Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Bringing Light into the Darkness

[Music] and the other stories as well but I'm going to focus on something at the very very beginning if you remember the end of partial todos where Yaakov took the blessings that should have the district intended to give two ways of and Yaakov engaged in what is apparently deceptive behavior so a sub in his rage has determined that he wants to kill his brother and there's kind of a double reason why Yaakov has to flee in fact this is what the commentaries say it says variates a Yaakov maybe Java Yaakov leaves their shava but yet karana and he goes to Horan so they point out when you leave your place sometimes there are two reasons why you go sometimes it's because you have to leave and sometimes it's because you have to go somewhere meaning to say is the main purpose what you have to get away from or is the main purpose where you have to go to in Yakov's case it was both he had to leave bare shava to get away from the wrath of Asaph he had to go to Quran because that's where we would find a wife from our Brahms family so that's why the Torah emphasizes by Yeats a Yaakov he leaves by Ayla and he goes because this was a double double trip Rivka's primary motivation was get yourself out of harm's way but she didn't want to tell you sucked if that was the problem because you still had a love for a self so these are the it's like she presented it as the need to find a wife now the Gemara gives kind of a backstory here that's not so clear from the text and that is Yaakov actually arrived in harem which is like a thousand miles away he then decided he wanted to turn back and pray at the site of the future temple in Jerusalem he wanted to pray at the temple mount's because that was the site of the akkada god miraculously shortened that journey so he got there very quickly and he prayed and then the Sun sets suddenly even though it was not the end of the day forcing him to stay there so he would experience the great and beautiful dream of divine love and divine reassurance so that's the meaning of the puss ik he went all the way to harren then he went back a Shem made the sunset and he was forced to stay because it was dark he could not travel once it was dark and the puss ik says forgive gaba macomb he encountered the place for y'all and shun and he lodged there Kevon Shemesh because the son had sent the Gemara focuses on the unusual word Villisca he encountered an dimensions n PG a-- elet Fila encounter is a term for prayer when man encounters God and Yaakov established the custom for the Jewish people to pray to Hashem at night according to the gomorian Braavos Avraham established the idea of praying to Hashem in the morning Yitzhak established the idea of the afternoon service and in this prosecutive Aveeno established the practice of turning to Hashem at night now obviously the Gemara does not mean to suggest that the text of the Amidah or the text of the prayers were composed by the of us that's clearly not the case that is a much later development around the time of the Second Temple but the idea of chakras Mincy arvit comes according to least one opinion in the gomorrah and the Rambam so rules it originates from the of us so now I just want to raise a very very simple question there is a mark locus in the Gomorrah if the Arvest prayer is obligatory or only optional now the Shama of the evening is certainly in the Torah but the Amidah of the Arvest we actually pass him is an optional prayer which is obligatory today only because it's a long-standing custom so now it's obligatory but at its inception it was an optional prayer so the question is we seem to have a fundamental contradiction here and on one side of the ledger say Avram did chakra T attracted men huh Yaakov added Arvest but then we say chakras and Mincha are obligatory prayers and Arvest is optional why would the prayer of Yaakov be inferior to the prayer of a Brahman you talk you see if you followed a different view in the Gemara there is a different view in the Gemara that the three to fill out are not because of the oboz but they are to correspond to the sacrificial cycle in the basin McNish as a replacement then the distinction between arvid's and the other two prayers actually does make sense because every morning there was a daily offering and every afternoon there was a daily offering there actually were no Corbin note that were brought at night except any leftover fats or organs from the morning offerings that were not consumed you could burn them the entire they would have to be burnt over the night but since that was not a necessary situation so one could say that's why it's Fila Sarvis is reshoot which is optional but the problem is that the Rambam in inhale hosts its Fila postions to things that seem to be contradictory he follows the view that these fellows are because of the avos and he also follows the view that our Vedas are assured meaning Maariv is optional except for the fact that of course it's become an established custom so the question is how can those two things coexist why would ya koves prayer be relegated to a position of inferiority right that's a serious question in many ways in Casals hierarchy they consider Yaakov to be the highest of the of us although it may be like the not a but a person standing on the shoulders of the giant can see further because basically we know that albarran represents the epitome of loving-kindness but too much loving-kindness can be a bad thing right your children will have tooth decay because they eat candy all the time and that's why I've run produced a yeesh Morel who could not be part of the Jewish people and yet Clark represents the other extreme of discipline and introspection and inner strength Guevara and that is why there is an Asaph who was also excluded in his only Yaakov that is called to ferret to ferret this beauty beauty is synthesis beauty is integration beauty is taking the opposite forces and blending them together in a harmonious whole - Ferris beauty and that is why all of Yaakov children in spite of our many problems of course all of Yaakov children are part of God's nation we are told on God's divine throne the face of Yaakov Aveeno is engraved so it's true that Avram might be greater in the sense of being the pioneer but in terms of bringing the synthesis of kindness and discipline to its perfection in this set to be Yaakov so back to the question why would ya coves prayer of our vets be optional if Avram's prayer of chakras and yes experimenta is obligatory are you taking away my share okay short answer and then we can going them early tonight it maybe not but you're right hundred percent correct right I'm assuming in the question something that in point of fact when my question that assumption and that will actually be the approach and I'm going to try to show you from Rosado why the optionality of our vets if there is such a word actually connotes its superiority but that'll that'll be the general approach to you kind of know ahead of time where we're going to be going that's right I certainly wouldn't tell you to say it give the chair give this their way but I appreciate that we're thinking on the same I'm honored that we're thinking on the same wavelength so that's that's good so here with this Mohammed let me share with you the thought of rhapsodic of Lublin and I mentioned of static different times over the over the years and let me just digress for a moment just for people who are not familiar with Ithaca of static of Lublin died in 1900 so he was a great great Hasidic leader in the latter half of the 19th century rhapsodic was an extraordinarily genius he was not born into a Hasidic family he was born into a family of monogamy and only when he was 18 19 20 he was already on his own did he wander around Europe for various reasons and he encountered casitas and the story goes he was an extraordinary genius as even as a very very young adolescent he had mastered the entire Babylonian Talmud the Jerusalem Talmud the writings of the re absolutely brilliant brilliant person but he once went into here the person who became his Rebbe the spitzer those of you that are a little more comic fans although i know that that itself is kind quite controversial right now and i'm not gonna go into that certainly but those who are cottontails know that of Carlebach often quotes the each Bitzer Rebbe tamashii Luwak and the may see Lord was in fact the Rebbe ever father Andrew Sadek wandered in as an 18 or 19 year old and the interpreter is speaking at the Sioux - Lucius Andrew Sadek is hypnotized he's transfixed he had what other religions call an epiphany although we can certainly use the word here as well and he started screaming in the middle of a group of Cocina my heart is on fire my heart is on fire can't you see the fire can't you feel the fire and then he was grabbing his head he says all I was until now was a brain I wasn't a person and this is the first time in my life I feel I have a brain and a heart and from that moment on he became very very devoted to the issue sir although in in technical learning elite reserve was a Thomas Holcomb but in technical learning Rob's article was probably greater than the in spirit sir but he was move out tell himself he truly considered the instrument 3 to be his Rebbe in a Vedanta Shem and rev Sadiq did not become a rabbi he essentially was you know he essentially made himself a Talmud for many many years and in fact he wouldn't even speak in public he did a lot of writing people would talk to him privately but he refused to have any type of public realm he was Movado himself first to the interpreter and when to the interpreter died there was another colleague of rhapsodic a colleague who was reberty Baker's grandson amazingly not from here what's the correct snagit and this is a label ager and nobody became the next grubby and only at the very end of of southwark life he agreed to be a Rebbe for maybe two or three years so because of obstetrics phenomenal brilliance his se Goods is a very very unique combination of deep Talmudic analysis mastery of kabbalah and very powerful emotional truth as well so it's a very very heady mix and a very heavy mix and very very difficult so you know in fact my host here tonight probably takes up three or four lines of reps set up and you can unpack it you can do it just take an hour like four four three lines so it is a very beautiful very difficult very dense very worthwhile there are some a few not that many there are some English adaptations not really translations but adaptations of rifts others writings but I find myself that Hasidic writings get tremendously diluted in translation I mean there are a lot of things that translations are going on the article translation of the babylonian talmud you know it's quite helpful but I find translations of procedure works tend to be I know the only the prostatic that's the only one in fact the prostatic is II didn't even write these are people took down the ones that he wrote himself are more in the nature of diary entries and that there are really no translations at all okay so the thought I'm gonna share with you is from Cedric and and let's go back to remember don't forget the main question why is our vid optional if Yaakov or Vina was met Akane Arvid right that's our question so if so doc says let's focus on the idea that in our prayer structure we pray morning afternoon night now on one level we say the same words at least the Amidah the shamone s ray same words morning afternoon night bro so doc says the fact that these prayers are linked to times of day suggests that the emotional mood of each Tila is different the emotional mood of chakras is not the same as Myntra and Myntra is not the same as Arvest chakras morning and ideally what is the best time to dive in the morning chakras ideally although many of us might not be up then is you dive in the shmona s ray right as the Sun goes up that is called the Vatican minion now in many ways I think people miss the point of a Vatican minion because they turn it into a mechanical looking at the clock in almost an obsessive-compulsive way as opposed to linking yourself to nature and singing God's praises with the universe that's what it is the Sun is rising in a symbolic and even in a spiritual way the Sun is praising the Creator as a new day begins and you join in that symphony instead we're looking at our atomic clock I mean I remember I once had my a my day my father's yard site happened to fall out on the day that I needed to get up very early I had to be somewhere else so I had to dive when I was there I was the Box fella for a vast seeking minion and I think what happened was if I remember I was thirty seconds late thirty seconds late less than a minute and they told me I could not dive in there again as a phazon because I missed it now let me make the obvious point in the time of Casale they did not have atomic clocks they were not measuring this in a range of 30 seconds that's not okay okay but be it is it okay my venting is finished for the night but what is the mood of us seeking its optimism hope resilience a new day is beginning even people that have a difficult life even people that you know things aren't going so well in the beginning of the day now maybe it fades even five minutes later but in the beginning of the day there's always a pull in your heart that things could be better there is something about the Sun rising there is something about the bird singing that conveyed to a person a sense of optimism hope gratitude resilience right that is the dominant mood of chakras a karate Tov for the life that God has given us for the opportunities that he's given us that is why of course in a sense the first words of the chakras prayer not the Amidah but the first words of your prayer to God in the morning is Moda Aniela Faneca I am grateful time that you've given me back my life and I can live another day right so that's the dominant mood of chakras how could they that the Gemara hadarom actually says that you're not supposed to visit ill people early in the morning because they'll be so good they'll look so good and feel so good that you're not going to pray for them because you'll figure it enough there's no problem similarly you shouldn't visit them when it's already time to go to sleep because they'll feel so bad that you'll give up I feel oh he's a goner what's the use of praying you visit them in the middle where you know not so good not so bad so you know they need your prayers and you'll pray you don't think it's a it's a lost cause so this is what chakras is so chakras is connected to Avram because of Rama's own life had that trajectory at least by the time he finished Avram was wealthy Avram was respected Avraham brought thousands and thousands of people to Hashem taka to convey a Shana even the so called bad son Ishmael according to rabbinic tradition did chuva after Sarah died and came back to Opera Avram had his beloved son yet suck at the age of 100 Avram was 100 years old it is true of course his beloved Sarah died in the aftermath of a akkada but she was no youngster either I mean she lived 127 years they had a relationship they built something together so Avram lived a life of fullness a life that had it struggle and a life that had its challenges but his prayer of chakras represents the gratitude and the joy that you have in life indeed part of why I forum's dominant method of abode Akasha is loving kindness right that's what Avram is known for is because that is how he perceived the creator in many many ways the model for our behavior is how we perceive God and Avram did perceive God in terms of God's kindness God's benevolence God's compassion and therefore that is the life that I for I'm left by the way then it's injected igress for a moment this idea that the way we perceive God is how we behave in real life also has an opposite effect the way we perceive human relationships affects how we perceive God it works the other way - in other words you can go from God to the human you can go from human to the God let me give you an example you know everyone knows that you have the Ten Commandments and the first five are said to be between man and God and the second five are said to be between men and men right that's a very famous classical dichotomy problem is the fifth commandments the fifth commandment is honor your father and mother and that is a cop that is in column one now but past us honoring parents is an interpersonal obligation similar to don't kill don't steal honor your parents so why is keep it up the aim in column one it ought to be in column two now grant it that'll create a symmetry problem because then you'll have four and six okay so God could make the 12 commandments in two different other Commandments in column and column one why is keeping of the aim being Adam Lama calm Cupid of the aim seems to be analogous to Bernardo Mojave row and one of the answers that's given is that the psychological way that one internalizes their understanding of God is how they view their parents if they view their parents of a child views appearance as a source of security benevolence love acceptance then they can look at God as super parents and say uh God is my father God is my mother God will take care of me as I been and EEMA always tried to take care of me and even more so but what if one's relationship to one's parents parent is abusive unpredictable arbitrary capricious the child internalizes the idea that those forces that have power over me I can't trust I can't rely upon I don't know what they'll do to me that turns out to be how they look at that as well now you might say well isn't that very childish every a person as an adult should have a different conception of divine yeah that may be true but the reality is in some surprisingly and distressing ways the images we form of God can arise in at a very early stage based on our relationship with parents so cubit of the aim is in column one because in a sense my relationship to my parents may very well be a very important definition and components of however late to God so it goes both ways I mean a mystery sense meaning my human relationship may be the paradigm of how I connect to God but the point I'm making about Avraham is moving in the opposite direction Abraham's perception of God formed the way he related to other human beings so chakras is the prayer of gratitude hope resilience appreciation connected to Avraham who experienced that in his own life and the reason why it's tied to the new morning because the dawn of a new day is precisely that physical astronomical phenomena that elicits from the human personality that sense of gratitude for life yeah okay already so now let's go to your truck let's go to your target now it's chakras meta can the prayer of Minnesota mentally is still a daytime printer somehow see them do pray after sunset but that's not not really correct right you guys got one before sunset but the tell me you show me says ideally it shouldn't like be 12:30 although be the average you could be outside you know pretty early it should be when it's still daylight but you begin to see the lengthening shadows of the evening approaching meaning the Sun is already below the treetops and the like so in minta there's a sense it's still day but night is approaching rapidly now this fits the instruction everyone remembers the Covenant of the parts God made a covenant without brown and God told him your children will be in slight we'll be strangers in a land that is not theirs and they will be enslaved and they will be persecuted for 400 years and I will judge the nation that enslaves them now Rashi points out what is this 400 year number the Jews were not in Egypt 400 years the Jews were only in Egypt 210 years so Rashi says ah the 400 years don't start from the time they came to Egypt it starts from the birth of Yitzhak it was from the birth of Yitzhak until the exodus is 400 years although the actual time we were in Egypt was only 210 years now this is a very well-known rush it's based on huzzah but the question is what on earth does he mean what why are you counting the four hundred years of birth or gates I mean you Turk was not a slave youth luck was not in Egypt yes I've never even left the Land of Israel in what way are you counting it from the birth of Islam right what is Raffy mean and what Rashi means is the following it doesn't say they're going to be in Egypt 400 years in fact it doesn't even mention Egypt at all it says there will be strangers in a land that's not theirs and even though it's huckle lived in Eretz Israel and they're just rel is our land get stuck throughout his life was made to feel like a stranger and like him alien even within his own country that is why the Philistines harassed him they filled up his wells the sense of you don't really belong here unlike ivory mabini who was universally proclaimed the CLO Kemet arbiter hey no you are like a prince of God yes luck was arrest I think often of the way Jews in Germany might have felt in the early 1930s after Hitler came to power 1933 90 / 40 before before Kristallnacht I mean technically they still had most of rights but there was a sense that things were beginning to to happen they were there were communications subtle and often not so subtle that you don't really belong here I mean that's after all what the Nazis campaigned about and you know amazingly enough there were many many Jews in Germany including some some great rabbis who thought Hitler was just Hitler's you know anti-semitism was only a campaign tactic to get you know right-wing voters and once he was elected and once he was in power he would be a normal guy in a moderate guy and we could work with him I mean there was actually such a belief in in in Germany so the idea of the it's clock is the experiencing of Gullit even when everything is still technically in place it's yeah yeah yeah it's a good question but apparently it's hard for us to psychoanalyze personalities from such a distance but you see that Yitzhak had a certain passivity about him he was not of the same activist temperament as Abram he was more withdrawn he was more introspective part of it was the experience of the akkada kind of separated himself from the normal affairs of men that in fact that might be why he he was taken in by ASA because he could not appreciate duplicity or fraud so he thought ASA was a righteous person etc so yet suck in a sense could be on this physical level I mean not spiritually of course he was a giant but then this physical level he could be pushed around a bit more he simply was more passive more withdrawn than was a brahma v no less involved in the affairs of the world so if chakras is the prayer of gratitude Mincy can be described as the prayer of panic in which things are beginning to slip away and you're turning to God so let me hold on to my blessings think about you know Yap you remember to someone wrote a book about this I think was called the history of darkness or something that the coming of darkness before electricity was you know a very very very significant event the kind of you know once it was dark you basically had to stay home I mean the people some people traveled etc but you just didn't go out when you were dark you couldn't work the fields you couldn't do a lot of endeavors you know candlelight is limited in terms of what you're able to do so darkness had a certain finality that it doesn't really have today today you know minica my room you know it's all it's all the same right if you don't have a window you don't even know is it light outside not light outside but darkness was the end of the day and the only in modern times sometimes it's that way it still let me think about the New York Stock Exchange which closes I think it's five o'clock whether it's dark or not so if you think about the last few minutes of trading people are crazy it's like a chicken with a head cut off they're running around getting in that last rate I'm holding on please please let the lights beyond a little bit longer I remember many many years ago when I was in college so we took a class trip to the Maryland State Legislature on the last day of the session just to see Annapolis just to see them pass laws and their session expired at midnight meaning they weren't a lot they were not allowed to continue to legislate at midnight so we were there we were there like we were actually there the last session and every time it was five to twelve you know four to twelve three to twelve so a guy just climbed up on a ladder and he just turned back to the minute thing so instead of being twelve it was a quarter of patrol he given you did like five times this until this clock says twelve you know we keep on going so there is a sense of panic note that there when a deadline approaches and it's the end of things that's it and min hey is that panic moment night is approaching I'm scared I'm losing things that was his hugs existential experience as a stranger and he turns to God out of desperation protect me let me experience the light don't let these blessings slip away so chakra is gratitude mrs. panic even in terms of its time window mentha is the most panicky of prayers not so much in Israel because in Israel if you're caught you can dive in in the streets it's not a big deal okay I saw somebody but an open letter to seminary girls please do not dove in the middle of multirow street you're blocking whatever okay but you know in the United States I remember this very well at the time before there were cell phones in widespread use if he walked into Penn Station in Manhattan in late afternoon you would see all the payphones occupied by religious Jews who were you know making believe they were having a phone conversation when in fact they were dialing midnight because chakras we can dive in before we go to work usually and our vich we can dive in when we come back ministers in the middle of the day and you got to do it before sunset so you're often caught in different places you don't have a private office necessarily business meetings so even the Suhana the physical form that feel Atman heart aches has a certain aura of panic about it yeah so in those days that's what people do today you know we've learned we've learned from the Muslims to be you know not to be ashamed of public prayer but in those days people were embarrassed people didn't want to just start governing it look they felt they felt embarrassed that not that they should so they had to make believe they were doing something else of course it's interesting this paradigm of Prayer is it as a phone call to God you know someone should tell them that if you do the call here it's local do it there it's long distance so it's it is cheaper here and that in that way but okay so this is the idea of chakra and min huh now let's look at arvit arvit although you know there are hotel room to dive in early but ideally you dive in my roof SATA coke oven when it's dark that's what Myra vis it is dark there was no light of the of the Sun that is above the horizon now let's look at Yaakov avenues mats of his situation when he was Mitaka in my refer he's running away now keep in mind Rashi gives us a very intricate chronology Yaakov and I suffer not youngsters at the story of the Broncos Yaakov a native are 63 years old now she gives you the complicated calculation but the calculation is ironclad 63 years old so a 63 years old Yaakov does not have a wife he does not have children a leaf as a sub-sub took away all of his wealth he's penniless childless specialist he is fearful of his very life his brother is threatening to kill him he is leaving the holiness of the Land of Israel to a much more profane environment he thinks he will never see his father again although Yitzhak manages to survive many years yes it is a life when Yaakov comes back but district thinks he's going to die in Jakob thinks you'll never see his father again he in fact never sees his mother again and he is also running from the frying pan to the fire in some ways because if a sub represents a threat to his physical existence LaVon represents a threat to his spiritual existence love and as a cheater love what is involved in deception lovin welcomes Yaakov and the guise of a brother in his Rafi says hey we're brothers because you cheat night cheat we can work together and Yaakov is legitimately fearful that loved one might destroy any possibility that Yaakov could establish a nation that would be devoted to serving a Shem in fact the passage in the Haggadah that lovin is worse than pyro because lovin would destroy everybody that doesn't mean Loveland would have physically destroyed people these are after all his own grandchildren luckily money right the Schwartz admire his grandchildren but it means he would have destroyed their value system their morality their ethics he would have made them incapable of being a nation devoted to God so Yakko cannot and of course to highlight this look at the visuals here the Sun sets not necessarily the middle of the day but it sets way too early plunging Yaakov into physical darkness which mirrors his mood exactly so Yaakov cannot pray the prayer of opera which is full of hope and joy as he looks at the wonderful life that God has given him he cannot even pray the prayer of Yitzhak in which Hashem let me hold on to the blessings that you've given me Yaakov has lost everything Yakov has nothing he's lost everything Buderus hatela there's no particular hope now it's true that God gives him a magnificent vision of the latter but that's after he prayed that was the answer to his prayer when he prayed there was only darkness physical darkness and the darkness of looking at a life without hope and without recourse so here is rafasa docks quick images twist if shock rich is the prayer of gratitude and maja is the prayer of panic our vit is the prayer of emunah of faith because faith is what you have when you have nothing else faith is that realization that even if it looks like I'm in a hopeless situation I'm in or it's I'm in the concentration I believe that God is with me that he loves me that he will take care of me now again we don't mean the Pollyannish sense that everything will have the happy ending that we want I think realistically we understand that's not always the case but that even in my suffering and even in my difficulty God is walking with me and he's suffering through it with me and he will give me the strength to endure that is emunah that is why in the burkas krishna that we say after the Sh'ma of the morning we say Ms Fiats is firm and upstanding because in the morning of our life i see the truth of god's promises and his reliability but at night in our vids and met via muna I have faith in God's truth even though I don't see it and of course this is the very very famous interpretation I think it tributed to the Baal Shem Tov of the park that we recite Friday night from Tehillim Sadiq base 90 tomb is more sheer glioma shabbat Rajiv's baba care hasta ha vm una table la notes mm Allah says I proclaim in the morning your loving-kindness and your faith in the Knights so it is said in the name of the Baal Shem Tov that morning and night are metaphorical terms for the different stages in human existence there are many times in our lives that are mornings times of joy times of celebration times in which we feel the kindness of God the goodness of God and what can I declare in those morning's hotstepper I see your loving-kindness but then there are times in life that might be dark times of illness calamity depression despair loneliness they could be national and collective like the Holocaust or they could be very individual and private the different struggles that we go through and there it's a little more difficult to feel and see the facet of Hashem the Deborah de Mello says M not ha ballet lives in those dark moments you're at my emunah in you sustains me and lets me go on right so this hot dhamma chakra is the prayer of gratitude Myntra is the prayer of panic our vit is the prayer of emunah let's go back to the very first question that we started off with if Yaakov Aveeno was mistaken arvit why would it be optional so as you said at the very beginning the question is assuming that if something is optional that would indicate it's perhaps a less of an important thing and then we have a question why would ya coves prayer be less important but I'm a deeper level it might be the opposite because keep in mind the following basic idea any religious ritual that is obligatory is something that we can expect and demand of every thirteen-year-old boy and twelve-year-old girl that's why it's obligatory it is expected it is demand so the prayer of chakra twitch is gratitude everybody is expected to be grateful for the goodness that a Shem has put into their lives the nervious yo-yo says even animals appreciate the hand that feeds them so gratitude chakra obligatory of course you say thank you to God of course you feel gratitude to the Almighty mija when you have blessings but you feel that you're losing them they're slipping away well that's also a natural response of Prayer as the saying goes there are no atheists in foxholes so chakras and Mincha are obligatory precisely because they represent lower levels of spiritual attainments that every person can be expected to meet our vid is a madre de to which we aspire but not everybody could reach it the idea of even when life is totally dark and despondent even when in your desperation there is no way out you connect to God with a Munna confident in his love even when he's not yet answering you that's the Maitreya vehicle so by making it a reshoot what are we saying it's something you strive to reach but we can't automatically expect that everybody can reach that level so the optionality of our Viet is not because it's less important but it represents a more sublime spiritual maturity which cannot be automatically expected of every bar mitzvah boy or about bust mitzvah girl but something to which they aspire as opposed to chakra 10 min ha these are not regarded to be it can be expected of everybody I say thank you for the good nourish M has given you you know we're in the month of kiss life and we are approaching of course the great beautiful beautiful holiday of Hanukkah it's a funny thing every year in the United States and this has been going on for many many years already probably a hundred years there is what's called the December dilemma because it happens to be that Hanukkah is usually in the same month as a very well-known Christian holiday purchase especially well known here all the stuff happened here but but in America perhaps people feel that spirits a bit more even than here and in the non-orthodox movements they kind of debate how do we get our kids to identify Jewishly as opposed to identifying with the Christian culture so there's a maha locus within the reform movements like this some reforms say we have to build up Hanukkah we have to make Hanukkah arrival to Christmas by kind of making a glitzy making its showy making advancing and then there's another schita in the reform movement that says Hanukkah is not one of the major Jewish holidays and it is absolutely wrong to build it up and therefore we have to you know make it modest and not a big celebration so they debate should we make Hanukkah like extra important should we make conical less important and this is called the December dilemma and they debate you'll you see if you open up any Jewish newspaper not the Jewish press but I think usually that's nuts it's not limited to orthodoxy that is communal paper you will see this Hanukkah debate every year so it gets boring after a while but they debate back and forth back and forth back and forth this has been discussed ad infinitum but the truth of the matter is Kanaka is an enormous ly important holiday for a lot of reasons not only because of the historical event it commemorates but the symbolic message it conveys because Hanukkah is about the ability of light to conquer darkness that's an important message because darkness exists on many many levels there is the darkness of violence and hate and war and bloodshed and terrorism there is the darkness of ignorance there is the darkness of poverty there is the darkness of the individual depressions and illnesses that people struggle with and it is said a lot of attributes to say this all the time it's the job of a Jew every Jew to try to bring light in the darkness but sometimes we look at darkness and it's so overpowering that we think what's the point whatever little light I could try to bring here would be like a drop in the bucket it wouldn't do anything so think of the Hanukkah story they only had enough oil for one day as far as they could figure we light the menorah today it's going to go out tomorrow what's the use but what's the lesson of Hanukkah you do as much as you can do even if you think it's not going to have any lasting effect and then what happens Hashem takes over and the great message of Hanukkah metaphorically is in a world and in a life that can be filled with so much darkness we have a responsibility as Jews as parents as teachers as spouses whatever capacity we are in and many of us are in multiple capacities but in any one of those capacities or even if it's just a question of looking at our own lines to bring light into that darkness which requires a double measure of faith faith in Hashem love faith in my ability to accomplish something useful and good in the world in fact in another part of Reps at agra of Sadick writes elsewhere not not even in connection with this these thoughts at all he writes beautifully just as a person must have faith in Hashem they must have faith in themselves to be an emissary of Hashem to bring goodness into the world so that's an enormous ly powerful message that I probably will give a share in the history of climbing in more detail let me just add that contrary to popular understanding the miracle of the oil did not occur at the end of the military struggle against the venom there was another 25 years of fighting after the Hanukkah story the miracle of Hanukkah occurred three years into the battle but the war continued another 25 years now I think that that itself makes the miracle much more meaningful because that's God's message to the Maccabees because here you have this small group of guerrilla war guerrilla warfare that is fighting against the most powerful army of the world at the time and most of the Jewish people think the Maccabees are fanatics anyway they are not supported by their own people and you know they're in caves they're living like the Taliban I mean they're you know they're hiding out here and there and there and there and there and one could understand that they would get discouraged and their spirit would be broken so what what did the miracle of the menorah tell the Maccabees you light your little light even if you think it's ineffectual and God blesses your efforts beyond what you thought is possible to tell you the truth that's a much more meaningful message at the beginning of the war than it is at the end of the world God is telling them keep on going don't give up don't despair you're doing the right thing you're doing the good thing all right so Hanukkah and my roof I think are very very much connected because both of them are generating light out of darkness through faith indeed Yaakov himself Hashem answered Yaakov prayer with the light of the dream of the ladder of the angels of God going up the ladder and down the left let me let me just end with one one one little story about this it is a very powerful story the Khoisan Bergner Rebbe wanted a great Hasidic rebus this is not the present one the one before him and the Khoisan Berger Rebbe lost his wife his first wife and eleven children in the Holocaust and he was in bergen-belsen now if you know the history of the time you know that Hungary was conquered occupied by the Nazis relatively late in the war 1944 the war was over in Europe in April 1945 so it was less than a year before the end of the war but and the Nazis knew Hitler knew that know things were not going well for them and the war would be over so as a result the annihilation of Hungarian jewelry occurred with tremendous rapid nough suggest they were working overtime they were they were they were killing at a much faster rate than even the annihilation of the Jews in Poland because in Poland they had time they had started already back in nineteen forty one forty two so no they did what they did hungry they had to try to wipe out on Geary and jewelry in less than a year so bergen-belsen was like the last concentration camp and this was the first night of Hanukkah and the Rebbe and wanted to light Hanukkah candles but he had to wait till two o'clock in the morning so the guards wouldn't be watching them that closely and several hundred people gather in silence and the Rebbe had some threads from the pajama uniforms and some rancid margarine to be oil and the idea would be they would light a can't they would light a thread and they would blow it out right away this light it blow it out so the Rebbe recites the first bracha first night of Hanukkah I share to the shine of a mitzvah of its even though the Hardwick national Hanukkah okay he then recites the second burka just Sinise him Shem did miracles for our forefathers then the third brother is what I'm the first night saffiano then cash em for letting me be alive so he didn't go straight to that Brucker he hesitated he looked around and then he made chuckling I know with the candles so there was a fellow who went over to the Rebbe afterwards and the fellow became a non-believer because of the Holocaust because of the suffering he no longer believed him done he said to the Rebbe you know I don't believe in any of this stuff but okay you believe in it it gives you comfort so much you know do what you want but I have a question in Rebbe I want to ask you something I understand how you could make the braava God commanded you to like tronic okay you but you believe that the rabbi's were acting through God to give you this mitzvah okay you believe it I used to believe it too second bracha God did miracles of our forefathers okay you believe that do you believe that I can't question you but I can question the third blessing how could you make the blessing thanking God for letting me be alive you lost your wife and 11 children do you really want to be alive and how many of us go to sleep every night hoping and praying that we will not wake up the next day now it's true it is true and this is a very interesting discussion that the suicide rate of Jews and concentration camps was extraordinarily low almost almost zero that that's a very interesting thing to grapple with but still many people hoped that they would not wake up the next morning so how can you make a piano and the Rebbe didn't say happy call rachet gets get out of here I'm not going to talk to you the Rebbe acknowledged the question the Rebbe said you have a very good question and that's why I hesitated before I can make the brown because in one hand the halacha says on the first night of Hanukkah you make a Chicano and I keep the halacha on the other hand God is a God of truth and you don't why do I share and at that moment for me to say chef Ian will be a lie how could I lie I didn't know what to do the halacha says I got to make the brother Luca says I can't lie how do i reconcile my two obligations so the Rebbe said I looked around and I saw hundreds and hundreds of Jews that had nothing that suffered bereavements that I had no help and legitimately felt that they probably were going to die and they still had such a love for God and such faith in God that they wanted to do this Mitzvah and I said to myself what a privilege it is to see such holiness and such righteousness and for that he said I can make it kalyana Thank You Hashem for letting me see the greatness giving me life to let me see the greatness of your people I mentioned many times before I think Victor Frankel's work he wrote a few books but the most famous is man's search for meaning and Viktor Frankl is is an interesting person because on one hand you know he's not a Torah scholar he was even he was not really until the very end of his life about claims they made him about Cuba I don't know I don't know if it's true but maybe maybe it was but he's certainly for most of his life he had no Jew education at all but he was a deeply spiritual person and he intuitively perceived many many truths that are asking the truth of the Torah so as a result it's one of the relatively few books that are not Torah books that are commonly recommended for us as part of a Seva students spiritual education we treat it as a muster book we treat it as a book of ethics we treated as a book of spiritual growth even though it's you know it's not based explicitly on Torah thoughts but frank'll makes the point over and over again and this is not no pretentiously it's no she's lecturing from of Amadeus this is through the experience that he himself had in the concentration camps that it's often our confrontation with the greatest evil that can be the catalyst that brings out the greatest strengths and the greatest goodness and that's a sign by side point and therefore one has very little choice over what happens to them in life but we have all the choice in the world of how we decide to respond to it and that is what defines the greatness or lack thereof of a human being right the message of Chanukah the message of barbets so may occur to you know give us the strength to grow from whatever difficulties that we do have made may they always be minor difficulties but through the matter is the beauty of this message is that it does apply to minor things as well as major things you know we have the major calamities of illness poverty and the like but then we have things that are you know we didn't get the job we wanted a relationship didn't work out your seventh grader didn't make the basketball team maybe that's more of an American muscle and you know need your frustrations you know things didn't work out the way we want it they're not no Holocaust proportion but there are things that bother us things that are serious in their lives and then we have to follow Victor Frankel's hard rock ah meaning how do I grow from this how do I become a better person how do I learn from my failures and my mistakes in many ways failure is a better teacher than success because when I have success I don't learn anything from that that just confirms that I was right from failure from adversity I can learn something new about myself and it could be a very very valuable gift so may we be so sure to learn what we need to act [Music]