Rabbi Breitowitz on Chanukah "Living With The Parsha" series Vayigash Post-Chanuka

okay hi everybody and it's good to be back after our one week hiatus and you forgive me for tonight I'm still coming off the Chanukah rush I would like to share a concluding thought about Hanukkah that I think will carry us through the rest of the winter and that is everybody knows there's a very famous McLucas in the gomorrah between baisama and beit el el how you commemorate the Hanukkah miracle eh um I says you start with eight candles the first night and you go down so it's eight seven six five four three two one vase Hillel says you add you start with one and you go up to eight and is normally the situation when you have an argument between becoming and Vitello the halacha is of course according to beit el el that's why you don't find anybody who likes candles in a descending order everybody likes in an in an ascending order but I would like to explore tonight kind of the implications of this mclogan and what type of lessons you might get from this the Gemara actually offers two explanations for Beit Shean me and b'stilla respectively explanation number one seems to just be a tautology meaning it doesn't seem to be explaining anything it simply says hey Chum I said as you light candles based on the days that are left so on day one it's the very beginning you have eight days right by the last day you only have one day so you look at the days that are coming down the pike on the first day of Hanukkah there are eight days coming down the pike and the last day there's only one day they CLL does not look at the days that are coming towards you he looks at the days that have expired okay now that doesn't seem to be an explanation that just seems to be a restatement of what they're talking about so we'll see exactly what that might mean now explanation number two they Chum I says you go down because I'm su coats they're worker but notes that were brought in the Beit HaMikdash and in particular in the Musab and the additional offering there were bowls that were brought every single day and they were brought in descending order day 113 day 212 and until day 7 Hashanah raba were they brought seven so beit sahm I said well listen Sukkot goes down so Hanukkah goes down again no particular connection no particular explanation and they ll says no since this is holiness my lianbao qodesh Bellomo read in we go up in holiness and we don't go down so of all of the explanations that's the first one that I can simply take at face value it's okay at least I got that explanation holiness goes up holiness doesn't go down but what is the first explanation the days that are coming versus the days that have expired and what is Beit Shean eyes points about the carbon notes of Sukkot and even even looking at the cabinet of Sukkot themselves why do they go down why would there be such a concept if that contradicts the idea of Malinois kodesh of going up in holiness does Beit Shean might disagree with mom and by kodesh or not right so I'm gonna take each of those explanations and kind of analyze what they might mean we know that generally speaking you know the typical stereotype of a Chama inspection is always strict and bay tillow is always lenient now that's not a hundred percent of the time true but it's true a large percentage of the time that made Shammai we are told Kabbalistic ly of course this is the house of Shammai the founder of the House of Sean I was shaman that Shama is rooted in Vedanta dinner the attribute of strict judgment and as a result Sharma's view of how a car will tend to be very very strict and Hillel is rooted in michoacán that's why there's a rabbinic organization in Israel you may have heard of that's trying to be a little more lenient north of X organization they call it beta L which you know that kind of fits because they're looking to have a but when you look at a mic locus like the Hanukkah menorah that that doesn't seem to have anything to do with being strict or being lenient it's simply a question do you go eight seven six or do you go one two three lady that's no shy foot there's no connection to the overall orientation how would you connect to smile okay to the general framework of how we analyze Hillel and and shaman so I saw a very very brilliant essay by a very very great rabbi who died around four thirty forty years ago Roma Yosef seven really he was the founding editor of the central PD some Buddhists which is still going on after many years the Talmudic encyclopedia and he basically said the following he basically said that the fundamental difference in orientation between Shama in Hillel is that shammai looks at potentiality and Hillel looks at actualization and this is actually the fundamental reason why Shama is strict and Hillel is lenient not simply because you know the people think I'll show my Zamindari right the non Jew comes to Shia and says teach me the whole Torah on one foot and Shammai chases a mouse and hillo says well what is hateful to you do not do to another I just want to remind people they can peer kala boats where the different sayings of the rabbis are quoted the saying that was attributed to shaman if anyone remembers is having the Cabal call da dum and says I saber putting me up outs you should greet everybody without exception with a pleasant countenance that is sha Mike who said that exact interestingly enough Hillel is a bit more tough love Hillel says he who does not learn deserves to die it's interesting point that in their statements the personalities are sometimes reversed but okay but being us at night there is a famous teaching that Rashi brings and it's really from the Midrash the torah begins with brace it's bara elokim in the beginning elokim created the world now we know it's a well known idea that the more importance a phrase or a term is in a language the more words and synonyms you will have for that journal I heard many years ago although I read recently that it's an herb legends that Eskimos because they have to be very sensitive to all of the different types of snow and ice where can they walk where they cannot walk they have words for many many different types of shades of white and snow and ice in which we wouldn't even know the difference I had heard years ago they have 300 then it got cut down to 25 and I heard the whole thing was a hey Bubba my sir but it is true generally that the more important a concept is the more central a concept is in a culture the more different words we will have to refer to them as a result Judaism is all about God and therefore we have many many different names of God not because God forbid there are many gods there are not there was only one God but God has many attributes because God is infinite there are so many infinite reflections of God's personality and each name is picking up a certain aspect of personality so we know according to rabbinic tradition the shame elokim Aleph lammott hey yud mem refers to me that sat in the attribute of strict justice not necessarily punishment but simply justice you get what you deserve a little kibble as opposed to the tetragrammaton the four-letter name of Hashem the UN hey well hey that we don't really pronounce or we pronounce it as olive salad you know no iord that is a reference to me that Soraka min so the metric makes the following point Bereshit bara elokim in the beginning of creation God had an optimal plan for the world and the optimal plan for the world was a world of justice everybody gets what they deserve you do good you get good you do bad you get better right every time you do a mitzvah you'll have a thousand dollars in your mailbox you do in Ave ha we will have graduated increasing electric shocks we'll start with that half a volt and we'll then go up in increments so Bray sheets bara elokim God's original plan was that the world should be based on me but God changed his mind of course that's always a theological problem this God knows the future but the Metris describes it this way raaaah Shane Howell um midscale God realized that the world could not exist in a framework of pure me-dasu in and therefore God had to temper justice with mercy and that is why later in the Hamas it says be ohm assault Hashem you came up - M L Oh Kim I read special Mayan gracious bara elokim but then Hashem with machetes Hashem joined the Hawaiian you cave of K and elokim to create a music a fusion of rock a Mindanao you'll notice an interesting point that God didn't throw out justice because it world without justice a world in which there would only be mercy would actually not be as good a world as you might imagine because without a sense of divine justice in the world people could get away quite literally with murder there would be no accountability there would be no standards and ultimately the world would be destroyed there needs to be a justice in the world because justice is the ultimate divine guarantee that evil will not have a permanent prosperity in the world yes in the short term things happen we don't always understand and indeed that's a very very difficult question but ultimately there is a divine justice in the world but the justice is tempered with mercy so it turns out that God's original plan what's me that's again but the world as it actually evolved had to be a fusion of din and Rahman so here is the concept that observing articulate jose ettan wants to say that the reason Beit Shean is stricter than Beit el el it's not because Sean Maher is mean that's not it's not the point but rather they Chama is linked to God's original for creation God's original plan for creation was justice justice is din Hillel is more of the reese okay Chama is the idealist we might say he is looking at the world the way it should be Hillel is focusing on the imperfect in complete realization of the world in which justice tempered with mercy was kind of a concession it was a deviation from God's ideal but Beit el o is the realist and hence he is lenient so the leniency and the strictness is not a function of leniency and strictness per se it is a function of the idealist versus the realist shammai looks at the world as it should have been constituted and Hillel looks at the world in terms of the imperfections of the realization of that fusion of mercy and judgment now this explains a very intriguing comment of the eye result the great kabbalist theory Sol writes that although in this world the halacha is like baked AOL in the days of the Messiah the halacha shall be according to Beit Shean because in an objective sense Beit Shean I actually represents a certain higher level and when the world progresses to a higher level of spirituality and kedusha then indeed we will be able to move into the world of din the world of justice rather than cutting corners rather than having these concessions to human weakness in this world however it's exactly the opposite one is not allowed to if you wanted to be much more like Beit Shean I you would not be allowed to do you remember there's a mission in Braavos where betcha my reads the verses of SHM are very literally so you shall read the Shema when you lie down and when you get up the according to bait shamonite you have to read the Schmoe of the evening in a lying down position and the Sh'ma of the morning you have to read in a standing up position but Joe says no no you can read it any way you want when you lie down just means your reader that night when people go to sleep and when you get up if you read it in the morning when people get up it is not going to have to read it so the Gemara that says or the michigan says there was a great grab a Gravatar fun who wanted to fulfill all of the opinions so every evening he would lie down to read the shop because that way he was fulfilling both bait sharma and basilica's a solo is not against lying down and what happened was he did this outside while he was travelling and he got attacked by robbers and he almost lost his life because he couldn't really escape that quickly from a lying-down position so you know he endangered his life so when he told the sages he wanted some compassion some commiseration he told the sages wow i'm not gonna believe what happens now i almost got killed out there because I lay down to read the Shema so they told them ah you deserve to die because you didn't follow Bates Hillel who gave you the right to want to be like other so although when Messiah comes we're gonna follow by each other this world is not yet a perfect world but it's reminiscent a little bit that's if they get totally it's not really related but it just reminds me of you know of Rev cooks words on vegetarianism you know people say that drove cook was a vegetarian that is not true actually raff cook does right of cook does indeed right that's vegetarianism is a spiritually higher level of holiness he does say that because then you have a certain reverence not just for human life but also for animal life and he does say we Moton mushiya we will graduate into vegetarianism so that much is true but at the same time he makes this point that in this world where we have not yet learned how to deal with human beings with decency we can't skip levels moral development he says has to follow certain levels first you get along with humans and then you move to higher levels of animal welfare but quite even tell you cannot torture or hurt animals but but simply killing them though it is a painless way of killing them so you don't have to reach the higher level until you've done the lower levels huh well that that there is a cot you have cook implies in some places that the cubanos of the third temple will be vegetarian offerings that seems to contradict the Amidah what's up there's no there are a lot of problems there but but this is what it'll cook she just and again I don't want to prove anything by anecdotes but you know Hitler was a vegetarian okay I know that you know you two bring in stories here and there don't prove one way or the other but Rob cooks point is very very Geneva cooks point is that you cannot skip levels of moral development you can't jump to a higher level it's similar to building a building you cannot build a hundred story until you have 99 stories that are supporting that hundred story otherwise the hundred story has nothing that it's resting on and it's going to going to collapse and hence you have the anomaly just even an example of PETA you know People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals an animal welfare organization which you know it's a very very good cause it's a very good cause but as a result of their devotion to their cause they have no reluctance in blowing up places where there are human beings who get killed in these bombs in order to stop animal mistreatment so you see exactly what your cook is talking about in their ID ideological commitments to a higher moral value there's all sorts of moral infractions on a very lower level that are being done such as murder and and and like that's why when they wear em when a donkey was used and I undergo the suicide bomber at me the donkey wasn't a suicide bomber but a donkey was used in a terrorist bombing and no there were children who were killed in that terrorist bombing so Peter issued a condemnatory statement how you know you don't use animals you know in acts of terror meaning they didn't condemn terrorism they condemn the use of the animal in the terrorism okay being as it may well so this is the idea though that in this imperfect world that's when I'm making we follow hello because to follow Shawn I would be beyond that we've achieved when Messiah comes we'll follow Charlotte so based on this our observance says we can now understand how the mock locusts this is the first terrace of the gemara how the muscle oak is about going down and going up actually fits because if Beit Shean I looks at potentiality and b'stilla looks at the actualization of that potentiality then in a limited sense that exactly describes the Hanukkah story because if you look at the Hanukkah story God endowed this oil with the miraculous power to last for eight days so we didn't know it was left with lasts for eight days on the first day but God already gave that oil the KOA so consequently they Chama who is looking at potentiality will say hey day one there's eight days of power in the oil day seven there are seven days of power in the oil day one I'm sorry - eight there's only one day of power in theory in other words it's consistent with the idea of looking at potentiality hll who looks at the imperfect actualization of that potentiality focuses on what we've seen day one we saw one day of burning day age we saw eight days of burning that's why you go up that would be the explanation of the Gomorrah the factor of seven says there's another argument between Hillel and Shammai which seems to have nothing to do with being strict or being minions but you can fit the same paradigm and that's a much locust about kiddush Friday night but we making everyone mix kiddush Friday night and the key Dutch Friday night has two blessings right you make it broke up bar a prio Govan a blessing under wine and then you make a longer Braco that's the brush and the Kadesh a Shabbat right that's so one is called the brother of the yin and one is called the brother of the kiddush which is the order what is the order of those blessings so obviously we first make bar a preocupen then we make kiddush but that's a that's only base Hillel feel Beit Shean I actually says a different view hm I says first you make the over the Shabbos and then you make the breckel over the wine obviously we follow bait lol now again this doesn't seem to have anything to do with leniency strictness like what's the basis of this so listen to what drove seven says it gives a very beautiful insight one of the unique features of Judaism generally is the idea of the integration of the physical and the spiritual so Shabbat of course is a spiritual day that we celebrate our closeness to God and the recomment that God is the creator of heaven and earth but we celebrate it with wine and drink and eating and all of these different all of these different things so the question becomes what is the relationship right what is the relationship between the physical and the spiritual so again Beit Shean I is looking at this as an idealist and Vitello is looking at the pragmatist the idealist says I am so overjoyed with the holiness of this moment that I need to celebrate in a physical way meaning it is the feeling of spirituality and closeness to God that is pushing me to toast uh Shem so therefore you first make the brush on the Shabbos because it is your awareness of Shabbos that's leading you to the drink that's the idealist they kill L is the pragmatist who understands the weaknesses of the human personality that for many of us it's not that we have such an appreciation of Shabbos that we want to physically celebrate it's the other way around it's the physical celebration that gets us into the mood meaning instead of saying I love Shabbos so much that I'm going to have a cup of wine it's the other way around because I'm having a cup of wine I really love Shabbos so therefore a Botello puts the physical before the spiritual because it is often the spiritual as it was often the physical that brings you to the spiritual meaning you eat solids because you love Shabbos or do you love Shabbos because you eat celebrate different different ways of creating the relationship okay all right so this is the explanation of the first terrace of the Gomorrah that shammai looks at the days that are coming up that's potential and they Atilla looks at the days that have passed that is actualization now let's look at the second explanation the Chama I says we compare it to the carbon notes of su cults that go down in order beit el el says we go up in holiness we don't go down got to move forward what district oak have to do with anything so first let me just give you a little observation historically you know the the story of chronic is actually described in the book of the Maccabees the book of the Maccabees we talked about this the last time is not a book of the Tanakh it is not a book of the Jewish Bible it is not considered an inspired or a holy book it is a series of books that are in a collection that are known as the Apocrypha now interestingly enough in the Catholic Old Testament versions the apocryphal books are included in their Old Testament list so you will actually find the book of the Maccabees in a Catholic Bible you will not climb the book of the Maccabees in a Jewish Bible nevertheless the book of the Maccabees is treated as a valid historical book and commentaries like Rashi will quote from the book of the Maccabees so it's not a it's not a trace book it's not an erratic alook it's not a book you're not allowed to read it is simply a book of history that is not prophetic and therefore it does not have holiness but in the book of the Maccabees it actually describes that when the cosmonium regained the temple on 25th of Kislev there was a great great pain because it was only a short time after circle and they were really hoping they would have regained the temple for the holiday of Sukkot and they just missed it by a by a month or so and as a result part of why they enacted Hanukkah was to be a makeup for the Sukkot festival which was a day seven days of coat and Shmi me cereth and book of the maccabees even says that people took lulav and etrog i'm that Konica to kind of make up for Sukkot now how logically that type of practice has no makes no sense at all you cannot make up for Sukkot by observing it the Hanukkah whatever if you didn't build a saccade you can't do it then so we have to assume it was a lay custom that did not have rabbinic approval and as a result therefore there was no mention in the Talmud of any direct connection in Connick in Sukkot but I would surmise this is my speculation that perhaps that is why Shama connects the candle lighting to the carbon out of Sukkot that might be the one intimation in rabbinic literature to the reference in the book of the Maccabees to that's Hanukkah was a makeup for circle so sometimes what happens is even a lay custom that the sages tried to destroy they didn't want to recognize it will somehow become part of the men again of Amun Israel but you can't get rid of it like you tried to leave a computer program and as you know Hillary and other people discover you try to delete an email and things tend to surface one way one way or the or the other okay but putting the historical note to side I want to share with you a thought of the spot them it's one of the great great Hasidic masters we know that a human soul is compared to a candle this is actually a verse in Mishler a verse in Proverbs near Hashem misrata done the soul of a human being is a candle that is lit by the Almighty that is why during our play look when you sit Shiva you know relight a a memorial candle that is why there's a yard side candle etc because that commemorates a song in fact even one of the words for solace nefesh nefesh is a salt so some want to suggest dareth drush this is not a grammatically correct interpretation that nephesh might be an abbreviation the nuns dance from there now near does not mean a candle never actually means a receptacle for oil right so near is the cup near the PHA or the pay is Patil ah sila a wick and the shin is Shemin the oil meaning what are we we are like we're supposed to be like a candle we're supposed to be receptacle oil and wick we prepare ourselves to receive Hashem divine light so naira shemish Matata so based on that when you look at the narrow - Hanukkah you are seeing a mirror of your soul it is the beauty and radiance within you that you're seeing you're not just seeing the holiness that God brings into the world which of course you're seeing that as well but it's kind of a mirror into the Nair of your neshama that's point one here points to the metaphor of fire fire can be a metaphor for two very different phenomena fire is that which burns and destroys that's one metaphor for fire fire is mushriks ohmic I left the other metaphor for fire makan then you may hear it gives warmth and it gives light now I understand scientifically the to come from the same thing because it's burning up the fuel I understand that but metaphorically we perceive it as two very very different things I mean just imagine the difference between a house burning and again I was with Cyrene know we had awful awful tragedies this week with the the mother enter and their four children so imagine the difference being a house that's burning and a fireplace right the fireplace also is burning I said you know you don't have the image of destruction in front of the fireplace you feel warmth and you have light right so fire can be that which destroys and fire can be that that illuminates and gives one so given the fact that when I look at them they wrote I'm looking at - Shama Hillel and Shammai are arguing over what message should I take now governor Malik says that when a person wants to do chuva and come back to God so it's a very simple formula somebody once asked Bernard Baruch where network was a famous Jewish financier who worked for he was he was an advisor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt around during the Depression so somebody asked him kind of like asking Warren Buffett today somebody asked him what is the secret to success in the stock market so he said I have an absolutely guaranteed secret buy low and sell high and that is the secret that you need to know so how do you do Chuba so King David said governor mother said it relatively simple soar may rah turn away from bad I say to do good don't you need to know don't do bad and do good you have it made right by low and so I now eh ah mine is emphasizing the need of looking at yourself and identifying the negative me dose and burning them away one by one by one if I have an anger problem if I have a selfishness problem if I have an ego problem I confront it I fight it I change it I burn it away so he views the fire which is a mirror of your soul as something that you need to use in a destructive positive way meaning you look at the negative me dose and you surgically burn them away one by one by one he views the may heart as that which is moshpit summa kalla it's Haram now based on that agenda for personal growth hopefully you will have fewer and fewer struggles with the passage of time so I look at my life and I have eight things I gotta correct I got rid of one of them the next day only one thing to correct right so based on the notion of my that I rock the hope would be you would be poet for homeless and that's why he compares it to the corner of Sukkot what's the comparison because I already say in the gamora then if you add up the carbonate of Sukkot the 13 to 12 the 11 they add up to 70 what is the significance of 70 there are 70 nations of the world that try to destroy us in one way or the other assimilation or you know aggressive anti-semitism and we are described as the lonely sheep the lonely lamb between 70 wolves and I think just this past week I think we've had some additional confirmation of our sheep status in the world okay well I don't get that but okay so why are we bringing her but not because the 70 nations are trying to destroy us so we bring Corbin notes so they should not have power over us and as we approach mushiya their power will get less and less and less and less their power will be diminished and that is why the carbon notes are poets but less because the power of the 70 nations gets diminished with the passage of time now you may say well is that true what about the rise of Isis or Islamic fundamentalism well again although that could be very very difficult for us and for the world all of these different things but cabbalistic aliy this represents the final death throes of evil just as a candle right before it goes out there's one final burst of energy so we may find before the ultimate destruction of evil it may have a tremendous rise which could create a lot of salt but nevertheless the overall trajectory is positive so now they Chama is drawing the following comparison just as su coche represents the progressive diminution of evil external to us as we approach the Messianic era the posit for Holly Sheldon a row Tonica represents the internal destruction of evil within us as we use the fire to represent the need to be mush this and makalah the rah within us so the comparison is Sukkot the emphasis would be on combating the external demon and the narrow Tanika is combating the internal demons because it's very much mush rush in Armas aura that everything that happens outside of our outside of us really represent internal things that are happening within us so if the Omo - oh um hates us it is be kept perhaps in part because we still have Sinatra phenom these will be each other it's like those movies those sci-fi movies where sometimes the things that you dream about your nightmares become the real monsters that are outside of you that's right that's right that's right and we'll have you although it is I can this is not there I can't compare it to the sauce image but I believe Benjamin Franklin said when they may be separation with dependency I don't remember which document cuz he signed a number of founding documents of the United States that he says we all have to hang together because if we don't hang together we shall surely hang separately meaning the British will hang us separately in that way so no the lack of oxigen armies fellows is very very obvious but you see that's big that's Beit Shean nice connection to su cuts that the progressive diminution in evil that Sukkot represents on the external level then they wrote Chanukah the H is much too much Allah represents on an internal level now so what is he'll else point of going up in holiness once again hello is making a psychological points based on the imperfections of the human personality in an ideal world we should be strong enough to confront the demons within us and simply fight them off but in the imperfect world that we live in we often discover that when we try to focus too much on our negativities and our faults we get overwhelmed with a sense of futility despair and pessimism because we feel like failures and as a result Pattillo says as a pragmatic character development perhaps you need not to focus on the negativities within your personality but focus on your strengths focus on those areas that you excel focus in those areas in which you have talents in which you're working well and the way you combat darkness is not by attacking it directly because you cannot take a baseball bat and drive away the darkness you attack darkness by generating goodness and light and therefore Pattillo says to make Shammai instead of viewing than they looked as - which destroys the negative storm a rough look at the night hunt as that which increases light and warmth in you and in the world and then the darkness takes care of itself now in an ideal sense they Chama is actually correct a person ought to be strong enough to take criticism like to take criticism like a man are you even to even say that to a woman right you know take it like a man and work on it but you know most of us think with myself you know we get kind of debilitated you know when we have to face criticism of ourselves so basal sad sometimes you got to put away that particular exercise for another day work on your positives and one might even say although this is a gross gross oversimplification dr. Milo gets paid shamayim Botello is the mach locus between the moisture movements and the Hasidic movements you know there were two great movements in the 19th century this is a thousand years after hello in China there were two great religious movements within helada me when I'm referring to Orthodox religious movements that developed in the 18th and 19th centuries the earlier one was the Hasidic movement which spread very very rapidly in spite of the initial opposition by no less than the Roma gone but proceeded us in the 19th century exploded and then there was a smaller movement but also a very influential movements in miscellanea that also spread called the Muslim movement of Rebbe astrologer now both of them were which you might call religious revivalist movements that to some degree were responses to reform and the so-called Jewish enlightenment but they had different orientations Kassie Deutz stressed the notion of joy in the service of God and the notion of no serving a sham with some high unity love etc the Mooser movement stressed on your relenting scrutiny of yourself honesty confronting your flaws working to reform your character right so one might even say that the muster approach was made Shamas approach of looking at your negatives and working on them the caseta kmen said don't don't think about that necessarily focus on the positive and the negatives will take care of them self now again this is a gross simplification of both the Muslim movement and the seceding movement but to some degree some degree even this stereotype is not totally inaccurate there is at least a kernel of truth in that in that description of course given the fact that Allah has like base hello I guess we should all become conceited on one type one type or another but this point that Pattillo is making according to the stress ms it's actually a very very interesting point I mean it's relevant many areas of life it's relevant the way we raise our children it's relevant the way we look at ourselves that is you know all of us have plenty of things we have to correct now we have to correct we you know if we think about it we can identify various me dots like be our anger might be selfishness might be egotism might be impulsivity it might be procrastination we have faults all of us at fault and certainly even more than the false we seen ourselves or the fifteen others and other people certainly have faults right you know children my children and alike and yet and yet I think most of us have a sense sometimes that when we are overly critical of others and even overly critical of ourselves that often does not generate the positive responses now if somebody is truly spiritually strong then what happen tell me what I need to correct you know this leads your famous last words you know when a boss calls his employees in tell me what I need to correct well please if your employer ever told you please do not be honest with them because if you actually tell him what he needs to correct you'll probably get fired or whatever it is so when people say tell me exactly you know what do I do wrong they really don't want to hear that too much and all of us know that because we become defensive we become hostile we become insecure so one has to understand that often people are built up much more by focusing on their strengths by encouraging them and then as we get spiritually stronger we are then better able to deal even with the negatives in our personality and that's really what Hilo's point is build a person up build yourself up because you're that person so build yourself up and then you will eventually be strong enough to confront the inner demons because the inner demons themselves are going to be smaller and weaker and less significant because the light is doukas a kosha right this is the the ultimate lesson of clinical is the esqueleto or Alec OSHA that the light will eventually triumph over those powers of darkness and again as we always say the darkness is not just the external darkness of enemies and anti-semitism but it also refers to the darkness within ourselves of whatever form it takes and there to the light is going to triumph over the darkness so I do apologize for talking about Hanukkah but I think it's such an important message that it's something that we can take well after Hanukkah as well and I'll just end with one Hasidic word from the base forget it very very brilliant Hasidic work he says again a lot of these Hasidic work thoughts are not grammatically correct so you can't really ask questions on them on that level but the many social wants to say that the word Hanukkah is connected to the words of clean or you know because the word we use for training when you train the child how to do a mitzvah so we call that c-note I trained someone how to do it so he says that experiencing the light of Hanukkah is the keynote that prepares us for the light of mushiya so we kind of go through a practice session so we will be ready to absorb the ultimate light of mushiya so again we live in a dangerous time a tumultuous time perhaps politically visually the United States perhaps it looks like maybe good times are coming down the pike but in the in the volatile ever-changing world there really is no security at all and one could respond to the uncertainty in the world in a number of ways one could simply be despondent yes there's no hope there's no stability there's no prospects for peace or maybe the other way around when one realizes that I'm such a matzo that there's like nothing we can do about anything then we have to realize that means Hashem is in charge and when a Shem is in charge ultimately I can let go a little bit I'll just end with this story the brisket rub rub for your success Electric was trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto in the during World War two and he was normally a fairly nervous person he was always worried about math he was worried about doing mitzvahs enough time it became him a restaurant of brisket they're very conscientious that way but in the Warsaw Ghetto he seemed unusually calm he went around his business and you know nothing seemed to bother him so somebody had their foots but asked him in a Rebbe you know you're so nervous all the time now there's something to be nervous about and how come you're so calm so he said the British Karev said the following the Brits Karev said oh you know when it comes to mid swats that is my responsibility when it's my responsibility I am very nervous because I can mess up I can make mistakes I never know if I did it right so when it's up to me I worry a lot but what happens when I'm in a situation that is so hopeless that there's absolutely nothing I can do so some people might go crazy he said that's when I relaxed because when I know that this is not a situation I control no he was not being Pollyanna she was not saying Oh everything we'll ever happy ending there was after all the Holocaust the bris Karev himself lost his wife and some children but his his serenity does not come from the unrealistic expectation that everything will happen the way he wants it to happen he knows that that wasn't the case but simply the idea that when a Shem is in charge there is a gamsu Mottola even on levels that we don't perceive and we don't understand we're not being abandoned Hashem is interacting with us in ways that may be painful but it's not because he's forgotten about us it's not because he doesn't care about us and therefore when you have a sense of divine love even if things happen that don't make sense you have the strength to be able to absorb them and move on and incorporate them okay so so in some ways the uncertainty of our times can actually give us a stronger connection with our College Barca because it removes the illusion that we really can significantly affect the world because really we cannot therefore a modest but I'll say anyone only he shot and Ella a lovino shabbat shalom so y'all be