there are special inserts for festive days shabes and even now Al also has references to what are called mentioning special days shabes y but alas as you may have noticed a few weeks ago there is no mention in the AL of any reference to khaka and so the question is just a simple question I I know it's not Kan but I think this will give us an insight into the structure of so I give myself permission to kind of uh talk about this and that is that's what this is called in other words you mention something about the special occasion why is there no in Al for and now you might come up with a preliminary answer that sounds logical but it's not a good answer you might say well maybe Al only picks upos that are so important that if you miss them in benching you'd have to repeat Bening so for example Rich say and Y if you missed it in benching you'd have to repeat so it's so fundamentally a part of benching that it gets picked up in Al but if I missed alhan again po him in benching I don't have to repeat so maybe something that's less essential to Bening doesn't get picked up in Al and that might be a good answer but the reason why that's not a good answer is because if I skip in thees I do not have to repeat Bening and yet it still is mentioned in in other words picks up even if it's something that you don't have to repeat in Bening so the question is KH and porm should at least be as important as ofes yeah yeah so that that's so well that that that that actually is Aus if you if you said R and didn't say y some say you do have to repeat it because because in a shabas meal everything is essential that that's that's correct um oh you want you want to use that to salvage the answer so maybe you wouldn't have to repeat even on shabas okay I hear I hear like that like that sheet did that would work yeah no I understand uh yeah yeah but but no no but he's saying a little bit more he's saying that even if you said RIT say and didn't say yalo there are some opinion some opinions that say you got to repeat benching just for yalo alone that could be a and por are purely Rabin holiday that might so but let me share with you a v from raim salv brisker uh really beautiful V and he answers another wonderful ker with this and that is you know um I think the newer art SC sitter may have it they came out with the second edition the mnes tells us in Bros that normally you D Inon but if you're uh in a place where it's difficult to D in a whole doing maybe it's dangerous to stop so there is something called an abbreviated now the truth is you don't really gain so much in terms of abbreviation this is called and the way having works is you have the first three bras and you have the last three bras which is and so the first three and the last three I don't want to say you're stuck with but you got to say but the middle B the middle requests so there's a single paragraph in which you just have like a few words for everyone like says Hashem give me knowledge help me to do chuva forgive my sins redeem me give mea it's like and it ends with this is called Tas now there is a super duper duper short one which is literally just one line but there's a very big difference between havo and the super duper short one the super duper short one if you find you later have time to do a full am you got to do a full oneu once you did it your y you don't have to do the longer strong okay this is called havu know havu because give us understanding because that's the first bra that's summarized in the paragraph So the brings a m of Shu the am Shu that says hav is great but you cannot recite Habu in the MV of Mo shabas the first when chabas is over even though it's a weekday daving you cannot recite hav and the reason is because in that daving you have to insert a paragraph about havdalah that Hashem separates B KES and that's not in the havu text therefore havu is not suitable for Mo shabas so the gamorra asks the obvious question put it in I mean what's the problem havu puts in every BR that's part of the am If part of the is just put right in the of knowledge so the gamar doesn't answer the question the gamar asks the question on sh and the gamar says Kasha it's a good K we don't is a now we know when the gar some sometimes has unanswered questions there are different leonos that are used sometimes the word that uses means utterly refuted and sometimes it says K and the Aron say there's a little bit of a difference between t and Kusha the word t basically means this opinion is totally discredited and we throw it away kha means it's difficult but there really is an answer maybe it's not so good and we don't want to give the answer but there's an answer meaning Kusha suggests there's a glimmer of hope and this is very strange because e and that's why sometimes even an opinion that is labeled Kusha we P him like that opinion we never P like a t a t is a declaration that this is an unsalvageable opinion K maybe we do Pas and indeed the pasin that we do not say in the arit of Mo shabas because we're not able to add the Hava why not so Ru one of the great great wrote the saer Shar cha the gates of repentance but he was also a great POS and interpreter of gamorra and in masas Bros we have a commentary on the riff written described to T if you look in the back of BR you'll see so they record his teachings he explains the following about Hab the only thing that can be incorporated Inu is that which is a complete bra of the amid meaning to say the amid of there's a br about wisdom that gets in there's a br about chva that gets in there's a br about that gets in there's a about K meaning it takes the Bros and turns them into phrases in but anything that does not have its own distinct bra but is only aaf that is Incorporated in another bra cannot gain a phrase in because there's no to which it corresponds havala in the amida is not a separate braa there is no BR in [Music] the that's the that we're going to say later in the haval is simply a it is an additional component to the bra asking hasem for knowledge and wisdom so since the havala in the amid is not it cannot be an amendment to by the way for the same reason exact same reason you can't say because you can't put in meaning unless something is a it does not gain admission because every phrase in hav has to correspond to a to a wellu is also uh part of a braa but it's part of it's a to a uh it's not a separate huh you can say no you can say R say but but but Y is not is a to he says cannot have phrases that are not Standalone Bros in terms of their overall theme oh because it's the same token as would say I understand but that's true is also part of a but says since the idea of is not as a separate it can't make so yalo can also not uh there's no separate braa for yalo it's part of the braa the of of of now so again this is a technicality in the huh that that's correct also that well well um that that might be an answer in other words you're saying a different answer that that havu only picks up things that you have to repeat but the EMS is uh that um even okay but you can't do it I mean you're right does not make does not make that difference all right this is I know it's a technical construct but this is the technical construct that he places so wants to say the following this is his he wants to apply the same analytical construct that t applied toasu he wants to apply to Alik that is Alik picks up only those aspects of that are Standalone BR so Alik picks up food ma m it picks up it picks up it picks up but are not Standalone Bros they're always within existing Bros so it doesn't pick it up ah you'll ask me what does that mean picks up say ah so here's something that maybe you've never noticed I didn't notice until I saw but it's so obvious let's look at the difference let's take the word I mentioned both in Bening and in Al right the sentence but did you ever think about the difference in positioning where do you say say in you say it in the third bra before right you start and then you say meaning it's before when do you say in you actually say it after why do you mention after in but you mention it before in right it's a question that you know perhaps you never even noticed it's a but it's a very interesting question so says the f the reason why I say R say in Alik is not because it corresponds to the in but because there are cases where R say can become a standalone bra and there's a very narrow window of opportunity for that and again let me illustrate the here let's illustrate the here let's say I forgot to say R say so if I remember before I say the words before I say hashem's name in Bon in other words I forgot to say I said no problem I just go back and I say but what if I already went as far as saying and if I finished but I didn't yet start the next paragraph So if you look in your Arts scr sitter or or Corin sitter whichever one you like to use you will see that there's a that you can say to make up and that has a very narrow window of opportunity you only say that braa if you remember the Omission between and the next bra once you began the next bra you got to go back to the beginning of Ben but in that narrow window there's actually a br that you recite for shabas fores for y for y for so now if you go with the idea that everything that's mentioned in Al has to correspond to a br invention and not just a you understand why the Y has to be mentioned after yeah because that's where the BR would be recited meaning be in other words it's not that when you're drawing a line let's say you have benching and you have Alam mik and you're drawing a line connecting the parts of alam mik to the parts of benching uh do not draw the line as you would think R matches r no R does not match in Alik matches you see so that's an amazing thing therefore the only thing that makes Alik is that which is a br and its own in its own within H and that will pick up shabes y but Al you will recall that if you missed there is no makeup that's actually I mean there's a say but that's that's not that's a a later there is certainly no with therefore to Simply put in the AL wouldn't fit again's idea here is that the structural technical uh way that understood the braa of havu is the way we understand the braa of of Al now when so therefore bit soit what is's answer the reason why there is noar of and in Al is there is never an occasion where khaka and purm are mentioned as a separate autonomous in it is always just a to an existing bra and in existing braas do not find their incorporation in again this is a very very brilliant answer based in and again it's what's especially nice uh is that it explains why the mention of shabes Y is after in rather than before because it is not not corresponding to it's corresponding to the ETC that you can see in the in the sitter so it's a wonderful wonderful terit but when push comes to shove what you've done is you you've answered one question and you simply create another question and that is the following is essentially answering we don't mention and because they don't get their own if you miss them in so we've now answered so we can ask the question on the level of B how come I mean just ask the same question how come if I miss if I miss y there's a makeup between if I miss there's no makeup see is taking that and then explaining that's great but we can ask the same question on itself why should there not be a makeup braa for Kaneka and porim just as is so again some of what you said you know might very well be an answer maybe they're purely raban even rodes although rodes is not user in but the Holiness of Roes as a festive is a Torah laes is a festive day in the sense of special coros so maybe this idea of the braa is only for uh dois um some give a different answer some say the following that the truth of the matter is that and we talked about this again I don't want to be too Mar Ina generally but I I think I one of the things that we brought out in the in the sh about khaka was that originally the Mitzvah of lighting candles may not have been the original way Kaneka was celebrated that may have been added later the original way Kana was celebrated are doesn't say NEOS Hal we know what Hal is that's pretty clear Hal is recited eight days what is h gratitude so Rashi explains is Alan which is of course in the blessing of giving thanks by the way that's true think about this that's true both for Shimon and for B because in we say not in the asking God to restore the aod we say it in the bra of modin gratitude because Hal is khah is we express KHAK in former days of gratitude in Bening as well we don't say you see the parallels are very much the same and Y are in the asking for the restoration of the temple but right that's why it's so easy to forget Alan invention because you're you're used to the insertions later on you're not used to an insertion that early in benching but the reason is very simple the second BR of Bening is no we thank hash so NEOS came later or may have come later said AOS which to us is the main thing of Kaneka may have been a later Edition but the original essence of Kaneka was but if you look in the it appears that the original of was only in Shon not in and the reason is that is something that should be done in a public forum and since teila is done in a minion even though I'm ding silently so inore was regarded as a public Declaration of gratitude that would often be recited privately so if you look in in the sugya it actually comes out that there actually is no at all originally to say alhan in bir it only became a Min of unlike r where there's a so as a result it doesn't have a because if you miss it there was no it was only a a right that would answer that that question okay so that's again again I again I apologize for talking about Kana uh but but I think structurally to understand the idea of Al and it's a very very interesting analysis and this highlights something if I digress for a moment uh a little bit of uh an underreported feature of the brisker Derk which actually is not even followed by so many briskers today when you when you think of the brisker Derk you think of very very deep analysis complicated analysis subtleties but one of the Hallmarks of a real brisker analysis is to Simply notice things that are often not noticed things that a child could know right you could have you know you could have your six-year-old ask you a question how come is before in in in Bening and it's a simple type of question it's almost a childlike type of question that we often don't bother to notice don't bother to to to ask and the Hallmark of a real brisker der is you notice everything and that's something very worthwhile again we see we saw this with salc all the time I mean a lot of times he would just notice it why is alenu here and not there wise that most of us don't you know don't even think necessarily it's such a big deal but a person notices notices everything so that's something to keep in mind that you got to keep your eyes open and when there are anomalies in the way a is formulated that is something that one should pay one should be very very careful careful attention attention to but be as it may this reminds me of another story you know theas about forgetting is a L part of the what if you forget this you miss this you do this makeups so in the early years of where M were trying to discredit as not knowing they used to have public debates about so they tell the story that uh someid was debating some MN and some misn started piling him on with questions what if you forget this and you forget you forget and you know and the didn't know what to do and he says you see you don't know any of theas about forgetting things so the says we don't forget meaning you why do I have to know all theas if you forget stuff a who doens withana doesn't forget you you concentrate on your and you say right it's very similar they say that um it's not not true in every case of course but uh a good Ritson will never let her uh Rabbi husband do anything in the kitchen because he's going to mess everything up mil because he'll know oh you know all of the right what is what is you learn is all about mistakes but a good culture kitchen you know doesn't make mistakes right so uh so why do why do you have to know so the yeah so the man you know okay I can make this I can do this I can I can cut it it's cold you know Etc uh so there is a concept that a lot ofak is how we react to suboptimal situ ation now again accidents happen of course they happen and that's why we have to have rules but a person should try to live their life uh where you know you don't have a constant you know I have this I I try to be polite but sometimes I get you know the same questions from the same people over and over and over and over and over again about milk fling and that and you know I'm thinking to myself hey you know why don't you just straighten yourself out get your act together I try I try not to communicate that but but you know uh certainly once you try to live a type of life where these Mix-Ups are again they'll always happen of course they'll always happen but you try to minimize it that makes life a lot easier if you create the systems where you don't come to all of the b or all of the sh or all of the emergency rules uh that one has to have so there's a lot of wisdom in that answer hey we don't forget so you know we don't have to know all of the areas of uh areas of mistake okay maybe we'll stop a little early today um I apologize and you have a good uh good week and