Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Chanukah Historical Insights: Military or Religious Victory

[Music] okay everybody good to see you and uh thank you for coming out uh in this uh in this rain uh tonight's Shear is dedicated uh for a Raa for all those whose Health has been affected by the war and especially for the return of all of our brothers and sisters in captivity many have returned but many have not more have not than have and uh we need to be mispel for them uh we should also be mispel that those who have been returned should not suffer from the extreme trauma of their experiences unfortunately we're finding out more and more uh that uh this is not the end of their suffering for Ben elzer and once again we have an anonymous donor thank you Mr or Mrs Anonymous again dedicated for the's protection of all of our and they will return healthy to their homes with and mayem bring the G now again uh as I've announced a few times already uh I has been coordinating along with other organizations a Sit andan campaign uh for many of the soldiers it's one of the great miracles of what's going on and uh we want to just to give a br to all those who have contributed and encouraging those who still have not to be m in this great great Mitzvah uh when we have our brothers who are begging and begging to be able able to do these precious mitzvot which not only protect them but also bring Yeshua to am Isel kind of how can we not answer answer their call uh so um I'm going to uh not do the paraa this week per se maybe I'll touch upon it incidentally I want to talk a little bit about Kana and that actually means that uh youon people will be probably be getting to sh on khaka because we have this week which is pre khanah and then we have Arena Quint party next week I I'm assuming Reena herself is going to talk and she's going to share her very very amazing experiences uh so even if you don't like me it's worthwhile to go to hear her uh she really has quite uh in fact I feel a little guilty taking up time because her story is so fascinating and so inspirational that it's something that everybody should make a point uh to try to hear and uh read her book read her book as well uh but this is our prean and tonight I I want to give a little bit of the history of of the period which is a very confusing period in Jewish history and I think I also want to show you that Kaneka has been redefined over the years uh as to the reasons for khaka what are you celebrating and the like if you ask uh most people you know the typical account in Hebrew school or Day School orer like what is khaka so people will say well Kaneka is the fact that when we rededicated the B mikdash a jar of oil was found that could only burn for one day and miraculously it burned day days and therefore kazal enacted a holiday of eight days to commemorate the miracle of what is called the P the jar of oil so there are a number of indications that that is not the reason for the holiday of Kaneka now again this does not mean we're denying the Pam and Miracle some academics actually draw that conclusion God forbid that's not where I'm going but that was not the reason for the and let's go over a few proofs that indicate that Kaneka was enacted as a for different reasons first let's look at the alhan prayer right the alanan prayer is the prayer that is inserted in both bat and in theida and the Alan is said to be very old the Alan is said to be virtually contemporaneous with the maban victory over the yanim which was approximately 18 5 before the Common Era BCE before the Common Era and the Alan discusses the fact that the armies of yavan wanted to destroy us in a spiritual sense uh they wanted to make us forget the Torah to take us away from the laws that it's God's will that we do and you Hashem with your great Rim you protected us you fought our fights uh you gave the many into the hands of the few you gave the rim into the hands of the sikim you gave the impure into the hands of the pure so the alanam overwhelmingly is discussing a military Victory now granted not a military victory for political reasons it is for religious reasons that the avanim were trying to stop us from keeping the mitzvos and the maban Revolt was to establish the ability to keep the Torah it did result in the haonan Dynasty uh but that was almost a a side effect of it so the Alan emphasizes the of the and then it proceeds to a rededication of the bash because the B mikdash was in yim's hands On's Army for three years for three years they held on to the beta mikdash we could not do any service in the bet mikdash uh they sacrificed pigs to aod Zar they built houses of prostitution within the basam mikdash itself they didn't destroy the temple but maybe they did worse they desecrated it they contaminated it and by the way according to the book of mcabe uh they gained control of the bet mikdash on the 25th of K the day that later became khaka three years later on that very day is when we regained control and we rededicated the temple so it's true that there is one reference in alhan to lighting the manur it says we came to the temple we purified it we lit candles in your holy Courtyards but it doesn't make any reference to a miracle there if I if I read it just says that as part of the dedication of the temple we lit candles it doesn't say it lasted 8 days when there only would have been one day so it's very clear from the Alan that the two reasons for the Kaneka Festival are number one the military victory over the yanim that allowed us to serve Hashem and keep the Torah and number two the joy at the rededication of the second temple that had been desecrated by theim the N of the is not even mentioned in the Alan at all I know that some people if you ever say this over to somebody some people will try to argue with you that the reference to is a reference to the P that is almost certainly not true because there is nothing in that sentence that is conting any type of Miracle connected with the oil it is simply stating a fact that they lit the manura as part of the dedication of the bet mikdash so it's clear that the Alan is not making a reference to any Miracle of P again we're not denying that Miracle I'll come back to that but we're simply saying that that was not the takana of Kaneka the Second Source is the book that again the historical book of the greatest detail about the Kaneka story and this is known Asim uh it is not in tanak because the whole story of Kaneka is after the age of Prophecy uh because the age of Prophecy ended with the Persian period when the second temple was initially dedicated this is the Greek period which is after that already so the saim is in the apocryph that are called they're not holy books but they are considered to be uh you know ancient books now the book of makab has two titles its original title was saim later for some reason in the 19th century Scholars named it saer so if you see saer saer maim they are the same they are the same books uh this is to not to be confused with the third work which is M an I'll talk about that I think just for bibliography purposes it's actually helpful to set out the different types of books now theer orer there are actually four books just like so here you have Alim doit however giml and doid are largely philosophical treatises they do not deal with history so for purposes of the khaka story the two books that give the khaka story is maab one and macbes 2 and they go over a lot of the same history but each one gives detail presumably they were written by different authors each one gives detail that you're not going to find in the other one sa makim was probably originally written in Greek although it commemorates the victory of the makim over the Greeks but Greek was still still a very very commonly spoken language in arish Israel particularly among the aristocracy so sa forab was probably written in Greek and the Hebrew that we have are later translations of an original Greek that is why by the way we have a certain ambiguity what is the meaning of makabe right the name of Mao's Army that fought the yanim they're called the makab the family areash that's the family but the Army is called the it's called the makian revolt and there are two common explanations for the origin of the word makabi uh this is before there was K is not one of the interpretations uh interpretation number one is that it's an abbreviation it's an acronym forem who is like you among the mighty ones God and it was said that when maio's Sons went into battle they would have me on the banner meaning their trust is in God In God We Trust M and that would spell makab with a like like the K however there is another interpretation that would spell makabi with a K and it comes from the term maket which is a sledgehammer and it refers to the military prowess they were like a smashing Hammer so we have two and it depends if makab is with a or makab is with a K so you might just ask me the question why don't you why don't you just look in the sa maim and see how it's spelled the answer is because in Greek you can't tell in Greek we have a word that is vocalized makab with no reason given for it we don't know how that would have been spelled in Hebrew so when you see it in in later translations either either a or a that's the that's the decision of the translator so in reality we actually don't know what makabi represents now in the book of the makab uh let's take makab 1 and makab 2 both of them describe the persecutions under and the and the battles and the struggles and the eventual n but two things need to be kept in mind in neither macbes 1 nor mccabes 2 is there any reference to the miracle of the oil it's not even mentioned now the second point is that although mccabes 1 and mccabes 2 go over the same history they do so from a different perspective it's very fascinating macab 1 emphasizes military heroism and Battlefield strategy and it probably gives you more detail than you might be interested in unless you're a military historian it goes over every battle every inch of ground every strategic Victory and every defeat in fact I was I'm told that at least there was a time in uh West Point the United States Military Academy where they would study the book of mabes during the Vietnam war because the Vietnam War you had essentially Guerilla War you had the US which is the most powerful army in the world fighting these rice farmers in Vietnam uh and uh officially we don't admit or you know the US does not admit that it lost the war in Vietnam it it does not use that language but it's absolutely clear that these rice Farmers defeated the United States Army because they were a committed Guerilla Army which can override even the most powerful armies the first historical precedent of that or at least one of the historical precedents is the Battle of the macbes against the Greeks so I'm told that West Point would actually study the book of the macbes one to understand the military strategy of fighting a Guerilla Warfare I'm also told that they did not study they did do not study and did not study the lessons of the sixth day war because they said there were no lessons you can get from the sixth day war the whole thing didn't make any sense it was obviously Supernatural and miraculous he says there was not a single useful military lesson they could get from the M but from the mabes they were able to get some some lessons so the emphasis of mbes 1 is looking at the of the maab too emphasized a different side it emphasized the religious martyrdom of those who died Al K hasem the famous story of KH and Her Seven Sons in which all of her seven children were killed because they refused to bow down to idols and they refused even to pick up the pick up a ring so it would look like they were uh they were praying to Idols uh those are are the stories of makab 2 mabes 2 talks about martyrdom dying Al KES Hashem now I want to emphasize I'm not suggesting mbes 1 had a secular orientation and mccabes 2 had a religious that's not EMS makab mbes 1 is also a religious book it talks about prayer to Hashem it talks about Hashem as the source of Victory both books are have a religious orientation but macbes one sees the greatness of the Jewish people in terms of their strength against the enemy and mccabes 2o sees the greatness of the Jewish people in their submission to martyrdom rather than violate the Torah now one could surmise that perhaps this was an active argument as to which point should be emphasized and what's fascinating is that this very same issue resurfaced after the Holocaust you know uh we celebrate or have celebrate we commemorate y hasha was it is it the 28th of Nissan it's the end end of the month of which one 27th 27th of Nissan that's Y and you know of course there are issues of Y in the month of niss but putting aside the issue uh everything in Israel is controversial you might figure what what what could be controversial about yah we we remember 6 million Jews who were murdered uh well the answer is that the day of the 27th of Nissan was chosen because it was the anniversary of the final fall of the war Saga and that was chosen in the early 1950s very very deliberately because there was a segment again I don't mean to impune everybody but there was a segment of of zionists in the state of Israel who were kind of ashamed of the passivity of the Jewish people in going like sheep to the slaughter they didn't like the fact that there was such such little armed resistance Jews were just mowed down they were just killed they didn't fight back and therefore when they wanted to memorialize the Holocaust they wanted to pick the one uh event in which Jewish people indeed were very very proactive in initiating fighting of course they were crushed as well but at least they they they tried and they put up the big efforts and they imposed casualties on the Germans and therefore they they chose specifically the warto as an example of the true hero ISM of the Jewish people everything else was the galut mentality and uh the state of Israel was designed to create a new type of Jew not the POS know not the um the wimpish Jew you know who just lets the goam walk all over them now that was that that view but there were a number of people in the early 50s there were quite a few survivors of the Holocaust who were still alive and uh they felt this was an insult to them they they felt there was a sense of being delegitimated looked down upon people did not appreciate the K hasem of going to your death so what occurs to me is I don't have any proof of this is that mbes 1 and mbes 2 are engaged in that very same debate do you look at the military heroism as the Jewish hero or do you look at the one who dies Al K hasem now the truth of the matter is obviously it's not an either or I mean that that's the truth the truth of the matter is that both should be admired and both should be mourned and and you know we should think about all of the different ways that God's name was Sanctified sometimes God's name was Sanctified by fighting against amalik that's also kesem that you don't stand you don't give into evil and you fight it and sometimes the kesem is the willingness to surrender your life rather than violate the Torah so it shouldn't be an either or choice but Lisa in the debates over yah and in mbes 1 and makab 2 we do have a similar type of question now both mbes 1 and mbes 2 do describe that after the victory with antios we finally regained control of the temple three years mom meaning theim took control on the 25th of Kiss life three years later to the very day we regained control of the betam mikdash we purified it we rebuilt the altar because all of those stones had become contaminated with the aod Zora coros in fact to commemorate this there was a special chamber in the temple which contained the stones that had been defiled by theim the old mbak Stones were kept in a chamber as a memorial and they knew mbak had to be built and knew manora had to be built the makeshift manura mentions like the eight Spears that were soldered together with thin right to the whole manur of the macbes the miracle manur was a very makeshift manura till they were able to make a regular fancy manura uh and according to the maab 1 they declared a holiday of eight days as a ceremony for the dedication of the b mikdash in other words the holiday of Kaneka is exactly what the word Kaneka means the word kanuka kanuka dedication it is an 8 Day Festival commemorating the dedication of the temple after it had been liberated from the yanim why 8 days so mbes one says Hanah was an 8 Day Festival because when Moshe Renu dedicated the mishan the dedication of the mishan was over 8 day period meaning there were the seven preliminary days from the 23rd of Adar till the end of Adar and the day of dedication was Roes Nissan that happened to be the tragic day that died but that is theuk now a little aside I would add a little commentary to makab number one and that is Moser renu's dedication of the mishan was eight days that's in the Torah but schlom built the first temple and in the book of malim schl H's dedication was 14 days in fact it ended with so in fact you see that jum Kipper was the middle of his dedication and kazal actually say they ate and drank and that Ki because they were celebrating the dedication of the mishkan so why when the mbes rededicated the B mikdash did they use the eight days of Moshe rather than then the 14 days of schlom so the book of mccabes doesn't say it just says they went with Moses but I think there's a medis that gives a very good answer to this because the medis says that when the Jewish people began constructing the mishan in the aftermath of yam Kipper Right mosha comes down on yum Kipper with the second luos Hashem has forgiven the sin of the golden calf the very next day Moshe says let's start collecting for a mishkan so they began construction of the mishun or at least collecting for the mishun the day after yamer they actually were finished in the month of klave they were ready to erect the mishan in Kiss life but God said he wants to defer its dedication to Nissan because that is the birthday of Yo and Y is the pillar of divine service so Hashem wanted to defer it to Nissan so as the MIM commonly say klave was a upset the month of klave was upset they felt they were cheated they should have been the dedication month so Hashem promised klave I promise you that you will be a month of dedication in the Kaneka story so now it's very muak why they went with the eight days of Moshe because in reality klave should have been the dedication of moshe's mishkan it was not so therefore Kana is 8 days so according to the book of the mbes why is there mbes one mbes one why is there an 8 Day holiday of Kaneka because it was an 8 day dedication ceremony for the betam mikdash now maab 2 gives another reason that's a little peculiar obviously for the three years that theim had control of the bet mikdash we were not able to keep the shal we didn't keep PES I mean we kept it as a y but we weren't able to engage in the pilgrimage offerings the Corbin PES and the like now the last hug that we would have wanted to keep and we couldn't keep was sukot the sukot before uh before that Hanukkah so makes too suggests a very strange idea that the eight days of Kaneka were designed to be a makeup for the eight days of the sukot festival that we were not able to keep sukot is seven days but then there're Sher so so in reality since Sher is contiguous it's directly after sukos we look at the sukos festivities as fundamentally eight days Kaneka was a makeup for sukot that the mabes 2 says people took lul and esrog and they built sukus now this is one of the reasons why the Apocrypha books are not considered Hally valid because obviously Hally there's no way you can make up sukot you miss sukot you miss it uh the only thing that could be made up is p Shen if you didn't bring the Corbin PES you're given a woman later if you miss sukot good if you couldn't do it you couldn't do it but there's no concept of of of makeup and in fact it's very clear that this came from the bottom up rather than the top down meaning this was a lay Innovation people on their own Gra gravitated to wanting to make up sukot so they started taking lul and Suka but Hally it has no validity and that is why there is absolutely no mention of such a ritual in kazal kazal kind of ignored maab number two they didn't mention it but what's interesting is that sometimes like a fossil old extinct minhagim have a little bit of a Resurgence like grass coming up up from AA and that is you know there's the famous how do you light the Kana candles bill says like we do you start with one and you go up because when it comes to Holiness you always go up B Shi says you start with eight and you go down and the gumar has a lot of problems maybe we'll discuss this in another share maybe what is the logic of bam H we understand you want to go up why would you start with eight and go down so one of the reasons the gamar gives is oh this follows the pattern of the corbon that you bring on sukat you bring 70 bows and it goes down 13 12 so just like the 70 bowls of sukot go down B Shai says the N of Kaneka go down and all the commentaries have all sorts of pisti questions like what's the connection between the corbano of sukot and the N of kanak and they create various structures but sometimes a little bit of History can actually illuminate obscurities B Shai is recording an idea that the origin of Kaneka was rooted according to mabes 2 in an attempt to replicate sukot and therefore even the of lighting the neot would correspond to the carbon of sukot so I would say that's what I'm saying that even though the kan's connection was ignored by kazal kazal did not emphasize it at all because it led to anti halakic conclusions conclusions that were not in accordance with Jewish law but the folk tradition of am Israel survived in at least one of course we don't POS like be shami but at least in Bei it actually survived it's an interesting I don't if I don't know if I want to use the word sociological phenomenon but it is interesting that there are many men hug him in the course of Jewish history that got extinct they were folk Traditions that simply stopped but in one way or the other like fossils they will survive in some form and I think B shami might be might be a very good example so it turns out that both according to macbes 1 and mccabes to the 8 Day holiday of Kaneka is not connected not connected to the nce of the P according to makab 1 it is the 8 Day celebration of the dedication or the rededication of the BAM mikdash after it had been desecrated by the yanim for three years and according to macbes 2 it was an attempt to make up for the of sukot which was seven days Plus in fact not only does do the books of the makes not mention the miracle of the they don't even mention a Mitzvah light khaka candles in other words they mention Hal you recite Hal and you recite you give thanks to Hashem in other words one might even question was Kaneka initially celebrated by the lighting of candles maybe that came later and I'll discuss why it may have come later meaning it's so funny we think the essence of KH even as a Mitzvah isos in reality the essence of Kan is Hal Theos came a little later now let's go a little further remember the story of the maab happens uh I'm sorry the victory the Kaneka story happens uh let's say 185 BC these are approximate dates 185 BC I want to go to another Authority that's not from kazal and that is Josephus Josephus is much later Josephus of course lived during the destruction of the second temple in the hands of the Romans the year 70 so that's um well again the mccabes is 185 BCE 70 right so you're talking about uh almost three almost 300 years later and Josephus does record that the Jews celebrate Hanukah by lighting he doesn't mention the P either but they celebrate by lighting and he even refers to the idea that the holiday is known among the Jews as so this is kind of the modern Israeli name for Kana but it comes from Josephus Who records y his name was yose benio not not the M of but M another M also a and he record it's called but listen to what he says the explanation he gives for is that when Jews would celebrate a military Victory they would light bonfires so the candles were mini bonfires so on one hand he incorporates the Mitzvah of but he too does not connect it to a miracle of p and he connects itself to so in macbes 1 mccabes 2 and Josephus there is no mention of the miracle of the p in mbes 1 and two there's not even a mention of the Mitzvah of lighting NEOS Josephus mentions the Mitzvah and the ritual of lighting NEOS but he connects that to bonfire celebrations and he does not connect it to the Mitzvah of so where does the pem story come from where does it come from so actually comes from a tanic source which is called M millas Tinus millas Tinus is actually the very first work of the Toral that was written down originally the aural law was not supposed to be written down when it was in danger of getting of being gotten forgotten so the sages permitted it based on the verse when it's a time to stand up for God we are permitted to an know the Torah and if there's a risk of the T of being forgotten we write it down the mishna is a good is the classic example the mishna is the the essential H Corpus of the oral law and it was written down because it was in danger of being forgotten now the mishna was authored or edited actually edited is probably a better word was edited by R in collaboration with all of the now the date these are all approximate dates the date of the mishna is around 200 of the Common Era now that is more than uh almost 400 years right 180 BCE to 200 is 380 years so the mishna was written 380 years after the Kaneka story but but around a 100 years before the mishna shortly after the destruction of the temple there was something written before the mishna that was called millas Tanis now millas Tanis is a very confusing title The Scroll of fasting so you would figure it would somehow contain the laws of fasting no Migel tanet was a calendar listing all the days of the Jewish year where you're not allowed to fast because they should be commemorated as holidays now this does not include chabas roses and yam because that's already Torah line it includes various miraculous or happy victories over time most of which we don't observe today and that's a whole question but there were like 35 days which commemorated different victories and different Miracles and those days are contained in migil tanet and the story of Kaneka is contained in migil tanet and in migil Tage we read for the first time that there was a jar of oil that that only had enough oil to burn for one night and miraculously it burned for8 days and that was the basis of the 8 Day holiday of Kaneka to commemorate the great miracle now again let's keep some dates in mind millat Tanis is the first as far as we know the first written source that mentions the theil was written approximately 100 of the common of the Common Era which is what 280 years after the Kaneka story so the p is not recorded until 280 years after the Kaneka story now I want to absolutely disassociate myself from the academic conclusions that are drawn the typical academic conclusion that is drawn maybe I shouldn't even say it because I don't want to give it credibility is that that proves it didn't happen that proves they say they say that that was a madeup story uh to enhance the holiday Etc and it didn't happen and that's why it was not mentioned that is not what I am saying as a as a believing Jew I believe such a thing did happen but I think it is pretty clear from the mot that that was not the origin of why Kaneka became a holiday and the reason is because if you think about it the nce of the P was actually an extremely private Miracle most people may not have known about it because what's going on here first of all where is the manur situated the Min is situated in the only kohanim were allowed to even go into the Isel couldn't even go there number two if I'm not there 24/7 and I walk in and I simply see the manura burning I don't know that it's been going continuously maybe it was lit today right in other words uh it may have been a miracle that most of the Jewish people were not even aware of it must have been a received tradition among that eventually was written down in migil tanet but it was not the reason for the holiday uh in fact maral on his own maral lived in the 1500s and maral didn't have access to the book of the mccabes maral on his own says logically the origin of Kaneka as a holiday is not because of the p it's because of the and says that and it's an amazing thing as you often find the insights of the moral that he gets through philosophy and Torah understanding not through Reading history are actually confirmed by history you see that the of Torah can can anticipate all sorts of things that are discovered later uh in history and and the like and the morale point out that this Insight actually answers the most famous question of Kaneka the most famous question of all if you have kids in school they will for sure bring home this question and give you a lot of answers and this question is normally identified as the Bas yosef's question the question of Yosef Kyra although he was not the first to ask it and the question is if there was enough oil to burn for one day and a miracle happen that Hashem enabled the oil to burn for 8 days then the miracle is only seven days the first day is not a miracle so we ought to start Kaneka on the 26th of kiss and light for seven days instead of the 25th of Kiss life and light for eight days famous question now uh this question is subject to what you might call answer inflation the Bas yoseph himself gives three answers uh I remember there were books that gave 50 answers and then another book came out that gave 100 answers and then another book came out gatria which is 250 answers and then another book and mean every time I I talk about the number of answers I have to revise my my draa uh 500 answers somebody told me there's a book with a thousand answers so it keeps on going and going and going and going and going so many so many answers R if Kyo just to give you a a simple answer says that when they had enough oil for one day they didn't pour all the oil in the manura they wanted to pour a little every day they figured let it burn for an hour today and then an hour tomorrow so they only put 1/8 of the oil in and it burnt the whole day so even on the first day there was a miracle but the moral says if you understand that the eight days of Kaneka is not because of the miracle of the oil it's because of either a replacement for sukos which maral doesn't say oruk bu it then it's 8 days because that was an 8 Day celebration not because of the miracle of the oil and therefore the whole B Joseph's question is actually no longer a question once you disassociate Kaneka or the origin of Kaneka from the nce of the so the question becomes the following the question becomes from the perspective of M and again I I'm absolutely affirming the historicity of the Miracle we believe it happened it did happen but it was not emphasized in the Kaneka observance the Kana observance was a celebration of and dedication of the mikdash the idea of the pmen was intro as as a reason as a celebration was introduced later so why would it be introduced later so here we have something very very interesting we have what you might call kanaka version one and kanuka version two or 1.2 whatever you beta whatever you want to call it and that is in many many ways in the retrospective well well I'll give you two reasons one is pragmatic and when is not let's assume we're lighting candles okay we're lighting candles at a time when er Israel is under Roman domination remember migan was composed after theb bet mikdash the Jews were in gas the go were being persecuted we're lighting NE a Roman sees me lighting my kanuka candles a Roman asks me why are you lighting kanuka candles my answer well we are celebrating the overthrow of foreign domination in ER Israel by an occupying power not the best answer to give to the Romans so as a result pragmatically Kaneka shifted away from the victory over the foreign oppressors to a miracle you know God did a miracle he gave us light you know uh in fact there's a beautiful story a beautiful VI it may be above these stories tend not to be true I don't know but it is a very beautiful story uh the American Revolution one could imagine there weren't that many observant juice uh in America in 1779 and uh Orthodox Jews there were even fewer uh but there is a story that one of the soldiers at Bunker Hill or Valley Forge one of these one of these battles uh was actually lighting his kanaka manur in the military Camp he had a kanak manur with him he was lighting a candle again I'm not going to get into the is that what a does some say does not light in the fields because you have to have a bot if there's no definite bi it okay but but he was lighting and he said later that all of a sudden in the middle of the night a tall dignified man stops it was General Washington who was walking around to see that people had blankets like the right people had blankets were they being taken care of and General Washington asked him you know what are you doing you know you might think are you signaling to the enemy or something you know so he said well we have a holiday in which we had a great victory over oppression and this light reminds us that God protected us and he said Washington you know said he really really appreciates getting that blessing he feels that this is something that will bring God's blessing to the United States against the oppression of Great Britain and uh turns out that when Washington was inaugurated in New York the first inauguration was in New York this guy lived in New York Washington actually paid him a visit uh he knew where he lived and he paid him a visit he honored him by saying that your light I don't know if Washington used the word kanah but your light gave me a lot of inspiration in dark moments because there were in the American Revolutionary War there actually were some very dark moments where it looked like uh the uh fledgling United States would not be would not be victorious so one simple answer again I know people don't like to give these pragmatic answers why Kana shifted from the N idea to the p idea was when the Jewish people are under Roman domination they want to De emphasize the mil but I think there's a deeper spiritual reason and that is the following in many many ways the victory of Kaneka turned out to be a failure you know uh if any of you ever read uh George Orwell not 1984 but his other uh Na no navet uh animal uh Farm now Animal Farm is a story about animals that are rebelling against oppressive conditions and they overthrow the human Masters and they create their own system of rule and governance and what happens is that the one of the animals Napoleon I think it's a pig actually becomes more dictatorial than even the human now this Fable was a parody of the Russian Revolution because here you had the Russian Revolution to overthrow the Zar uh to establish Lish Freedom equality uh Etc and what you got was you got Lenin you got Stalin meaning to say what you got was not much better than thear in fact could have been a lot worse than thear uh even so and noro was saying it's like the animals revolt and they created a dictatorship that's worse than existed before that is sometimes the history of a lot of Revolutions a lot of revolutions turn out to create a situation that was worse than what you had before not all but but some Kana Is tragically in retrospect was very very similar the makim the as the ramban writes were 100% righteous saintly people whose kav sh sh they were fighting not for political reasons they were fighting to be able to keep the Torah and they were willing to die to keep the Torah andem gave them he delivered the many into the hands of the few the impure into the hands of the pure and all of that was beautiful but strangely enough this was a war against helenismo and Dynasty who ruled for the next 100 years eventually became helenistic themselves they became like George Orwell's story they became the very thing that they were fighting against it's a great great tragedy they took on Greek names Yani horines in fact the only bright moment in the ammonian dynasty were the 10 years when a woman took over Shalom hamala she was married to Jana who was a Russia yanai died she took over for a while and uh she restored Torah learning and she supported Torah and that was a golden time she unfortunately died she was already older when she became a widow and queen and her sons unfortunately did not follow in her ways her sons were Daddy's boys rather than mommy's boys her sons followed the ways of of their father and that was it uh and the Romans came soon afterwards and that was the end of the ammonian dynasty Dynasty anyway uh so here is the thing initially we could celebrate kanah the victory over theim the reestablishment of Torah rule the reestablishment of Judaism but by the time we're in the Roman times so number one we lost that Independence anywhere with Rome and number two what the Kash established was not meaningful in fact in K's chronology it is just considered an extension of the Greek period doesn't yeah you are correct that that that is a very good point uh yeah that is a very good point the rambam in fact does say that part of the joy of Kaneka is the restoration of ronot or sovereignty uh to the Jews for a period of of close to 200 years where the Rob gets 200 years is problematical but maybe huh maybe's yeah that's that's even more peculiar that he's included including Hardis as Jewish yeah yeah it is true that the rambam does consider and it's very relevant on yut very other other things as well the rambam does consider uh even extremely non-religious Jewish governments to be some at least a cause of Celebration uh so yeah that's a that is a very good point but I'm trying to say Mill tanit but it could be that Mig tanit didn't look at it that way and Mill tanit did not want to glorify the the jonian dynasty it treated it as a failure it treated it as the continuation of the Greek period and that's why khaka version two puts much more emphasis on the Miracle of the P rather than the the B calls no say again who the Bible say about no no name yeah yeah yeah yeah I saw you know there's an interesting um book a big big fat book safer that was written after The Six Day War called it was written by ra ker uh and he was trying to compile all of the words he was taking although he was a by origin but he was taking a very very Messianic view of Zionism and Medina and and the like uh but even he had his limits someone sent him an article saying that akab was actually a great sadic said uh I'm not going to go that far I'm not going to say AK was a righteous person but AK had certain he was Russ is the proof that it is a great victory yeah y oh y okay I I I know I hear you I mean I I'm not denying that perspective and you you are right that the rambam clearly uh saw that as a positive thing but all I'm saying is that uh the M could have seen it differently meaning meaning there are different different just like today there are different different ways of of of of viewing this so again we're not going with the academic approach that this is a madeup story but we're simply saying that different aspects come to the Forefront at different times for different reasons so as a result we have a certain schizophrenia in Kaneka that the alhan still focuses on the of the and the dedication of the bikash but our ritual of Han focuses very much on the Miracle of the P now the maral says there's actually a thematic connection between the two that's important because the following whenever we celebrate there is always a n there's a certain challenge that we face which the Torah itself warns us against and that is called that a person attributes their success to themselves and they become arrogant they're filled with GAA they reject God this is always the problem when when we're successful so maral said Hashem wanted to couple the with a supernatural Miracle which in no way could be attributed to human endeavor as if to say God is saying don't think your Victory is because of you your Victory is because I took your efforts and I gave you a success beyond what you would have thought is possible just as this one day of oil intrinsically could only burn one day but God gave it the ability to burn more so the morale said we need the to put the in proper perspective because without that we could glorify our own military prise my strength accomplished all of these things in fact some want to say you know one of the um one of the very very uh perplexing aspects of October 7 the October 7 Massacre and this is and now I see it's getting Much More Much More publicity New York Times and the like is the massive failure of of Israeli intelligence uh because you know as everyone knows Israeli military intelligence is really by far the best in the world I mean much better the United States I mean we you know we know what's going on uh right so how could it be that all of the detect detection systems like failed and Hamas gets into the country and even the Army doesn't respond for a few hours which is also unheard of that it took so long to get the Army there uh even in fact I saw a video it was horrifying they were showing like WhatsApp conversations in real time with people that are trapped in their houses when the terrorists enter and they're saying where's the Army where's the Army where's the Army you know I mean M it's just just to imagine imagine the the the terror that people were feeling under those circumstances and the question is how could it be so if you've been following the story New York Times has a big big article about it and apparently there were quite a few sources in Military Intelligence or the shinb or the Shabaka whatever it was that knew or at least predicted that this was coming down the Pike and people higher up kind of said nah it's not possible Kamas doesn't have the resources to pull it off and they poo pooed it and it's a massive failure I mean for sure heads are going to roll on on this but from a spiritual perspective from a spiritual perspective sometimes what's going on is that God shows us sometimes that all of the systems that we think we're in so much control in everything can fail everything can collapse that literally mashia comes when you know there is nothing but God that's going to protect you yeah we have to have isas and of course we are eternally grateful to the who are most every single moment this is not God forbid denigrating that contribution all but ultimately without Hashem all of your plans fall fall down so in a sense what happens is the massive intelligence failure was also part of the Messianic plan for us to realize that we have no one to rely upon you know it's so bizarre I don't want to get too political really I don't like to talk about politics that much uh take a guy like uh Chuck Schumer so Chuck Schumer is the it's interesting the title that he gives himself you know it's not quite accurate he says he is the highest elected Jewish official in the history of the United States I mean his elected position is United States Senator so brem there have been a lot of United States senators LMI within the Democratic party he was elected Majority Leader so he's using that like a new office that to be the highest know elected political Jewish officer office in in Jewish okay let let him have the title if that's good now Chuck Schumer though has not been um you know a great friend of Jewish causes generally he's liberal guy and he goes off in his liberal Direction but he made talk about the pinted he made a speech the other day in the senate about anti-Semitism and he said that the Jews cannot rely on anyone you know even the United States of America they can't rely it they rely only on God and on each other so even Chuck Schumer Ain I think that's the pin coming out you know coming out in a very unlikely unlikely place and I'll give him credit I will give him credit for for making a speech like that uh you know it's something very very rare from an American politician who is so much part of the establishment of the of the of the political power so there is a debate I'll just end with this and again next week we'll we'll talk more about Kaneka that um is kanaka important or not important you know in in in the reform movement they often debate this because Kaneka is this around the same time as that well-known Christian holiday so some people in the reform movement says hey we got to build Kaneka up with gifts every day and fancy stuff because that's the only way we'll keep our kids away from Christmas Etc and others say no Kan is not a y what are you trying to OV exaggerate it but the truth is kanak is not a that's true I mean you can do Maka you can do all sorts of stuff but kanak is enormous important because Kaneka is ultimately about the light overcoming the darkness there's a lot of darkness in the world there is the darkness of persecution and violence there's the darkness of ignorance there's the darkness of assimilation there is the darkness of hatred and polarization within the Jewish people there is the individual darkness that people have of depression anxiety lack of shom between husband and wife estrangement between parents and children and the role of a Jew in the world generally as laaba used to say is to be a Lamplighter we're supposed to try to bring some light in the darkness of the world the darkness of Our Lives the darkness of an individual but sometimes we look at our capacity and we think I'm so insignificant the amount of light that I can generate relative to the darkness is so small what's the use what's the point it's like trying to empty the ocean with a thimble what are you going to do so a person gives up the message of Kaneka is you do what you can even if you think it's worthless and then you'll be surprised Hashem will bless your efforts beyond what you thought was possible the one day of oil you know they might have said if they thought they weren't going to have oil the next day they might have said well why lied today I'm not going to have anything tomorrow what's the point but you do what you can and when you do what you can things happen beyond what you thought possible so Kaneka as a metaphor for Hope as a symbol for the notion that you got to bring light to the darkness even if you think it's small and ineffectual is a very very powerful message for us today so in that way it's a very very beautiful holiday because it has that symbolism so it's not only military Victory and it's not only what happened then there's a real relevance in dealing with the struggle of light and darkness even so I wish you all we'll see you hopefully next week at Reena Quin kanuka [Music] party down