What Can We Learn from Chanukah? - Part 5 - Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb

there's a problem that we all face and that is that certain things repeat over and over again and become very familiar with them and then we take them for granted and we stop thinking about them and then all of a sudden we discover that things aren't the way we thought they don't mean what we thought and it's a bit of a jolt to me it's always a joke because I think of myself as an intelligent thinking person and then I discovered that I was asleep when I was was dealing with these things this happens with the texts of Prayer very regularly I want to share one with you right now at the bottom of the page in the gray is the addition that we insert in the prayers for the two holidays konica important want to go through the one that describes Hanukkah and I'm going to read through it as I read through it think about Hanukkah think about what you know of a conical what we're doing and see how the text relates to what's going on for the miracles a Salvation mighty deeds victories battles you perform for our forefathers these days at this time the days of Martha CEO so I'm the Oakland High Priest the husband Aaron and his sons when the wicked Greek kingdom rose up against your people in Israel to make them forget your Torah and compel them to stray from the statues of your will you and your great mercy stood up for them and the time of their distress you took up their grievance judge their claim avenged their wrong you delivered the strong into the hands of the week the many into the hands of the few the imperior to the hands of the pure the wicked at the hands of the righteous and the wanton and hands the diligent students of your toes for yourselves you made a great and holy name in your world and for your people Israel you work the great victory and salvation as this very day therefore your children came to the Holy of Holies of your house cleansed your temple purified the sight of your holiness and kindled lights and the courtyards of your sanctuary and they established these eight days of Hanukkah to express thanks and praise to your great name something strike you as odd here no how about something odd by omission if all you had was this text that was the only source you had about about about Hanukkah what would you be missing you'll be missing the miracle the oil there isn't a clue here death is a miracle of the oil it's all about battles armies victories the many into the hands of the few the strong at the hands of the week it does say at the end they cleaned out the temple and dedicated it lit lights but so I think that's a miracle they're involved I think that's passing strange so maybe you'll find that ok when weird Avenue and in the big house of Muslims we say after after eating bread it's the same paragraph for some reason or other it should be it should be omitted overlooked how about when we're actually lighting the menorah actually lighting the menorah aren't we lighting the menorah in order to commemorate the miracle of the oil isn't that why we're doing it right the middle of the page this is the paragraph that we say why we're lighting the candles these lights we Kindle upon the miracles the wonders the salvations and the battles which you perform for our forefathers in those days at this season through your holy priests during all eight days of Hanukkah these lights are sacred we're not permitted to make ordinary use of them or to look at that have no respect thanks appraise your great name for your miracles your wonders and your salvations any clue here there was a miracle of the oil and the only thing that's mentioned in any detail is salvation said bowels that's clearly the war isn't that strange when you're lighting the menorah shouldn't you say and you made America or other lasted eight days instead of one day but not a word that's very strange that needs to be explained boooya number two the morale wrote a whole essay on Hanukkah called a mitzvah he says something which isn't obvious to many but he says it and he himself is a major authority he says that if you had been observing the battles of the Maccabees against the Greek army you would not have seen any open miracles it would not have seen any open miracles I which I said that many into the hands of the few of the straw at the hands of the week is that really unheard of in history don't remind Americans about the Vietnam era when a primitive primitive backwardation somehow stymied the Americans to the point where they ended up with the whole country making a communist and I'm confident that no people here from Britain's will be embarrassed by the independence war of the Americans against the British where the British had one of the finest armies in the world and that was a time when they said the Sun never sets on the British Empire because they had provinces over the world they sent their fine army to America and they were defeated by a bunch of ragtag amateurs doesn't it happen that smaller weaker less well equipped armies defeat greater armies especially when the smaller is fighting on his home turf for independence and when the attacker he could represent a empire but they're mercenaries they're people who are paid to fight and have no personal stake in winning or losing other than getting paid doesn't it happen in Natural History what we think of as natural history where the smaller less well-equipped army defeats the greater our me says the Maya Rao if you had been attached to the Maccabee enforces you would not have seen the earth open up under the Greek forces and swallow them up more boulders fall down from Heaven's on them with no open miracles now says their emphasis in the prayers is to teach us something crucial about the message of Hanukkah this is a application of the thing we've been talking about for four days theme of nature and that is that we should not divide the world into miracles which happened once in a thousand years and that's where God acts in the world and the rest of that I'm God is on vacation and nature carries the world and God intervenes when he deems it necessary to intervene in the rest of the time it carries on its own that's a mistake the point of Hanukkah is to teach you how to look at the seemingly natural that's the point of it yes the open miracle was the miracle of the oil but the point of that miracle is to teach you how to look at the war that's the real message real message is to look at the war in a different fashion how do the two inter interact how do they relate well after all who started the war you read now everywhere certainly in the sanctified New York Times that's irony case you missed it and other places as well the first war of national liberation the first war that's support of universal human rights and conscience and freedom and some of the so on well don't tell us the people who might be too offended upset by it but that's just baloney the Maccabees were not in favor of freedom of religion they would not have been happy they would not have tolerated someone who wanted to practice polytheism and idol worship in the Land of Israel on the grounds that we just fought a battle for freedom and self-determination no the Maccabees represented the truth of the Torah and the Torah is god's way that the world has to run in particular how the Jewish world jewish people has to run and it was to remove oppression that stopped them from fulfilling what the Torah wants for me was not the beginning of a national liberation war as certain political parties want to use it too was reinforced their own ideologies not at all now it was started by the Maccabees who were priests it started when a certain abomination took place in the temple that the Greeks offered a pig not as if pigs were specifically now not only designed to spite us the use of pigs the sacrifices was very widespread in the non-jewish world it was very widespread but to offer a pig in the Jewish temple is that just a Greek saying let's still hear what we usually do they knew very well what they were doing they knew what we stood for it they knew what what role the pig has an art in our thought system they did it to say we're Greek applying it in such a way that we're digitizing we're going to do something which is an abomination to you in your own holiest place and it was the Maccabees as priests who led the revolt the revolt was specifically theological wasn't liberal politics it was theological and outraged his head had taken place in the location that God makes his presence felt and we can't live with it and we're prepared to put our lives down for that so how does the war proceed they're all proceeds from out the North that driving the Greeks and Syrian Greeks back to the north there in Jerusalem which is only halfway through the war did not end when they conquered Jerusalem we cleaned out the temple and instead of the menorah and that the lights didn't end it and when I for once afterwards they come into the temple they clean it out and they like the menorah immediately there's a miracle immediately is a miracle if you are fighting this battle what do you feel when that miracle takes place what you feel is God is with us we made the right decision and he's behind us and he's showing us that he's with us it isn't as if maybe we should call off the war oil is the whole thing let's double the oil production and let's export it the rest of the world the convert them no no they continue the battle but since the battle was for the sake of rededicating the temple they get confirmation that the war is something that God wants and that he's with them in the war this is the crucial message when you are living your life and things happen the way you expected to happen or within the range of normal variations normal fluctuations and you think to yourself ok that's the world doing what it usually does that's a trap that's a trap because then you lose sight of the fact that it's all divine providence and as a matter of fact the purpose of this miracle and the miracle of purim both of them are to teach in a in a open observe observational way that you shouldn't look at the normal progress of life as if it were absent of divine providence it's all an expression of divine providence indeed there's a progression going from egypt the miracles in egypt the plagues through pooram to Hanukkah expressing this idea in ever greater measure where Hanukkah is the less than I want two traits that development for you and that's the bottom what we have to experience with item an hour to think I'm saying honey Russell oh and there's although it says there were battles and that's what the lighting the lights is supposed to push me to understand not as if the miracle of the oil is irrelevant it's not irrelevant but the big message says the morrow is how do you look at what seems to be natural let's go back to do deep background let's talk about the plagues in Egypt the plagues in Egypt divided into two categories the ROM bob says this he uses it for a different purpose but he bet he talks about the same division some of the plagues are anti natural the river turns to blood rivers don't turn to blood there is a period of darkness where for at least 72 hours there's total darkness and it becomes substantive so that you can't move nothing like that happens that's the firstborn there are no medical conditions that attack firstborn children that's just not a medical category those miracles break nature now imagine a polytheist looking at those events how did you see them what do they mean to him how does he interpret them he's not to phase remember that in the polytheistic ancient world there was no religious competition there was no religious competition every group that had its religion agreed that the other groups religion is valid it's true the Babylonians agreed that the Egyptian gods are real God's the Egyptian agree the Babylonian gods are real guys indeed a war between two nations is a war between the two sets of gods no one has a complaint about something about somebody else religion maybe some misguided modern I won't say the clinical term would be that you know the ancient world was all Los Angeles you know you do what's good for you after was good for me well we appreciate each other so there were no religion there were no religious worst it wasn't there was nothing to fight about so an Egyptian witnessing these events will say okay we understood the juice our God every nation has a gun up until now we thought the Jewish God was impotent the Egyptians have been enslaved the Jews for 90 years he didn't do anything okay so it's a week God secondary God now we see that you do things that we weren't we appreciate he has certain powers that doesn't mean they recognize the one creator of the universe and give up their own religion all that means is when I take account of how to navigate the world one thing I have to keep in mind is that the Jews also have a god and you know what has to try to stay on the right side of all the powers that are applying doesn't challenge his point of view but the other plagues have a different character let's take frogs Egypt is inundated with frogs where do the frogs come from they come from the river it says so in the text explicitly but that's where frogs always breed that's why they always come from they always come from the river only this time they calm and spectacularly greater numbers and we come exactly where Moses says they'll come and they leave exactly where Moses says they'll leave see here you have what I would call a hybrid it's a miraculous event built on a natural source it's clearly miraculous because human being normally predict when they'll be a gigantic infestation of not wrong and quantity of infestation was unprecedented but frogs didn't fall from the sky or go out of the flower pots which would have been much more unnatural much more striking no they came from the river where they always came from that's true for all the intermediary plagues lice people have lives and until let's say 20 last 20 years 25 years in this country was very common you had lice checks in the schools and tell always some proportion of the people who have lice you don't have it everybody infested with lice at the same time doesn't happen cattle sickness cattles get sick but cows get sick sheep and goats get sick and they die but not all of them at once and infestation of wild animals there were wild animals in the hills but they were typically afraid of human habitation they lost their fear and they came and swamp locust locust exists in this part of the world locusts travel from place to place you know how they travel they travel on the wind they do have wings but they can't fly hundreds of miles on they travel on the wind the Torah says explicitly they were blown in on the wind that means it's a natural process but again Moses said exactly when it would start if a station was quantitatively greater than it ever even before they ended exactly when Moses said it would end this is a hybrid it's a natural process expressing itself in a supernatural way let's think of the message of that imagine a polytheist an ancient polytheist was looking at these events how does he take them well how does he structure his world there's the god of the Sun and a god of the wind and a god of the sea and a god of death of the god of fertility and I kind of victory in war why because these are natural forces forces he doesn't understand forces he can't predict and he pictures them in a way that's familiar to him there are intelligent agents behind each one but there's only one it's only one god of the Sun not 20 competition for the Sun the one god of the moon one god of the sea one god of death no competitions for these for these agencies now what about frog production of course there are god there's a god i'm in charge of frog production yeah the gods in charge of everything who's doing it well up until now it was either Nile or at which was a god or an ally of the Nile someone someone of the gods was in charge but for one week it's quite clear that it's the Jewish God who's doing it it's a Jewish God who's producing the frogs so who brought us the frog the rest of the time well if you have a consistent picture and use the same methodology that leads you in the direction of thinking maybe the rest of the time Jewish Congress doing it also well the rest the time he was doing its small scale and now when it suited His purposes you did a large scale and that will be true for cattle sickness at will be true for a license I'll be true for the annals of 80 and it'll be true for the wind blowing the wind say this is true by the way is splitting of the sea the splitting the sea was was done by a strong wind that blew all night why who needs the wind God doesn't need a wind to blow it he's making a point making a good point that what you think of as the forces of nature are really expressions of the Jewish God's activity also this spreads by the effect of the Jewish God into what formerly would have been thought of as the realm of nature or the realm of other gods Jewish God is taking over multiple functions that's a process that started in Egypt Purim you have a continuation of the process let's just recall the events with which the book of Esther starts and as I recite them imagine yourself living through them aha so a roach the King has party six months he knew how to party even Los Angeles could learn something from him and at the end of the party when he's a bit high he makes a appeal that the Queen should make a showing this whole political intrigue behind this i'm not going to F&F it out and she says no she Speights him and he's now realized that he's got a rebellion on his hands and he calls on his advisors and Eston how to handle it the divisors say if you leave via text carefully make it into a feminist issue and do something to make sure that women will respect men and women will be subjugated to men it's real feminist issue in the first chapter there and he does so and she's removed now imagine you lived through that what do you say these oriental potentate sand this guy who can party for six months you know I'm a drink for six months who knows what he can do would you say that this is a miracle why these are just politics and oriental intrigue doesn't have to get a new queen and that's a beauty search and Lester is taken into into the group along with thousands of other and she's chosen what's the probability of that well obviously whoever is chosen it's a very low probability lotteries are engines that produce events and low probability not always when events low probability is it a puzzle or a miracle a lottery is something that's designed to produce an event with low probability that George one rather than somebody else so she won must I call that a miracle I don't think so nothing in it whoever won will be very low probability now there's a plot on the King's life and Mordecai discovers it and tells Esther Esther tells the king and the plot is foiled the Kings saved their plots on Kings lives very often almost always they filed otherwise it would hardly pay to be a king because you wouldn't last long and almost all of them get foiled the factors apply what if I happen to overhear it must I regard that as a miracle now the King doesn't reward Mordecai that's pretty puzzling you would think that if somebody saved your life you'd reward him to encourage other people to save your life sort of thing you'd like people to do but the Jews were a downtrodden nation even though he perish was the Emperor of the whole area but we were in a worse position because we had no homeland we were in exile so maybe he felt that honoring a Jew was unnecessary or politically inappropriate and he didn't do it still although it's odd to say that it's a miracle is not demanded of the fact up there by the facts now humming arises and he decides that he hates Mordecai because he hates mortifies kind of attack the whole Jewish people and he decides that he can't stand motorized existence he's going into the king to ask him for permission to kill more like he's already erected a gallows to kill him before he gets there it's nighttime and the King can't sleep so the King says bring their stirring rocks because everybody knows history put you to sleep right now historians here and it just so happened to history book is open to the incident took place four years before when mordechai saved the King's life and now when he hears this he thinks cheated we do anything to reward water suddenly his conscious disturbs him we didn't do anything to reward work I know we didn't let's see what kind do something for Mordecai who's in the courtyard hummons walking in to tell the King to kill more time and the King says oh come in humming have I got a project for you go and honor Mordecai in public at that point i think the reader says that's going too far that's going too far normally in normal life that doesn't happen it's too much of a coincidence it's too engineered to be expect to be accepted as just a coincidence that's right that's the point of the of the of the book the point of the book is to tell you here you have to admit there tomorrow this is not something that would happen just by chance okay then Esther is queen and she's right in a position where she can it's a seat on the behalf of the Jewish people and said the Jewish people at the end of the book you see clearly that miracles are taking place that's fine that's obvious that's open to everyone I want to take one baby step beyond that now go back and re-examine the events at the beginning of the book so let's see how Irish had this party and he called for the Queen to come and the Queen didn't come and then his advisors advice to him to have it removed was that just happenstance after all that's how i stir got in that's how she was there then I haven't the same two Jewish people years later doesn't it now look as if it was contrived Mordecai overheard the plot and he told esther and the plot was foiled but that just happens this he just happened to be there heaven though the foreign language they were speaking so he picked it up and the King decided not to honor him to reward him with that just happened says but look that's what set up the ability to withstand Hama Druz coming you haven't killed that moment that was called in and used to defeat humma so now you go back years before and say well maybe the fact that Mordechai was there overheard the plot the plot was sobbing he wasn't rewarded that also was planned in order to set up the final salvation the intellectual path here is to live through events which strike you as natural and then later to have to go back and reinterpret them and unsee them as an expression of divine providence that's a very valuable lesson here God taught the lesson in a way that a whole generation saw it in front of them but you know one of the chief differences with you who beings and squirrels is that every squirrel repeats the life of every other squirrel since the beginning of time there's no progress in repeating is that cumulative culture we don't have to invent the wheel in every generation rented once it be carried for that ice generation event something else once you have that experience and you have it on record later generations could say okay they learned the lesson I can learn it also without going through the same process again what looks as if it is just natural events it's just a way of God hiding his agency but his agency is there now that's what happened in Purim was very important that the poor of event took place in exile this took place in Persia for many people once the temple is destroyed the false prophet said to Jeremiah god will not abandon his temple Khan will not abandon his city the Babylonians can't possibly conquer us God and jeremiah said to them making mistake God has told me babylone is going to succeed for many people and they went to Babylon it was over it was over I Jeremiah predicted it and he told them that is God's Way of repairing the failures and trying to bring them and bring them to a higher state of v4 many people who was over so much so that went 70 years later the second temple was was inaugurated only minority people came back dress the people didn't come back so that's why that this this miracle in Persia was very important don't think that because you're in exile and you're powerless that I've abandon you know I'm here with you also and I'm showing you that what looks as if it's natural is really divine products now in his fourth certain sense konica was worse hi was worse for two reasons first of all because of Purim they only want only the attack was on the physical the attack was physical annihilation in Hanukkah the attack was spiritual annihilation the fact that your body keeps on living but your mind and heart are filled with false ideas false goals disconnected from the reality is in our Terms worse than physical death and the attack took place in the Land of Israel in a way that's worse if you're in exile it's natural to expect it's wrong but it's natural to expect you're outside the Land of Israel things aren't running the same way the same elevation the same spirituality same divine attention but that the attack could actually overpower us in the land division now destroy the temple but to use the temple for idol worship abominable idol worship that that was a greater challenge to the idea God is running the world and that's why the miracle had to take place and the second miracle was one which had the same message the open visible part of the miracle was the oil but the message was that the war that you fought are fighting and will win there's something where God's providence is what is running the war that's precisely why there were no according to my router brethren there were no open miracles in the in the battles because what you have to learn to do is see that in the natural that's an expression of divine providence as well now these two there's a blessing that we make was like the candles the miracles that you did for our forefathers by your me mahane in those days buzz man has a at this time so the simple explanation those words is this happened thousands of years ago but it happened to these dates of the year and we're now recording and we're celebrating what happened at these days of the year but actually those words was managed a I have another two very important implications one is for us we who lived and to a certain extent still live in exile because until the majority of Jews live in the Land of Israel legally the exile is still in force there are certain mitzvahs that will only come back into force when the majority Jews live in the Land of Israel and that has not yet happened so we're talking about 2000 years of exile and in those two thousand years a great deal of history looks natural that's me an antidote today and the antidote is that you look back and say there was another time in Jewish history when they were living under what looked like natural conditions and they were shown forcefully that would look like the actual conditions are divine providence and that we have to learn applies in our day as well in a second yeah implication of those words I just saw an essay from then see the sean series Sean that's the name of the safer was the slaw nomura be up until about I guess ten years ago when he was niftar it's a great scholar a great leader he was the one who rebounded the facility after the Holocaust and he asks the following question there were other events in Jewish history open miracles which for which we have no holidays Sun kariv besieged the city of Jerusalem he's surrounded it with a gigantic army in one night the entire army died we have no holiday to celebrate that I frankly don't remember what they that happened on I don't think I'm alone you asked many many religious Jews what date was it that some Pharaoh's army was was destroyed don't know what's the difference between those miracles that become celebrated annually forever and those that don't and the Sanwa Rebbe cites a few words about the miracle of hanukkah it describes the ignorant describes the miracle that happened and then it said and the following year they established the performance the mythos that we do on high following you what's let's say was a following year who cares why does that give our bother to mention that I was a following here Aslam Rebbe said this our holidays are not historical I highs are not historical they don't celebrate things that happen in the past some things that happen in the past plant in the world and living potential and every time the date comes back that potential is available and can be realized if you interact with it an appropriate way and usually the appropriate ways to mirror what happened on the original event that's why we have a seder every beginning of face off every year because they had a seder in Egypt that's what they did and we do the same thing we'd welland in ensue coast because that's what he did in the wilderness of course was the clouds of glory it's a long story but that's this week they let a menorah in the temple we light him an era the holiday of Purim was celebrated at that time with feasting moving feasting quit for 2500 years since then that's because the same spiritual potential repeats itself every year not every miracle in history does that the destruction the armies on high roof does not create on that date further every year that same potential and therefore there's no holiday celebrating it because the holidays are not historical not to remember what happened once upon a time there to realize that recurring potential and not every holiday has definite potential and that's what the Camorra says well it says they waited a year to see will that same potential recurred will it reassured self if so then we should do something to recognize it and to exploit it if not we'll ignore it just like sometimes event was ignored wasn't so they did so bus monitor as long as that means we're doing it now because this date these dates are the dates of which that potential is available that potential is potential of seeing the world in appropriate fashion to see that what looks like something that's purely natural purely accidental is something which is really divine providence that's why in the prayers you have the heavy emphasis on the war because that's the challenge challenge to see that would look like the war is in fact divine providence and that being the case to accept it as such and then look at our own lives and say the things that look natural things look like be really accidental are themselves expressions of my province you