What Can We Learn from Chanukah? - Part 3 - Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb

as anyone yeah he's got a he's got stocking in a candle factory I think the point of it the point of it is to symbolize the number of the night so I don't see what the point that would be it is true that I'll tell you something else the minimal Mitzvah the Mitzvah that that's perfectly adequate to be satisfied is one candle / house / night so you have only one candle today okay and you can have 30 people living in the house wouldn't matter one candle / house / night now there are two ways in which the Tom would suggest upgrading and it's one is that each responsible adult shed light is on menorah and the other is that you should increase the number of candles per night a question of which takes precedence but there are two possible upgrades commentators ask why is this mr. structured like this why should it be abated minimum and then two upgrades a single upgrade you have very often there is the best way to do a mitzvah then there are certain parts of the midst of which if you omit them you are still satisfied at a minimal level but there's no other mid so that has built into its definition two upgrades and the answer that's given is this history tells us that they were looking for pure oil with which to light the menorah when they reset it up after pushing the Tsarina greeks out of jerusalem and they only found one container of pure oil what would they have done if they had found no containers of pure oil they would have used the file toil you are allowed to use the filed oil to motorboat Sieber is the way that which the tower puts it and you have no option to do the midst of the service in the temple other than to use items that are not pure you use them so finding the pure oil wasn't the difference between lighting and not lighting finding the bureau is the difference between lighting in the best possible way or lighting in an inferior way the whole miracle was to enable us to the limits in the best possible way not the maintenance of possible this was possible without it if the miracle was enable us to do the midst of the best possible way the rabbinic response is to structure the midst of such in such a way that the upgrades are prominent in the midst in a way that isn't any other Mitzvah and that's why there's a double upgrade because other ministers have a single upgrade this double upgrade to in it and it's not so difficult there was a time when people were very impoverished and then it was very difficult like that number of candles but always for some segment population it was not not important expense and yeah at times in history like now where it was an important expense for anybody so that means it's available to everyone to EE upgrade an enema Mitzvah and to show that we're what we are showing us precious here is the ability to upgrade to do things in the best possible way because that's what the miracle supported ok ok now last two days we made some remarks about it I give nature and how that for the Greek philosophical point of view nature's everything after my point of view there's no such thing as nature at all we proved that yesterday I'm not going to go through that again I said my two days ago that our attitude towards Greece is not utter rejection our attitude towards Greece is to find what aspects of their life style philosophy ideology can be incorporated into the tents of Torah and use it the parts that can't be have to be rejected but the parts of the can should be integrated yesterday I said that even though nature laws of nature causality has no ultimate reality but since God is committed to its appearing that way someone who studies the appearance analyzes it in detail and can predict what it requires will be able to tell us what to expect and that's why even the Jew who doesn't believe in nature takes aspirin for headache because God has committed that this pattern be continued in our observation that use of the Greek impulse to understanding through through science was practical question is whether there isn't a deeper spiritual use of the idea of nature and there is in order to explain this I want to give you an explanation of what happened to ottoman hava in the garden when they were confronted by the snake and they ate from the tree of knowledge now this is a story that has vast hidden dimensions that we don't really understand that doesn't mean we can't get anything out of it the explanations which which give us a superficial view and superficial you is true it's just that it doesn't real the great depths in the story of this alert has an essay in which he analyzes the nature of the test and the important implication of his essay which he points out is that our world is a replay of the test that he faced it's not just that that was historical event that took place and had a consequences and then we live in a different world no we carry our history with us the same type of challenge he faced is what we face and that means we can take we can get insight from bloody face in having failed and we're going to get some understanding of what our challenges are the idea of the snake is the idea of a temptation to evil that's external to the person the implication according to some is that the first two people who were created directly by God we're not capable of a deliberate transgression they were not capable of a deliberate transgression come to Adam and say look at this cheeseburger okay he didn't have a bomb achievers but look at this theft look look how beautiful it is look how look how the Prophet you'll make he can't hear you here's what she's talking about there's no internal motivation whatsoever for a deliberate transgression the only way they could fail is if they could rationalize to themselves that what they're doing is correct that in itself is what God wants they were capable of rationalization so the challenge has to be that he's faced with a rationalization his job is to see through and quickly identified that is false and to resist what's the rationalization well God said don't eat from the tree just clear that's the command but says Adam to himself I'm not capable of simply violating God's room I capable of doing that okay he said not to do it or they will do it but then it's trivial it's trivial nothing's been accomplished has there been any struggle hasn't been any great victory of good over evil of courage / when laziness and and and viciousness I'm just following my nature if I do that wouldn't it be better to eat from the tree once in even the tree wants would mean to internalize the impulse to evil as we are constituted every one of us is capable of doing something evil deliberately we're capable of it and we struggle with it wouldn't it be better he thought to internalize the impulse to evil and then conquer it and then not eat further from the tree and thereby win a great spiritual battle for the sake of God's will wouldn't that be better so now the normal response to such reasoning is sure we better but can't do it because God said don't do it but it's not so simple because Jewish law the torah from which the whole world is created does allow that on occasion a law of the Torah can be violated if it will lead to a great sanctification of God's name the Jewish court has the authority to do that prophets have the authority to do that and it has been done it's been done in the Tanakh when Elijah challenges the profits of bow to a contest in the Haifa area in the caramel mountains and he says you build an altar I build an altar and we'll put sacrifices on the altar a call to alcohol to the Creator you call to your phony gods and let's see who sends fire from heaven at that time there was a law that since the Temple in Jerusalem was standing no sacrifices are allowed to be offered anywhere else in the world from the time that it was built even when it's not standing so he was violating that law that's true but in order to defeat the profits of vow in an open contest and to create a sanctification God's name it's permissible to do that the Talmud has a number of cases where the courts violated certain laws of the Torah because by so doing they would create sanctification of God's name so now added reasoning continues she asked Scott said not to eat but look God knows that he made available to me the structure of the Torah so he knows i know this rule of the torah and he's taking it into account he told me not to eat he knows that I have a principle that could overrule his command not to eat so as to create a greater sanctification of his name God surely took all of this into account and he wants me to follow that meta rule and eat once and then resist the temptation to eat from the tree when I'm lowered to a position where I could deliberately do the wrong thing that was his reason at this point most people in the others say wow she sounds pretty good yeah what's wrong with that narrow Destler as exponent of the mooser movement where they take seriously deep self analysis particular analysis of your motivations said there are two ways to portray Adams position and Adam portrayed it to himself one way whereas the psychological reality was a different way i'll give you the two ways Oh way to portrayed it the way that I just said if I just don't eat from the tree then my sanctification of God's name and the world is trivial there's no battle there's no triumph it's trivial that's the way portrayed it to himself but in psychological reality was different and as you'll hear it's the same words with just a different emphasis if I just don't eat from the tree then my sanctification of God's name is trivial the second way is where I'm trivial I'm trivial what role that I play what did I accomplish what did I do I have become trivial I have no significance I have no meaning I have no value the question is whether the external sanctification of God's name in the world is trivial or whether I'm trivial and this was his challenge his challenge was to do a deep internal self analysis what is my true motivation to what extent is ego playing a role in this motivation and notice we're now talking about a spiritual ego we're not talking about ego to get money to get power Fame pleasure we're talking about a spiritual legal an ego to accomplish something spiritual that's also eagle that's also you and that was his challenge this challenge was to analyze what was really going on in his motivation to recognize that it was an expression of a spiritual legal a desire that I should be somebody somebody spiritual and then to have said that's not what God wants that's not worth accomplishing through violating a rule to make a bigger sanctification of God's name because it's not going to make a speaker sack tificate you guys think it's going to make me bigger making me bigger doesn't justify violating his rule he failed to the self analysis how why he failed was Esther doesn't say this is again just describing the surface and that's that was the failure in what he did okay that becomes now the theme of the aftermath the theme of the aftermath is to work on undermining the ego unempowered the ego facing where the ego is inclined to take charge inclined to demand expression and reinforcement and to say no and if you look at our world the world post even if you look at the word the world god structured the world we put it into it would put us into it you can see that it is designed to create multiple opportunities multiple dimensions in which the ego wants to be expressed wats reinforcement and our job is to at every point try to short-circuit that so how does it work in our world well just as the case at Adam but for us it's diffuse and more broadly spread out the ego wants credit for its accomplishments now Adam was put into a world in which the food arose naturally he didn't need garments the weather was ideal and there was no death no disease no accidents it was just one challenge we're put into a very different world we put it to a world where we have to take control of our lives we have to provide for ourselves all of our physical necessities social necessities including defense and yet somehow avoid the temptation of the ego to take credit for what we do so person works and earns a living yes you actually heard that any Shiva people work in our living the normal feeling is I put in the hours I studied I prepared I did what my job and I got paid I got paid because I worked I earned it I deserve it and I'm getting what I created for myself somehow we are challenged to get to let go of that to release that let me give you an analogy which may make this vivid let's imagine that IBM is advertising for new programmers and setting up week's trial to identify people who are talented and they're going to take five of them and hire them and put them into a new programming position so they take these hundred people they say here here's a programming language and here's a program we want you to write probably will do XYZ and they're writing their programs that running it's running sample runs and they're getting feedback they can use diagnostics and many don't get a probe that works at all and the number do get the program that works and some work better than others the end of the week five get the tap come in on Monday these five programs did work and worked well and your other are going to be new programmers fact they committed monthly morning and IBM represented system you guys are the most talented and we are confident that you're going to do well at IBM we so want to tell you something that none of your programs worked none of them worked listen what do you mean I read it I got the results I ran the diagnosis I no work no all the results that you got were fed to you by master programmers to see what you would do if it works will you try to improve it how we try to improve it when you rent Diagnostics the diagnostic results we're not given to you you're fed back false results so as to see what your next move would be to see whether you're creative whether you're inventive whether you have the imagination we set up a maze to see if you can run through the maze which approach didn't work you're the best guys you get the job but your progress didn't work do you think that you deflated probably probably because they were taking credit for creating a program that works something like that is how God runs the world we make efforts the results of our efforts are a gift God presents us with the results our efforts don't create the results think of what we said yesterday for those of you here yesterday if every movement moments is a new creation and no moment causes what happens in the next moment it can't be result of our efforts it's just a new creation of God in according to certain patterns so we make these efforts and God presents us with the results we said yesterday God is committed to a certain pattern of events he wants the events of all certain patterns one of the things that pattern does is to make it look like we produced the results it makes it look that way why does he want it to look that way because he wants to give us an opportunity to be sucked into the expression of the ego if it looks like I produce the results then I deserve credit reversibility results I made it happen and then the ego gets reinforced that I'm special I'm doing something that's precisely position God wants it to be in so as to be able to overcome it so before I enter into an effort I ask God for help and when I finish if the result that I was hoping for a arrives I expressed my gratitude to God for giving it to me asking for help and expressing gratitude are antidotes to the ego it's the same dynamic that Adam faced only Adam faced it in clearly spiritual terms here we're now translated it into physical terms but it's the same dynamic of denying the ego the picture we have we mentioned the other day here becomes very vivid the picture we have of every action is being makes a decision a decisions event in the soul free will as an exercise in the soul and then from there on the motions the body and the ripple effects into the environment are all a matter of the way God creates it because every action is a partnership every action is a partnership none of it's done alone the world operates in such a way that it's easy to miss that almost everyone does miss it and most of us who know it intellectually we know intellectually if you ask me a question I know the right answer to give but do I experience it that way do I feel it that way I know Destin another essay points out this is not just a question of knowing the right answer to luxury it's a question of how you experience the world the goal ultimately is to feel that when something happens in the world it's a direct divine creation so much so some of you know the the katha movie expression ain't some holidays we do not rely on miracles just as a footnote I should tell you all Talmudic rules have exceptions that's the way they wrote that was the start of the literature and many general statements in the written Torah also have exceptions it's not a failure it's not that it was sloppy it's not whatever that there are calories ables if that's the way the literature expresses itself when you'll study literature's of other cultures you understand that yeah different literature's have different modes of expression and well that's the points out cases in the Talmud where there were people who did rely miracles one is a famous case with Lena Mendoza was friday afternoon and his daughter was setting up the lights for shabbos by mistake she poured vinegar into the lamp instead of oil and she lit the wicks and then realized it was vinegar now he's stuck once once the eyelid you've already accepted shabbos on yourself and the wick is flammable but the vinegars like gonna burn david also said don't worry listen to his words he who commanded oil to burn will command vinegar to burn and it did burn now that's obviously a miracle but listen to his words he commanded oil to burn why is all burn don't talk to me about molecules and oxidation the Creator commanded oil to burn the same creator whose command vinegar burner and there's no difference there's no difference between them oil burning is just as surprising as vinegar burning or neither am I surprising the fact of the molecular structure what you know about oxidation is irrelevant it's all a divine creation a person who sees and feels and experiences the world continuously as a divine creation camelia miracles the only person can't rely on miracles who doesn't is a person who doesn't see it that way who doesn't feel it that way but once a person has reached the point where oil burning a vinegar burning are equivalent in his experience there's a point in hiding anything from him he also there was a poisonous creature of some kind called on our roads it's not clear exactly what the creature was lived in a hole in his area people were afraid of it rightly so he said show me where it lives and they showed him he took off his sandal and put his bear heel on the hole and this creature sense that something was there and came and bit him and this poisonous creature died and they carried him on the shoulders back to the to the house of study and he said this is the teacher that it's not the road that kills it's in that kills arrow doesn't kill the cigna kills now he thereby did an open miracle but the same thing is true if you experience the whole world as equally miracle there's a point in that it hiding miracles from such a person that's the goal and that means to subtract the entirely the big enemy of seeing the world as a continuous miracle is the ego because when I make an effort i want to take credit for it I can only take credit for it if it's not completely a divine production completely a divine gift I can only take credit for it if I made it happen and I can only make it happen if i push God's activity out of the way in which nature works so it's the ego that's driving me not to see the truth now this is a physical example we also have it in spirituality as well there's a famous statement the Tom but now this timeless power of the state is paraphrased in the language that people use I mean stated to you the way its power faced God says to to a Jew fiscally PESA to the Jewish people piss Willy pesca judicial naka 9ef doc with a kid Pisco Cholula open up for me an opening the size of the eye of a needle and I will open up for you the entranceway to a great hall that bothered me many years ago many years ago I'm very old maybe 40 years ago then the idea is you make an effort do something spiritual and I will invite you into the world to come through the entrance way of a great hole so I said to one of my colleagues here Oh ship indras why is gone playing cat and mouse with us if I have to go through the entrance way to a whole give me the power to open up the entranceway to the hall why is he say I should open up only the the eye of a needle and then god whooping up he said because the illusion that you are making it happen the illusion that you are creating the result is not only an illusion in physical matters it's an illusion in spiritual matters also my god is saving you from that illusion it doesn't want you to be subject to that illusion so you make the effort which punctures by the way when you open the high of an e needle needles metal and yet to puncture it all the way through that's a qualitative description of what needs to be done as to be a hole all the way through but it's a hole all the way through something that's tiny thin and God opens up the whole you hear it you feel it as a response to your effort but not its created by your effort and you are saved from the spiritual ego now that's at the end of time but in the meantime in the meantime that's the crucial that's a crucial element of this of this challenge person works very hard work hard to improve his character works hard to improve his performance of mitzvahs and he has some success and that's not a bad way of putting it has not created caused forced but he has he has success yeah how did he have it anythings will I worked hard I worked on that's true but so what so what have you worked hard the right thing to say is I worked on and God crowned my efforts would success because that's a response that he wanted me to have and as I said before the neighbor of Dessler it's not enough to know the right answer it's it's it's to experience it that way where does the experience show how do you look at other people who don't have success how do you look at them do you sneaking lee feel a certain superiority well of course he's not succeeding because you're not working like i'm working do you work like i'm working he'd make it to how can i say that i could only say that if you worked where I'm working he'll also be successful if I thought that my work was producing the success if I give that up how do I know what would happen to him if he worked like I'm working maybe had more success may be less success it's a gift that God gives to put you into the next step of the of the maze that he wants you to face she can't say something like that there's that's the same problem of facing the facing the temptation of the ego took to assert itself to try to overcome it that means that we are living Adams challenge continuously only for Adam it was comprehended in a single challenge but because of his nature that we can't understand that the nature of the conditions that we can't understand it was all of our reality plus much more all integrated into a single challenge price has been split up that's one of the reasons so many people so many people because it split up each one of us faces it in a particular way each of the conditions of life house as the cherem the way of God has its own challenge and no two are the same let's take any money it makes a big difference if you start off poor and you earn your money that's different from inheriting a lot of money but keeping it up or maybe increasing its up the temptation in the first case is much higher much harder than sonication second case because the second case you just continuing what you had hey you're making it so to speak from nothing what happens if the person starts off wealthy and loses everything and then has to build it up from nothing that in a certain sense come even harder because becoming poor is a shock it destroys his sense of confidence his sense of position sense of solidity and then he has to reach to recover it that's the third way in which the challenge of wealth is has to be faced and it's endless did your competition from siblings and you're the only sibling that made it so then that's also a challenge to feel I'm better than all my siblings the variations on life conditions are variations on the challenge that you have to meet in subduing the ego the compound integrated challenge of Adam is split up into thousands millions and billions of people and each one has his own slice of that challenge that he has to as the face and overcome ok so now nature the appearance of nature is what facilitates this spiritual challenge the appearance of nature is what makes it possible for me to think that I made the product I my sponsor the product well it's a physical product or a spiritual product rosewill product we based on psychological nature extent to which i think that psychology is subject to my control am I my creativity problem in certain ways in which people I built character is built motivations are built and in that way to try to take credit for what I'm doing I'm together so far okay so now there are certain strategies built into the Torah which enable a person to try to overcome this and the one that I mentioned before is a crucial strategy again Sato in the way of God points this out in this chapters on prayer you start every morning with prayer I thought that says among other things what you're doing in the morning is this is a prelude to a daytime of effort what you say in the prayer is I know that everything comes from you and therefore i'm asking you for success when you ask for success several things are happening number one I'm acknowledging that it comes from him and number two on a deeper level this I saw an SLR of matty c o'sullivan who's the musky aachen in lakewood they should have a full recoveries not well when you ask for something in prayer you have to believe that God is listening and if you ask well if you ask meaningfully if you if you invest yourself in the prayer that could make the difference because gago say if you're praying in that way I'm going to answer you and if not not which means if you do that in the morning you say listen all of what I'm doing in the day for it to be successful depends upon how I prayed the prayers of the morning the rest of it is just what I have to do to make an opportunity for God to give it back to me and get back to me in a way that isn't an open miracle because I'm not worthy of open miracles the real source of the successes that I prayed and God answered me and he gave this to me as a gift if I carry that consciousness with you as you go through the day then you i have an integral available for this temptation of the ego and also when you say thank you every prayer ends with an expression of gratitude I became you say the silent prayer next list plastic is an expression of gratitude that becomes crucial to this point of view because it's the gratitude which then subdues the claims of the ego to the prior successes and understands that they are the blanket this is the challenge of understanding who we are what we are what row we're playing in the world and that everything that we do in the world is an intimate relationship partnership with God that's the challenge you