Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb - Carrying Chanukah Into the Bleak Winter

life has a certain rhythm i think in different cultures different historical periods rhythm is different there's a social historian that nyu postman i think is his name it talks about the invention of childhood but until a couple hundred years ago there was no such thing as childhood because it was a baby at the age of six he went out to work couldn't survive unless everybody worked the idea there's a period of time which is relatively um irresponsible and uh minimal demands of schooling and that's the time you can find yourself and build your identity to exist um most cultures there are high points of low points in the year or high points and neutral points in the year points of special emphasis i think it's common to spend time preparing for the points of high emphasis what isn't common i think is what happens afterwards what do you do with the high point once it's over for many people it's just over you then occupy your mind either with the next high point coming up or you shift into neutral gear for the interim time but nothing no high point is on the horizon the torah has an additional strategy of carrying over from the high point into the next period of time not enough to say that the high point inspired me and maybe now i'm a better person living on a higher plane formally institutionally there's a carry over into the next period so for example it comes to shabbos saturday night there's malevolent malka is a continuation of shabbos it's projecting shabbos into the next week it's a carryover from shabbos one conducts with a marker in shabbos and there are special songs to sing of course one does it without the formal restrictions of shabbos but still the shabbos spirit is still there has have a play on words when a major holiday is over the next chabas can be called in yiddish shabbos no which in one meaning says it's the shabbos after yamcha but another meaning of nach is that it's still yamcha it's shabbos more of yomtov cathedral and there are some customs which enact this across large periods of time you have a lulav that you use on circus many save the lulav and the arovas that some are used for fragrance but the rubbish and they burn them in the fire with which you baked the matzos so you have them five or six months later and you take this thing which you use for a mitzvah in the fall and you use it to make the matches that you're going to use in the spring same with left over oil from hanukkah it could be burned for the sake of the burning of the comets there's a sense of connecting the high points not leaving them simply as high points without any carryover one way of conceiving of shabbos is that the three days before shabbos wednesday thursday and friday prepare for shabbos and sunday monday and tuesday carry over the influence of shabbos to the next week and that's reflected even in a law because you have to make half a dollar marking the end of shabbos suppose you don't have wine and you have to have the ability to make up dollars you can make abdullah until tuesday morning you don't refrain from eating as you ordinarily would but you can make a dollar until tuesday morning because sunday monday and tuesday are still related to prior shabbos so the idea is that after the high point is over there is a it's desirable to try to carry the high point through now when we do that is you have to analyze the high point and see what lessons it teaches and then try to find ways to implement those lessons in the coming period of time there are a couple of lessons of the menorah which are not very well known but i think that they are useful in this regard to try to project from hanukkah into the coming period of time many years ago of zeven put out a classic called bahala holidays in jewish law it's translated into english well i got it it wasn't translated in english but it has been i haven't tried it it's a beautiful a beautiful job and he makes some remarks on the menorah and how it's lit and how the laws of the menorah work which i think are useful here's one we all know that one way of beautifying the mitzvah is to add a new candle each night that happens to be a muslin special difference of opinion we follow the opinion-based syllable the first night one next night two next night three fake shaman says the opposite first night july eight it's night seven next night six six nine five complete opposites of course the number of of candles will signify what night it is if you know who's ruling the following you see three candles you don't know what is the third night or the fifth night depending upon who's with you probably what's the difference between them what's the essence of the disagreement rav zeven brings down i forget who one of the commentators who does a survey of the difference of opinion between besselberg and he has he sees a theme in their differences their disagreements ebay emphasizes potential and basil emphasizes actual both are important and both are are fundamental but one emphasizes the one and one emphasizes the other now in this case what happened with the oil there are many stories perhaps the simplest story is the oil burned more slowly the first night they filled up all of the menorah and they ignited it but at the end of the first night they found that only one eighth of the oil was burned seven eighths remained burned more slowly the next night another eighth of the original mount burned and so it was night by night the xiaomi's analysis is this so what happened is that the oil isn't normal oil anymore the oil now is slow burning oil when did that happen that happened immediately that happened in preparation for the first night's lighting became slow burning oil on the first night how many nights of slow burning oil did you have you had eight nights worth the second night one eighth of that was used up so how many nights of slow burning oil do you have in the second night seven nights worth the third night you have six nights worth left so says basham i look into the essence the essence is that oil's character was changed so make the number of candles correspond to the amount of miracle oil that you have and that's why it goes eight seven six going down diminishing now they still it's very important to get this right basil agrees with meshami yes the miracle was to change the character of the oil and yes on the first night you have eight nights of miracle oil the second night you have seven nights of miracle six nights of miracle that's true blesses basil we don't celebrate the miracle oil we celebrate the burning the miracle oil is only potential the mitzvah is to ignite it and it should burn it should give out light that's the mitzvah and the mitzvah celebrates the illumination that the oil caused the first night you had one night's worth of illumination second night you had two nights of illumination third night you had three nights of illumination that's why you increased the number of camps rather than decreasing now this is a symptom of a as i said a much more general and deep difference of opinion do you celebrate the potential or the actual this has many implications for classical jewish understanding and for nuances of jewish practice for example moses is on mount sinai receiving the torah from from accord from god while he's there at the end the jews will make the golden calf god says to moses go get down that people have straight from me and this is the normal progression can't be fulfilled now when god uses the word go down raid go down the talmud comments go down from your greatness go down from your greatness why moses was a very great man how did he get to be such a great man he worked very hard to achieve it but here's the key point the achievement the ultimate result of all his work is a divine gift it's not as if his work created it is a divine gift maybe god wouldn't have given the gift to somebody who didn't work to achieve it that's true it may be necessary but it doesn't produce the outcome the outcome is a divine gift then you have to ask why did god give him the gift what was god's intention in giving him the gift was it to recognize his hard work you worked so hard so you deserve to have your work crown to success the answer is no that's not why god gave him that greatness god gave him that greatness because it would be useful for the jewish people he could do something with it for the jewish people the greatness that he received is only a potential but the potential's existence only is meaningful if it's actually used now what happened is when the jewish people made the golden calf they descended they deteriorated they no longer had the station where they could benefit from moses greatness so god said then you lose it i didn't give it to you for you i gave it to you for what you could do for them they can't take it from you now so then you lose it this is an exquisite illustration of the idea that the inner potential is not the goal inner potential only has meaning if it's used externally a similar element in a famous biblical story god commands abraham and isaac to go through the sacrifice of isaac when it's over the torah says abraham returned to his young men and they went together to the bereshaba so the question that's asked is why does the torah say they went together to bear shepherd isn't it obviously we go together how did you think they were going to go you take the high road and i'll take the low road i mean they're his servants they're caring for the animal of course they're going to go together not only that but together that's the third time together appears in the story and the together is very significant when it comes up so the reader says why did the torah bother to tell me that they're together i must give myself some credit i thought of this myself but then i saw it in the writings of rav cook and then i knew that it had a good a good source if cook says abraham experienced one of the greatest spiritual tests and successes of all time could he still relate to the servants left behind or was he spiritualized out of their environment out of their sphere to the one where he couldn't relate to them anymore so the torah says he went with them together it stresses together he was still able to be together with them that's typical of jewish spiritual achievement a jewish spiritual gift by the way i think the word gifts there it's common in english to speak that way and it's a pretty significant word that for the sake of what you can do when you can be together with the others that it mustn't push you to the point where you can't relate to it because that was what's given to you for so now here's something which i think it's it's worthwhile contemplating each of us has certain strengths either because we were born and raised that way our early environment our natural tendencies took us that way or we had certain striking experiences which stimulate us in that direction or certain inspirations if i look at those events as divine investments in me then i'm going to treat them very differently if they're divine investments and i remember that this investment was made in me in order that i should be able to do something for others then my attitude towards others who need me or come to ask for help from me uh is going to be very different sometimes when i try to help people they and they want to express their gratitude i tell them many people when i was developing took their time and freely gave me their advice information the example the instruction to help me develop i'm paying back that debt they invested in me so i'm investing in other people that's an answer and it's i think a meaningful and adequate answer but what i'm telling you now is much deeper than that because i didn't meet them by accident they didn't happen to be the people in my environment who had these gifts which i specifically needed all of that is divine providence and that being the case ultimately it's god's investment in me and if it's god's investment in me i have to realize that it was given to me only for the sake of what i can do with it for others just like most and just like baseball says about lighting so if you have in mind the menorah and you have in mind the fact that we celebrate is the illumination that comes out of the menorah and then think in what way can i spread illumination in the world so then we've learned a lesson from hanukkah and we can take it with us that's one here's another one many books talk about the profound philosophical clash between the greeks and the hype of the jews one of or maybe the most significant clash is that for the greeks nature is everything and for the jews nature is nothing nature is a no thing what we call nature is just when god runs the world in a repetitive categorized way what we call miracles when god runs the world in a way that isn't repetitive and categorized it breaks the categories that we're normally used to but it's all god's activity the only thing in the world that is god's activity is human free choice everything else is god's activity so our point of view and their point of view are utterly utterly opposed it's an absolute contradiction now what happened the greeks took over the land of israel and they performed all sorts of abominations although that wasn't their intention there wasn't intention it wasn't to do something abominable their intention was just to do what greeks do so for example they put up a statue to zeus in the temple and they offered pigs to zeus in the temple they didn't do that despite us offering pigs to the gods was common widespread practice they would just follow their common widespread practice since they their army was occupying us obviously in their minds their gods are stronger than our god and they're they're taking advantage of their superiority and doing what they normally do what they always do plus it's an abomination peace zeus the statue of a foreign god and pigs in the in the temple so that triggered a rebellion and the rebellion was successful was crowned by a miracle so we like the menorah what are we celebrating sometimes it's described like this they have philosophy and we are philosophy what we're celebrating is the triumph of our philosophy over their philosophy their philosophy is false and degraded in certain ways our philosophy is true and holy and we won the war and we won the war with a visible miracle which violates their idea of nature so it's a triumph of our philosophy over their philosophy and that's we're celebrating i think that's superficial i think it's superficial and dangerous i think it's a way of winning the battle but maybe losing the war because it's another facet of greek philosophy which is equally if not more dangerous and it's one where which we were much more likely to be fooled by and dragged into what is a human being what does a human be what's essential about a human being what's most important about a human being the greeks defined humans as rational animals to be human you have to have a certain sort of body an angel could be rational and smart and well-educated and moral and everything else wouldn't be human because of the human body and you have to have the power of reason that's what sets us apart from all the other animals that's what's essential to us human being is a rational animal okay if the essence of human beings be irrational animal then thinking is the highest human activity because when you are thinking you're using your reason and what thoughts should you think well the highest human thoughts are the thoughts of philosophy the fact that it is a philosopher writing these lines is completely irrelevant you know non-prejudicial so the highest human being is the philosopher said the philosopher indeed one of my colleagues at hopkins pointed out an interesting problem for aristotle is this here i am philosophizing philosophizing down the hall to somebody playing a saxophone and he's disturbing me he's making it hard for me to concentrate why shouldn't i shoot him why shouldn't i shoot him he's an inferior he's wasting his life the essence of mankind is thought and he's not dividing devoting himself to thought and his activity to disturbing my thought so why shouldn't i shoot him interesting problem paris though that's how they define the human being now if we're going to celebrate the triumph of jewish philosophy over hellenistic greek philosophy we're reinforcing that picture of man what we're saying is you have the wrong philosophy and we have the right philosophy and that's why we're superior meaning because our thinking is going to be better than your thinking that's why we're superior to you but all that means to buy their definition of what it is to be human but the definition of what is wrong it's wrong it's desperately wrong the maharao considers this in detail and he says the essence of the evil being is not thinking but speech speech what's the difference between thinking and speech thinking is purely mental thinking in a certain sense is purely spiritual speech brings the spiritual into the physical speech is a marriage of the spiritual and the physical and that's the job of the human being that's the unique ability of the human being because a human being has a soul in a body you're being himself as an amalgam of the spiritual the physical he can be the bridge between the two he's the one who's supposed to take the spiritual and use it to impress on the physical and elevate the physical when genesis it says god breathed into adam's nostrils the breath of life and he became a living soul vocalist translates which means a speaking spirit the essence of you means life is speaking because it crosses the boundary between the spiritual and physical greeks didn't get that this is a different concept of what a human being is and i think this point is is expressed clearly by what we say about the chanukah menorah and although the post can discuss this and there is some discussion of it but i think what we say and where it's learned in iran is universal practice we say we have no permission to use them the hanukkah lights ella liro sam bilvad just to look at them just to see them can't use them for any purpose what about the purpose of learning torah to sit in front of another and open up a safer and learn torah so the post game discussed this but some say it has absolutely forbidden the iran says it's forbidden because just like the menorah in the temple you couldn't use for any purpose whatsoever including learning torah and this menorah is supposed to be a symbol of that menorah you can't use it for any purpose other than to look at them i'll come back to what that means in a moment but now look how that affects the picture we started with if you thought that in hanukkah we're celebrating the triumph of jewish philosophy over greek philosophy then on the contrary the highest thing he could do sitting in front of the menorah is to study jewish philosophy because that's what the victory is all about it's all about the greatness of jewish philosophy over great philosophy but we don't do that we don't do that the message is not that we have the better philosophy the message is that we as human beings are not thinkers that's not what we are we're speakers engaged in amalgamating the spiritual into the physical so as to elevate the physical and make it spiritual as well that's what human beings are now again what does it say in aristotle and there's the kodeshima they're holy they ain't none we have no right to use them just to look at them that means that the kedusha the holiness is the highest goal not having the right philosophy not thinking the right philosophy not learning the right philosophy holiness is the goal and the philosophy that we have and understanding the intellectual understanding that we have is a means to achieving that holiness that's what it's for and that has to be the essential message of chanukah not the superiority of the philosophy but the goal of the human being and the nature of the human being which is bringing the spiritual to the physical in the name of holiness that's why when we do any mitzvah we have a bracha the prophet says it doesn't just say god commanded us to do it and i'm fulfilling his command it says he sanctified us with his commandments and commanded us why is that introduction there every time in every mitzvah every every lesson that you make it always starts he sanctifies by the by the commandments it is to tell you that the purpose of the mitzvah is to achieve achieved sanctity we say this even with respect to the mitzvah of learning torah the midst of learning torah is not an end unto itself the misleading torah like the midst of keeping kosher like the mitzvah of eating matzah in the spring and blowing the chauffeur and the fall the purpose of learning torah is to become holy that's what it's for the tsar says there are 613 strategies aramaic for ethos a strategy is a means by which you accomplish something else what's the something else holiness connection to god all 613 commandments are means they're not ends but means means to connecting to god and to holiness that's their purpose that's the function that's their importance and that includes the learning of torah and that's why when you have a direct manifestation of holiness you can't even use it to learn torah because holiness is higher than torah holiness is the purpose of talk now this could have a double effect one side is to try to appreciate what holiness is and to try to make sure that the it is hanukkah give us a push in that direction but also i think it should be a push to think about learning torah and think about what it's for and to ask ourselves how we could implement in the learning of torah this spiritual element of course when you're learning torah the immediate pressure is to understand what you're learning that's the immediate question you want to understand but let's take that desire to understand and put it in a larger context what does the blessing say in the morning what do we command to do la sok vedivre sora lazuk means to be occupied with the blessing is not that we're commanded to understand to learn to remember to analyze to create new insights into the commandment is to be occupied with torah there's a famous remark of the have a time when we finish there's a long speech that we make formal speech that's you know word word word for word and one of the phrases that we say there is we're talking about joshua chronos who are people who are engaged in ordinary occupations and who don't see the higher meanings in life and it says we expand effort and they expand effort we expend effort and get rewarded and they expand effort and are not rewarded do you mean they're not rewarded take a craftsman let's say a shoemaker those days when you wanted a pair of shoes you went into the shoemaker he measured your foot and then he made shoes for you out of whole leather but then when you picked him up you paid him so what do you mean we make effort and get paid and they make everything don't get paid time said what happens if you go into the shoemaker he measures your foot you come back two weeks later and you put on what he created and it doesn't fit do you pay him no you do not pay him you pay him for a finished appropriate product you don't pay him for a failure so he spent two weeks working and didn't get paid now what's the parallel and learning torah the parallel is i spend two weeks on a tetris banging my head against the tracers and i don't get it i don't get it i walk away without understanding do i get paid for that yes i do i get paid because the mitzvah is to be occupied with the vray torah and i was occupied with the territory for two weeks so i get paid for that that's just to loosen the grip between study of torah and understanding the myth is to be occupied now more than that here we come directly i think to the spiritual side side of holiness there's a mishna in perky avos i've tried this test on many people i tell them mr says torah merits many things and music goes on a whole long list of great privileges and abilities and successes that someone who learns torah gets i quote it to them sorry to discuss it and then i say um i didn't quote the mission correctly i didn't quote did you catch the mistake no ask yourself did you catch the mistake asking you i'm asking the people in the recording did you catch a mistake i left out a word which word did i leave out hello may torah the shema the mishnah says he has to learn it the shema let's just learn it but learn it the shema what does this mean means for love of the creator who commanded it that's how it has to be learned to learn the love of the creator that commanded it what does that involve what does that require how do you apply it i think the hasidic movement emphasized the shemot in its attitude towards aurora but there's very little written on what you can do to make your learning with schwa i have a couple of suggestions one suggestion that i heard from my youngest son which i think is a brilliant suggestion you're studying with a study partner and you come across a problem and you can't solve it a difficult problem back and forth you can't solve it during the night you're thinking about it and the answer hits you i've got it what do you do you come in the next morning and say i got it listen i have the answer how about instead of that saying i heard this from somebody i remembered last night that i heard this from somebody i remember who but somebody told me this answer tell me what you think what's the difference the difference is that the i has been subtracted i'm not taking credit for it give me the credit to somebody else okay it's not true it's perfectly permissible to tell an untruth like this and that means there's less ego in it that way that's much more to do with the shema than to use it as a vehicle to build yourself up and increase your reputation and show off how great you are that's much more the shemo if you do it that way that's one example another example this is something which anybody who lives in yeshiva sees this going on all the time um stuck we can't figure something out in many in many batimedrish there are people who are paid just to stand there and answer questions try that in universities they're there all the time when you have a problem you're stuck you go to this person and it helps you out so that you should be able to make progress you have instant access to somebody who's who's a much more accomplished scholar than you are boy what that would do for a university education um it's a making appointment for two weeks hence and so forth and so on but now suppose the people who are paid to uh to give answers are busy and you and your caboose are stumped it's an unwritten rule that you can stop anybody and get help you can go up to the front rank and say listen we're stuck we can't read this rashi please help us and they will stop and help you because learning torah is a joint effort it's a social effort it's a community effort it's not the individual i grew up in university libraries where it's absolutely silent absolute silence and you are left in total isolation jerusalem is the exact opposite now how does that advanced student feel when he's working on a very difficult sophisticated text and his beginner comes up and says please read and translate rashford for me if he hasn't got it if he hasn't understood it then his feeling is oh yeah i guess i have to do this but what a waste of time i mean this is absolutely elementary and i'm working on the top top top stuff that's not blessed that's not doing it for love of your creator who commanded you to do it because your creator wants you to help people he wants you to be available to people the greatest scholars throughout jewish history made themselves available to the public at no charge to answer their questions that's what a post sake is every jewish community has organized something called a bastion of people who simply give their time to the public free of charge simply to sit there and answer questions and many are available by phone and they answer both men and women one of my daughters had a problem at 1 30 a.m was coming to pesach and things were being prepared in the house she called up a positive one of these decisions and she started to apologize for calling at 1 30am and said don't apologize because if you feel you have to apologize next time you're going to hesitate and you won't pick up the phone i'm here that's my job that's what i'm here for if you need an answer at 1 30 am call at 1 30 am i don't apologize and don't hesitate find me a professor at harvard like that find me a a a a doctor at you know a professor at johns hopkins hospital like that that's learning torah the shema for the sake of what you can do for others it's the same point that we started with before and now it's applied over here as well for the light that shines forth from it not just from the great ideas that you had of aaron cutler who founded lakewood yeshiva in america said if i had been left to learn i could have written foreign books that would have turned the world upside down instead i made like yeshiva he didn't say that out of regret he said that by saying america was a wasteland he established the standard for talmud torah for the whole country lakewood became the center and the standard of talmud for the whole country liquid sent out satellites to dozens of communities kirov kodolim senior students advanced students married who set up themselves in a place where there were no religious people or very few religious people and learned and taught freely for the for the public that's what lakeland stood for lakewood sets standard for the whole country of aaron knew that that's what needed to be done and as i say he didn't regret doing it in the country that was what what the kosovo needed to be done in the world so we understand that the human being's job is to use the spiritual to transform the physical and when he does that he's taking what he has and and spreading it further and when he learns torah the learning of torah can't be a greek gesture here the greek idea has a way to to worm itself inside as against other ideas like everything is nature and there is no creator so anyway genesis knows that's wrong but here the intellectual effort is so great in our circles in our study of torah that the it's her the evil inclination to glorify to deify the intellectual insight as if it were the key service of god and the key success in jewish terms that's a very very much more difficult temptation to deal with hanukkah should help us to remember what the locus of learning is the form of learning is what the purpose of learning is ultimately is not to become very smart um i'm going to finish a little bit earlier but i just want to tell you one little story we had a guy here i'm here 34 years he's probably here 25 years ago he had finished undergraduate school and he was going to go to business school i think he was accepted to stanford business school and he said my goal i think he was 22 he said my goal is to make a billion dollars by the time i'm 35. that's my goal and now that was 25 years ago then it was a million dollars with something today it would be 5 million that's my goal and he said i have heard that the talmud makes you smart and that's why i'm coming here i'm coming to study talmud to become smart turn a million dollars by the time of 35. that's why i'm here don't talk to me about commandments don't talk about god kosheros shabbos forget it i'm not interested in that i don't believe in any of that i just want to be smart good he's studying for a whole year that's all he did study tom nothing else and he was a bright kid and he really got into it after the first year he said wow this is really terrific i think i want to try a second year and the middle of the second year started to happen little second year slowly but surely it began to seep in and it began to have an effect on his his attitudes and his relative values and his perception of the world and his his preferences and by the end of the second year he was already practicing mitzvos and he was he was in so that's the idea of absorbing that the study of torah is not just an intellectual gesture if you start that way you haven't got it that isn't it the study of torah is an attempt to elevate the personality develop the soul to project the spiritual into the physical hopefully is something we can try to take along with us from chanukah to uh to elevate the coming period of time the bleak winter as i put it on the sign you