Speaker 1Hanukkah is an opportunity to talk about a fundamental issue which cuts across Jewish history really and gives us an opportunity for insight into a major Torah theme. Let's maybe start like this. You know, the Midrash says that every season or every historical event, every Chag, every Yontif, is a different spiritual time. You know that we, the non-Jewish view, this is I suppose the season to talk about, is that seasons and festivals. So commemorations, celebrations, anniversaries are really a reliving of a moment in time. There's a nostalgic going back to a moment in time, to an event, and there's an anniversary which is a revisiting of that event in a sentimental sense. But in Torah there's nothing sentimental. In Judaism there's nothing that is an observance that has no inner content. But our concept of a cycle, a yearly celebration. A celebration of a yearly event, or weekly for that matter, like Shabbos, is that there's a revisiting of the energy that is flowing at that time. We're not, again, perhaps to put it more sharply, we are not celebrating the event at this time because it once happened then, but rather it happened then because this is the time. In other words, people think Pesach happened at a certain time. It happened to happen at a certain season, so every season when we come back through the cycle to that season, we remember. For Pesach we do it again, but that's incorrect. We don't celebrate Pesach in the spring because it happened in the spring. Pesach happened because that was the right time for it. In other words, there's waves, there are waves of time, each wave carries its own particular identity or energy, and that makes certain things possible. There was an exodus from Egypt made possible because that was the season. And therefore it happens to coincide with that season, not just because it happened then, so we celebrate it then, but it could only have happened then. To put this even more sharply. The first example would be that it says that when the angels visited Abraham, when Avraham of Vinu was visited by the angels, it was at Pesach time, and he fed them matzah. He gave them matzah. Well, the obvious problem is that matzah we eat in commemoration of the exodus, which happened many centuries later. Why was he eating matzah centuries before there ever was an exodus where they went out with unleavened bread and ate matzah? But the spiritual answer is that that season is called Pesach, and it has certain mystical observances. That's why it's called Pesach, and it has certain mystical observances that fit it. Later, we went out of Egypt and those events fitted in because that was the wave of energy at the time, and so at one particular point in history, there was a crystallization of events that matched that. And that's what it means. That means when you go through that time again, you have the potential for your own exodus. When you get to Purim, a certain thing happens each year that you can ride that year. When you get to Chanukah, certain things are happening, and we relive those, not because we commemorate them historically. But because those. The energy is flowing now. That event could happen again. It does happen again. It happens more revealed or in a more hidden sense. But the event is being relived, not just re-commemorated and remembered. And then, of course, the question is, what is that energy now? What is Chanukah? What does it mean? What is this festival in the depth of winter? That is when the year looks at its most hopeless. The days are shortest and the nights are longest. It is the time of negative spiritual time. The Medrash says that when Adam was created. Adam was created at this time of year, right? Give him some opinions about it. But according to one opinion, he was created now. And the first thing that he witnessed. The first thing that he witnessed after he was created was the days getting shorter and the nights getting longer. And he'd never lived through a cycle. And he thought that was going to continue, and then no more day. And when he reached the solstice, when he came to this day, or this period of Chanukah, and for the first time in his life, and for the first time in all human existence, the days began gradually to lengthen, as they're about to do. And the nights to get shorter, he saw that he'd passed the zenith, or the nadir of that experience, and he saw there was hope again. And that was a rekindling of hope in the darkness, and Chanukah is that event. It's no accident, of course, that in the non-Jewish world, they celebrate what's been celebrated in the non-Jewish world. In the non-Jewish world, it's exactly this idea taken from Torah and projected into their system. You're aware of that. From the 25th of December to the 1st of January is an eight-day period that celebrates a certain Jew's birth and circumcision. It's an eight-day period that celebrates that event, and the teaching is that it's a birth of something hopeful in a generation of darkness, a birth of redemptive power. That's exactly what Chanukah is. It's a birth of something that's going to be a miracle. in a midrash, that you can know what the time is from the garments that God wears. Hashem wears garments. He wears garments. It says, for example, it says, He wears light like a garment. That's a general mystical idea, is that, what does it mean to wear light as a garment? What does that mean? There's nothing in Torah that's poetry. It may all be poetry, but that's not the point. The point is it may be a poetic garment for an inner content. What does it mean to wear garments of light? What does it mean? It's a long story what it means. But, very briefly, light means a medium of revelation. To wear a garment of light is a paradoxical thing. A garment hides. A garment hides you. The garment, I wear garments, you don't see who I am. You see my dignity. And you see a lot of things about me from the garments, but they're an external projection. But a person who wears light as a garment means you see, light means the garment doesn't hide, it reveals. Light is the medium of revelation. That's why it says that man and woman, when they were created, they wore no clothes, because there was no, the garment, they were the garment. The essence of the garment were one. That's why it says their garments were made of light. Aleph, Vav, Resh, Or. Light. Connected with the light of Hanukkah. And after the sin, they became clothed in a layer of garments that must now reveal an external honor and dignity, while hiding essence. Because the essence itself is shameful. That level of essence. And that's why their garments fell to the level of, not Aleph, Vav, Resh, but Ayin, Vav, Resh. With an Ayin. The Hebrew word Or with an Ayin, instead of mean light, means to hide. Hide. The literal translation of Aleph, Ayin, Vav, Resh in Hebrew is Or, meaning a skin. But of course, anyone who knows Hebrew knows that the same word in Hebrew spells blind. To be blind. And of course, that's why a skin in English is called a hide. That's why it's called a hide. So, he wears light like a garment. Each festival, each time of year, he wears a different garment. Which is a way of saying, it manifests in a different, a different middah. A different middah means a different tray, a different character, a different facet of character. A different way of relating. Now, what's the garment that he wears at Hanukkah? So, the Midrash says he wears a garment of kinah, jealousy. Kinah means jealousy. Jealousy, and the response is revenge. It's a garment that's worn, that's sensitive, that registers this thing called kinah, jealousy, and the correct response to a jealous, a correct jealousy, is a vengeance that writes the offense. That's what it says. And of course, we know that's exactly what happened. The Chashmonaim, the Maccabees, the Hasmoneans, the Chashmonaim, they acted to avenge the honor of the Divine that had been offended by the Greeks in their attack on the Jewish people. And they went out to avenge that affront. And of course, I'm sure you, you're thinking, you must be, I'm sure, thinking ahead of me, that's why we say, we say, you avenged their vengeance. We say, which we say throughout the eight days of Hanukkah, we say for the miracles and the wars and the salvation, etc. And then we say, you fought their battles, we say to Hashem, you fought their battles, the Chashmonaim, the Maccabees, you fought their battles, and you avenged their vengeance. It means, they were acting in vengeance for you, to attack the enemy that had attacked you, and you assisted them in that act of vengeance. The theme here, is that there's a jealousy, but stay with me carefully, because there are layers here that need to be sorted out, it's not a simple matter. That means that there's a Divine manifestation of that which is called jealousy, and the appropriate response for that is a vengeance. Vengeance always means, revenge in Hebrew, revenge always means, doing exactly what was done in the opposite direction. It's not justice, or retribution, that just means punishment. Nakama means, doing exactly back what was done, yes, in requiting, measure for measure. And of course, that's why it has an unusual sweetness. It's a very hard thing to resist, the desire to take revenge. And that's why it's a Torah prohibition. Revenge doesn't mean justice, or righting a wrong. Revenge means exactly what he did to you, you do to him. to him. That's what's sweet about it. Sweet is not that the person gets his comeuppance, or that he gets punished for what he did. That's just right. It's just justice. Revenge is when he gets exactly what he tried to do to you, or did to you. So, this is a time of jealousy and vengeance in response. What does that mean? Well, the problem is as follows. Whenever the Torah talks about this aspect of jealousy, and then a revenge in retribution, it always refers only to one sin, and that's called idolatry. Okay? Whenever the Torah refers to this question of kinah, that means a kind of a jealousy, and then the response which is revenge, it always is referring only to one category, and that's idolatry. First of all, let's understand why that is. You see, this jealousy is always in the context of a marital problem. It's a marital problem. It's also in the Torah. The Torah says like this. If a man tells his wife she should not be isolated with a particular individual, a particular man, and the woman isolates herself with that individual, and it's not known what transpired between them, then a certain series of events, if she agrees, and if the husband is absolutely spiritually pure, all sorts of conditions, she can be brought through the test, or undergo the test of the soita, which is the test of the potentially or putatively unfaithful wife, and she goes through this test, and if she's in fact vindicated because she's guiltless, she's promised a pregnancy from her husband, and she has a child. If, on the other hand, she's shown to be guilty, then she dies the most gruesome death. Her body decays and decomposes and falls apart, and she dies a gruesome death. That is called the sense of jealousy that a husband has when his wife acts in an unfaithful or potentially or apparently unfaithful manner. That's called ruach kin'ah. That means, if a spirit of jealousy passes over him, why? Because something here has offended the essence of the relationship. That means, the most intimate connection a person has is a marital connection, and here, something has interposed in that intimacy. This woman has conducted herself in a fashion that has been a betrayal here, there's been a disloyalty, and that is a pigia, an affront to the essence of what this man is, or woman, and the appropriate response is a feeling of kin'ah, jealousy. And the appropriate response there would be some sort of a vengeance, right, to avenge that break. Incidentally, that's, of course, why that's the sin of adultery. The sin of adultery, of breaking the loyalty of a committed bond. What is the time? What's the, you know, that mitzvahs in the Torah and prohibitions in the Torah are all based on levels beyond our understanding. Why God commands a certain thing is beyond our understanding. But we have levels called time. A time, the level that's called a time means something we can understand. We never claim it's the ultimate reason. We don't say it's the reason for the mitzvah, but it's a layer of meaning and reason, if you like, that we can understand. What is the time? What's the essence of an adulterous relationship? What's the essence? The essence of an adulterous relationship is a wedge that's been inserted between the total bond that should exist, a bond that approaches the sense of identity, of oneness. Love, love in Hebrew, the Hebrew word ahava, adds up to the same numerical equivalent as the word echad, which means one. Real love is not one loving another. Real love is one becoming another. The two become one. That's why the root of the word ahava means to give. Love means giving of self to another until the self has been so ultimately and utterly given that there is nothing left, that one has melted into the other. So that there are one. Then of course there's love. There's love because there's oneness. You know, whenever we say shema, you must have noticed, right? When we say the shema, which means Hashem is one, we precede it with the declaration of love and we follow the declaration of love. Because love is the means of building one. What's the bracha we make before we say shema? Ha-bocheh ba'mo Yisrael, ba'ava he who selects us in love. Then we say shema, that he is one, and then we say va'afta, and you shall love him. What comes before shema is his love for us. Then we declare his oneness, and then we talk about our mitzvah of love for him. It's sandwiched on both sides by the concept of love, because that's what one is. That's what oneness is, two becoming one. The problem with adultery is that here is a utter, a complete bond to the point of two having become one, and someone is inserted that's how when the Torah says that Reuven had an intimate relationship with his father's wife. The Gemara says it doesn't begin to mean that. Even though that's what it says. Why? What did he do? He simply moved his father's bed. His father's bed. When his mother died, and Yaakov moved his bed out of her tent, instead of when Raphel died, instead of moving into Leah's tent, he moved into Bila's tent. And Reuven was very offended for his mother's honor, so he moved his father's bed. The Torah calls that adultery. Adultery. The Torah says he had a relationship with his father's wife. The concept, you have to understand this, the concept of adultery is interfering in another person's marital relationship. That's what he did. That's called adultery. Of course he never had a relationship with her, but he interfered in his father's marital affairs. You can do it in various ways. You can do it at his level and become guilty for moving a bed, or you can do it in a much more gross and crude fashion and become guilty for that. That's what adultery is. And therefore, of course, the punishment, the consequence of adultery, is that the woman becomes forever forbidden to her husband, and forever forbidden to the man with whom she had the relationship. Even if he's non-Jewish. Even if the man would not be Jewish, and he'd later convert, she'd still not ever be allowed to marry him. And the reason is, because, yeah, the reason is because there was a betrayal. There was a betrayal here, and that severs the bond, and prevents, that's the problem. So, the sense of, that's the marital context, and the sense of jealousy is always a jealousy for having broken that intimate bond in an irreparable fashion. Now, the Torah uses that for, the sin of idolatry. Why? Because worshipping idols is a marital disloyalty. Our relationship with Hashem is supposed to be a marital, and we have plenty of proofs for that. He regards us as if it were, as it were, as a wife. He is the ultimate groom, husband, and we are the female counterpart. And Sinai was a marriage. The mountain was held over us like a chuppah. The Torah was given as the gift of consideration that affects the bond. There's a marital relationship. The Jewish people are married, to Hashem. There's many, an echo of that is the relationship between a Rebbe and a Talmud. Master and disciple is a marital relationship. A form of marital relationship there, just like Hashem and us. It has an echo there. The adulterous relationship is called idolatry. There's a bond to Hashem, that's a marital bond, and he has a person who worships, that means, who extends himself beyond himself in connection, but instead of connecting, with the correct source, he connects with the false source. That's called idolatry, and that is a marital problem in the spiritual world. That occasions and evokes a response that's called jealousy. The Torah uses jealousy for that offense, and that evokes and calls into existence the response of Nakama, which is a divine vengeance for that illegitimate and adulterous relationship. So far, so good. The problem is that Hanukkah is called an event that evokes a divine jealousy, or the Chashmanayim felt that jealousy of a affront to our relationship with Hashem, and therefore they acted to correct that in an act of violence, vengeance, they attacked the Greek, the Assyrian Greek Empire, and miraculously, as it happens, they won. The problem is that, listen carefully to the problem, the Torah uses the sense of jealousy and its consequence only in the context of idolatry. And the problem is that when the Hanukkah occurred, idolatry had left the world. Let's get the history clear to appreciate the problem. Again, go through all of Torah and you'll find that the divine expression of response, the words that are used for idolatry, worshipping idols, is called Kina, jealousy. It's also used with Hanukkah. The problem is, by the time Hanukkah arrived on the scene, by the time world history had passed the point that we know as Hanukkah, by that point, there was already no possibility of idolatry in the world. And therefore, how on earth is this term appropriate? Let me first of all clarify the history so we understand the problem correctly. Idolatry was a problem that existed only as long as prophecy was around. When prophecy ended, the temptation, the craving for idolatry ended. First of all, history was like this. The Gemara says that the men of the Great Assembly were talking about around the Hanukkah time. The men of the Great Assembly, just because before the Greek Empire began. Alexander began to rule. The first year of the rule of Alexander, which was the beginning of the Greek Empire, his rule was in the year 3448 after the creation. Just 2350 odd years ago. He ruled for 12 years. The first year of his rule was the same year that Malachi died. Malachi was the last prophet. He was one of the men of the Great Assembly. That convocation of sages, who lived through the last era of prophecy. Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi was the last prophet. He died in the same year that Alexander began to rule. And world history had a watershed distinction between the periods, the years, the eras that took place before that and those that occurred afterwards. There's a custom of many Jewish communities to date documents from that date. And that is known as Minyan Shtarot, Minyan Shtoris. Documents became dated, not from the creation anymore, but legal documents now took a date from the first year of the rule of Alexander. Nisim says that when Rav came to Babel, when Rav came to Babylon, he said it was 500 years Mishnat Pesuk Nebuah from the year of the ending of prophecy. It dates history from the year that prophecy ended. In some Yemenite communities until very recently, maybe even until today, documents are dated according to that system. We have two dating systems in Judaism. One is date from the creation, like with 5, 7, 6, 5. And we have another date from the year of the ending of prophecy. The world began again then. When prophecy ended, world history began again in a deep sense. In what sense? Well, people were hand in hand with the ability, with the sense of prophecy, with an incredible craving to connect, not in the prophetic sense, but in the idolatrous sense. There are two facets of the same faculty. What happened was the world reached a point where the craving for idolatry became so strong that the temptation was so unbalanced that so many people were failing in that ordeal that the men of the Great Assembly decided to exorcise the desire for idolatry. It was an almost irresistible craving. Some picture of it you could have today in the sensual area. If you want to know what is a craving that the whole society, that drives the whole society, you don't need me to prove that to you. You can look at any, you shouldn't look at any building, but if you would, not to any bus stop or any news or any magazine, anything in the media or anything in society, you will find that there's one motivation that drives everything. One motivation. Even the other motivations are only to have enough money to pay for that. There's a whole society driven by that. Of all the human failings and fallibilities and temptations and cravings, there's one thing that fills the books of all the libraries of the world that's plastered over all the billboards, that's that's what it is. That sensual craving gives some beginning of an inkling of what the temptation was. It's a temptation that has governed society. Governed society. The whole society runs according to that. Presidents fall to it. Repeatedly, you know. From the bottom to the top, that is. Theirs was a society that was governed not by that. It was governed by the craving for idolatry. They're very deeply connected, incidentally. Very deeply, because they're both intimate connections. The sensual drive is the connection of man for woman, and this is a much higher version of the connection of man for, yeah, for this, that kind of marital connection. Far more ecstatic. Far deeper. And they found that that society at the time was governed by this craving for idolatry, and the price was not worth it. The failings did not balance. Of course, when you have a craving like that, you overcome it. The reward is enormous. But when you fall, the result is disastrous. And they decided to shift the balance of the human psyche. We're talking about the men of the Great Assembly in a prophetic era, a post-prophetic era. We're talking about people of cosmic power. They could adjust the human psyche. We're talking about another category of human greatness. So this is what they did. The Gemini says they decided to take the human mind and eliminate from the mind this drive for idolatry. So they performed whatever they did. I'm not going to go now into Kabbalistic techniques. And this human desire for idolatry, to worship idols, came flaming out of the Holy of Holies. It was living in the inner sanctum of the temple. Of course it lives there. It may be a very impure and fallen thing, but it's the same desire. Yes, it has a valid and kosher side. The same faculty that longs to connect with Hashem is the same idea, the same faculty, the same part of the mind, the same root of consciousness. That longs to connect with an invalid source. Same thing. The same craving that a man should have for his wife can certainly be used in a direction, same thing, same faculty. And therefore it has a holy side and an unholy side. And so it came flaming like a lion of fire and it killed it. And from that day on, the human race has no innate temptation to worship idols, in the deep sense. There's no sensual craving to go and bow down to a piece of stone. That ended the incidentally while we were on the subject, just to complete the picture, they decided that once that had been granted, they could make some other adjustments to the human psyche. That is called the Esratzon. Esratzon means when Hashem grants you a wish, you take the opportunity to ask Him another one. That's a law in the laws of prayer. If you ask for something and He grants it to you, the law is you should immediately say thank you and ask for more. Definitely. Definitely. In English, you call that a good wicket. Yes, you're. When you see it's an Esratzon, you're on a good wicket, then you give thanks and immediately ask for more. It's a law. After all, you're only asking for tools that you use in His service. If He grants you a tool, you take the opportunity to ask for more. Since they were granted the wish that they, yes, their effort had been blessed, that now human beings had been rid of this invalid and problematic craving, they decided to try for one more. So they decided to eliminate man's desire for woman. Imagine a world without that? Imagine the purity of a world without that. So they eliminated that sensual drive, and the Gimon says three days later there was no fresh egg in Israel. The chickens were not laying eggs. And Rashi, in his classical way, Rashi says, how come the eggs weren't laid that were already being incubated in the chickens? Let it be that there were no new eggs being formed. But as soon as that effect came into the world, there were chickens who already had eggs within their bodies. How come those weren't laid? He says, because the body heat of the chickens had dropped. That means when this sensual issue leaves the world, the world cools down. And therefore, they said that if this continues as the end of the human race, we cannot survive that way, so they brought it back. They tried to bring it back in a different way. They tried to bring a man's natural feeling for a woman, they tried to reinstate it in a way that he would only have that feeling for his wife, no other woman. Can you picture a world like that? And they got a note from the higher world that said, from heaven they don't give halves. There's no halves. Take it or leave it. So they were forced to reinstate all of it. They say, the Gimon says, they managed to make it blind, which means they managed to bring it back intact, but weak. How weak? That from that day on, a man has no natural craving for a close relative like his mother or his sister. A remarkable thing, that. A person can have a mother or a sister who is extremely attractive. There's no natural, of course a person can develop any perversion, a person can habituate himself or train himself in any distortion. And it happens. But there's no natural desire, there's no natural, in all societies it's not a Jewish issue. In mankind, there's no natural, there was an effect that they managed to achieve. What is this relevant to our subject? You see that when a faculty is removed from the mind, it takes with it all its functions. If you're going to lose the faculty that is the attraction, a man for his wife, then you lose the attraction of a man for a woman in general. If I extract someone's liver, I can't expect some of the functions of the liver to remain. Listen well to the consequence of this. When they extracted from the human mind the desire for idolatry, instantaneously and at the same time, prophecy left the human mind. Prophecy means I receive messages from another place. Idolatry means I wish to connect with a place outside myself. This is a transmitter receiver organ. This faculty that lives in the root of consciousness is the faculty that is able to hear messages from another place, craves receiving those messages, craves connecting that which is outside of itself, and connecting with something outside of itself has two forms. One is called prophecy, one is called idolatry. One is connecting with something that I hear a message from another dimension, and the other is lifting myself into connection with another dimension. I can do it the right way, with the correct source, or idolatrous, the wrong source. Don't think for a moment that idolatry, this is not the time to go into it fully, but don't think for a moment that idolatry is the worship of fetishes, or totems, or images, or pieces of stone. That's not idolatry. Anyone who thinks that an idolater is someone who carves an image in stone, and then bows down to that saying it created him, that person does not have a religious confusion, he has a psychiatric problem. Idolatry, the graven images that they make are only physical representations of forces in the world, astrological, forces, sun, moon, wind, stars, etc., that are valid connections. The problem with idolatry is not looking at, or worshipping, or connecting something that's invalid. That's just silly. It's connecting with something that's valid, but not going all the way to the source. It's not appreciating that this muzzle, this zodiac element, this astrological influence, not appreciating that it's only an intermediary. That's the problem. So idolatry is connecting correctly, going out of the self, but not going far enough. That's what's improper about it. And since you're connecting to that which is wrong, you're taking some intermediary and imputing to it some independent power, there's a marital infidelity. So, let's get this clear. When prophecy left the world, and people could no longer hear messages from a higher dimension, at the same time, because of that, because they'd lost the craving for idolatry, they lost the ability for prophecy to manifest in the world. And since that day, no one craves, in a sensuous this immediate sense to worship idols, nobody is able to reach prophecy from that day on. Beforehand, the craving was irresistible. The Gemara says that, for example, Rav Ashi once, Rav Ashi lived in the year, approximately the year 400. Rav Ashi lived around then, and he lived approximately 700 years after prophecy ended. So Rav Ashi one day came to the base of Madrash, and he wanted to give a lecture on the subject of Manasseh. Manasseh was the great king who led the Jewish people a thousand years before, and Manasseh was a famous and very evil idolater. So in order to speak disparagingly of Manasseh, because there's a mitzvah to mock idolatry, although one should not mock anything else, and that brings down all sense of honor and dignity and chashivism in the world. Mockery is an extremely negative character trait. But mockery, belittling, should correctly be applied to idolatry. So in order to fulfill that, he began the lecture like this. He said, Niftach Be'chav Roy, which loosely translated means let us. speak about our buddies, referring to the great king Manasseh. He spoke of him in belittling fashion. That night he had a dream, and in his dream Manasseh appeared to him. And Manasseh said to him, let me ask you a halachic question. And he asked him a very interesting halachic question, and Rav Ashi did not know the answer. So Manasseh told him the answer to that halachic problem. So Rav Ashi was amazed. He said, if you are such a learned rabbi, you're such a learned sage, yet such Torah knowledge that outstrips my Torah knowledge, how come you worship idols? What could be more silly and childish and fallen? And Manasseh said to him, had you lived in our generation, meaning, you live in a generation that doesn't know what that craving is, had you lived in a generation when I lived, we at least managed to walk sedately to our idolatrous practices. You would have lifted up your cloak to run. And then Rav Ashi realized that he couldn't judge those generations. He didn't understand what the craving was. And the next day he began his lecture, Niftach Be'chav Roy. Let's talk about our teachers. Right? So you see that the craving was, and he said, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. But the craving for idolatry was an almost irresistible craving. And from that moment on it left the world. And at the same time prophecy left the world. Now let's go back to the theme we began with. We said that when there's an idolatrous connection, that affronts the relationship that we have with God, with Hashem, in the sense of betrayal of a marital relationship. And the correct response is jealousy and revenge. How can we apply that term to Hanukkah, which happened long after prophecy ended? Hanukkah was the time, Hanukkah was the next generation after the men of the great assembly, right? After they left the world, when was Hanukkah? Hanukkah was the men of the great assembly, yeah, the next generation was Shimon HaTzadik. Shimon HaTzadik was the individual who had been part of the men of the great assembly, had seen prophets, and lived into the next generation when there was no more prophecy. And he was the one who faced Alexander. The Greek empire, yeah, marched against Israel in exactly at the time that the unshakenness of Saigdona, the men of the great assembly, had ended prophecy and the craving for idolatry. That's when Greece raised its head. The Gemara says that Alexander marched against Jerusalem because a band of defectors and malicious upstarts had told him that the Jews were rebelling completely falsely. Alexander marched with his army on Jerusalem. The Gemara says he marched all night towards the temple. Shimon HaTzadik, the rabbinic leader, was the high priest. When he heard that Alexander was coming to meet him, he donned the priestly garments, and he marched with all his people, and they met outside the temple at dawn. And in that historic and very tense meeting, Alexander got off his horse and bowed down to Shimon HaTzadik. So the people said to him, "A great king like you is bowing down to this Jew that you're supposed to be attacking?" He said, "The face of this man is the one I see in my dreams before every battle. His face leads me into battle, and the empire that I've built is due to this Jew." He bowed down humbly and he left, and there was no Greek attack on Israel. And the next generation, after Alexander's rule, when the Greek empire split into three factions and the Syrian Greeks were in power in Israel, then they began to persecute the Jewish people and prevent them practicing their religion and forbade them to learn Torah and to perform circumcision and so forth, and they tried to Hellenize them and take them away from their religion. And the Jews were victorious over the Greeks because their forefather, Shimon HaTzadik, two generations before, had subdued Alexander in that fashion. So this took place two generations after Shimon HaTzadik. In fact, it was in the days of Yosef and Yeza, Yosef and Yochanan. That was the historical juncture. You're talking three whole generations after prophecy had ended. As prophecy and idolatry leave the world, the Greek ordeal. And the question you have to ask is, how can you then use the word of jealousy, which is always used in the sense of the response to an idolatrous relationship when there was no temptation to idolatry anymore? Greece was not an idolatrous problem. The Greek attack on Israel was not the threat of idolatry. All the Greeks wanted to do. What is Greek philosophy? The Ramban says, "The essence of Greece is atheism." That's what Greece is. Don't for a moment think that the Greek gods, okay, are religious in any sense, or idolatrous. The Greek gods on mount whatever it is, mount. over there in Athens, yeah. The Greek gods are all very pathetic creatures. The Greek gods are all full of human fallibilities and all sorts of mixed up and confused relationships. I mean, they're tragic figures. Among all the Greek gods, there's not one who created the world. Right? Who's in charge of the world who creates it. The Greek gods were there to serve them, not to be served. They were there to serve them, to be a god of war, a god of love, a god of health, a god of success. The Greek philosophy was that the world is as you see. What you see is what you get. The Ramban says that the nature of Greek philosophy is that. The words the Ramban uses are the cursed Greeks who denied everything their eyes could not see. Greece is the concept of Western empirical, testable, scientific logic. What can be derived and proved philosophically, or can be derived and proved in the lab. That's what Greece is. The prior attacks on the Jewish people was a different sort of attack. The Greek attack on the Jewish people is the attack of atheism. That is nothing. Not that there's something different to believe in. That there's nothing to believe in. The Greek attack on Israel, the Gemara says, they said to the Jewish people, write for yourselves on the horn of the ox. That you have no share in the god of Israel. That was the Greek interest. To detach Jews from their god. Not idolatry. The Greeks weren't trying to get the Jews to worship anything. When they destroyed the temple, they didn't destroy it. When they desecrated the temple, they put a pig in the temple. They weren't worshipping pigs. All they wanted to do was invalidate the temple, which means the place where we connect with Hashem. What happened after that? What happened after that was that. This has to be seen in some way or another. It's so clearly, it's such a fundamental. Until that phase was a phase of open revelation. The temptation was idolatry, but the positive side was prophecy. The consequence of this is, what it means is, that during that phase of the world's history, faith was not a problem. Nobody had a problem with faith. Nobody doubted Hashem's existence. You couldn't. It was visible. Now the Rambam says prophecy went hand in hand with miracles. Every miracle requires a prophet. Think about in Tanakh, you'll find whenever a miracle occurs in Tanakh, there's a prophet present. It was a generation, those generations from the world's beginning until Chanukah, were generations of prophecy, where the Divine was openly revealed. People witnessed and experienced ten revealed miracles in the temple at all times. There was no problem of doubt, of not knowing whether Hashem exists or doesn't exist. It was all visible and experienced. The Torah says that there is no doubt. The Torah of those generations is called the written Torah. Listen carefully, this is amazing, this is the essence. The Torah that manifested in all those generations is called the written Torah. The written Torah is a manifest Torah that a prophet announces, divine dictation, it's in the world, there's a direct connection. The Torah is being written by a person you can go to and ask the future. In those days people didn't go to doctors, they went to prophets. If you lost an object, you went to a prophet, he told you where it was. There was no problem of the darkness that we have today, everything was completely light. When prophecy left the world, the world transitioned into a phase that is called the oral law, not the written law. Let's try to understand this. What is the nature of the oral law? And of course, as soon as the oral law begins, and there's no more written law, there's no more divine revealed wisdom, and he takes himself back from the world, he takes a step back and the world goes dark, from then it becomes only human wisdom that has to derive Torah. The oral law means what we evolve, we learn it and we, yeah, it becomes human opinion. Human opinion based on divine, on a divine relationship, but a very, very problematic thing to explain. The Ramban says that prophecy now becomes, lives in the gut, as it were, of the sages. It's in their hearts and minds and it's, they're imbued with this prophetic sense. And from that, operating on their logic and their concepts, they come out with Torah which is original, which is derived from the human being. Amazing thing. The Goan of Yonah says this, he says, based on a certain verse, the Goan says that the Torah that's written is in the world. The oral law is not in the world. Where is it? Where is it? It means this, the oral law exists only in the hearts and minds of those who study it. A person who studies Talmud and understands what it means and grasps the logic, but not grasps, learns how to perform those logical maneuvers. Learns the techniques of understanding and derivation. To that extent the oral law exists. Give an example. The Goan of King Yanai. Yanai lived, Yanai who was, again, a very problematic king, who should not have been in power. He's an illegitimate king, but he was in power. And he was having a lot of trouble with the sages, the rabbinic authorities. So Ben Poirot, who was his advisor, told him, kill them, wipe them out. So Yonai said to him, but if I kill all the sages, all the rabbis, what will happen to the Torah? He destroyed the sages of Israel, and no more Torah. So Ben Poirot said to him, what's the problem? The Torah is written on a scroll, and it lays in a corner. Today you'd say the libraries, it's in the books. Anyone who wishes to learn Torah thereafter will come, open a scroll, they'll learn. And he accepted that advice, and moved, acted to begin destroying the sages, the rabbinic authorities. So Yonai, at that moment he became a denier. Because he should have responded by saying, yes, the written Torah is on a scroll, and it is accessible. But what about the oral law? The oral law lives only in the hearts and minds of the sages. It can never be written down. Don't for a moment think that the Mishnah and the Talmud we have now is the real oral law. As soon as the Talmud becomes written, as soon as you write down those things, it becomes a written law. The oral law is only the process of understanding. If there's no one studying it, if there's no one understanding it, there is no oral law. And let's try to understand this. That's what it means, it's not in the world. People make a mistake here. People think that the oral law is like the Mishnah and the Talmud, and it's a different sort of writing. The Torah is written one way, the Chumash is written one way, and the Gemara is written another way. That's called oral. You make a mistake. The Talmud, that people labor with a lifetime to understand, lives only in the process of coming to understand. Once you've understood it and it's clear, it's not oral anymore. It's a written law. Again, Gemara learning, Talmudic learning, Torah learning, is called learning, is called an oral process, only in the process of the agony of coming to derive it. It's in the process of bringing it from the unconscious, from the deep well of primordial, innate, pre-birth knowledge. Bringing that out into the explicit dimension. Learning how to do that, how to get there. The inner sense of wisdom, the inner knowledge, the deep divine inner knowledge that each person has. Learning to bring that out and to tap that energy, to dip a bucket into that deep well of the higher consciousness, deeper consciousness and bring it out, that's the oral law. As soon as you've brought it to clarity and you understand it and you can say it over to somebody else, it's not oral anymore. Then it's part of the written law. Is this clear? The oral law is not the result. The result can be written down in a code of Jewish law. That's not the oral law. The oral law is the result. The oral law is the process of derivation. When people study Talmud, they're not looking to learn Halachic conclusions. You don't need to learn the Talmud for that. You can look it up in a book of Halachic conclusions. People are learning Talmud for the exercise itself. If you want a very, very crude analogy, when you go to a gym, you don't go for the result of the exercise. You go for the exercise itself. When you pick up weights in the gym, the idea is not to get the weights up. That's the last thing you're concerned about. What you want to do is the effort and the energy and the exercise. The exercise is lifting the weight. If the coach picks up the weight for you and puts it into your hand and you can snap a nice shot and send it to your mother, she'll be very impressed to see, but you don't build any muscle that way. What you want in the gymnasium is not to get the weights there. You want the work that it takes to get them there. That's what you. In Talmudic learning, you don't want the conclusion. You want the process. It's the process of Rebbe and Talmud, of master and disciple. The interaction, the incisive process of derivation. It's the work of understanding. It's the Arol Lord can only live in real time. That's what keeps us alive. That's why we call it Arol. That's the dynamic that keeps us alive. What keeps us alive is not what's written on a scroll and laying in a corner. You don't need humans for that. That began when prophecy ended. When there was prophecy, there was no derivation to be done. All you had to do was understand, read, receive. After that, Torah is not received anymore. It's derived. It's now Rebbe Kiva's opinion and Rebbe Talmud's opinion and this one's opinion and Hillel's opinion and Shammai's opinion and it's derived from his own sensibilities, from his own. And he can't prove to you why. He can't prove because the opposing side has just as good a proof. And they're both valid. But it's because he derives it himself and it comes from himself. That is the process of the Arol Lord. What the Greeks came to do was to sever the connection. Until then, the Jewish ordeal was you connect to Hashem or you connect to idolatry. That's the ordeal. That's the difference. The Greeks came and they changed all that. The Greeks were the manifestation of the new era. The new era was that there's no more prophecy and of course there's no more idolatry. And the Greek attack is a whole new thing. It's not the temptation to idolatry, it's the temptation to atheism. That's what the Greeks brought to the western world. The concept of the western world is purely atheistic. Now temptation in this generation is not no one wants to worship idols. What the dark forces want you to do now is not worship idols. They just want to worship idols. They just want you to doubt reality. That's what they want. They want to fill you with the doubt. Is there a God? Is there not a God? Am I Jewish? Am I not Jewish? Am I human? Am I an evolutionary orangutan? That's what the problem is now. Complete doubt. No knowledge of anything. Not even whether you're human or not. There's nothing clear. Until that generation, you have to be blind not to see. God spoke openly. You see this in so many ways. I'll just give you one illustration. Before the men of the great assembly, people did not make blessings. You know that? Virtually no blessings. The men of the great assembly, people did not make blessings. The men of the great assembly coined the blessings that we make. We make blessings on everything. You can't drink a glass of water, eat an apple, wake up in the morning, use the bathroom. Nothing without a blessing. Put on your shoes, your belt, everything you make a blessing. Before then, people made no blessings. Why? Because the idea of making a blessing, what is the idea of making a blessing? Baruch atah Hashem, you Hashem, you create this apple, you're the fruit of the tree. What do you mean? Baruch atah Hashem does not mean you are blessed. I give you a blessing. That is not what it means. Baruch atah Hashem means you Hashem are the source of this blessing. When you take an apple and you make a blessing, you are identifying the source. And giving acknowledgement. Before the men of the great assembly, people didn't make blessings. You know why? Because the source was openly visible. You didn't need to identify the source. Nothing would have been sillier. The apple spoke. An apple didn't look like an apple. It looked like a divine word. The world was incandescent with prophetic. Not just that there were individuals who could tell you the future. So when you took an apple, the apple looked like something that was divinely emanated from the divine dimension. You didn't have to say that. But after the world went dark and there is no more prophecy and nothing is seen visibly anymore. Then an apple looks like an apple. Now an apple looks like an object that could be accidental. On the contrary, the world thinks it is. The world thinks it is an accidental biological evolution. There was no bigger junction in history than those two phases. The prophetic era before where God spoke openly and the rabbinic and oral law period afterwards where He took a step back and we don't see Him again. Chanukah was the transition between those two zones. Chanukah was the last miracle we ever saw. Shimon Ad Sadiq was a member, you know the western light in the menorah used to burn miraculously every night. Seven lights were lit. In the morning the western one was still burning miraculously even though there wasn't enough oil. And he would clean all the others and then clean that one and re-light it. The next morning that would be burning miraculously. That's the miracle of the western light. That miracle sputtered to an end. Shimon Ad Sadiq saw it a number of times and it came to an end. Two generations later in Chanukah it happened one last time for eight days. That's the last time we ever had any direct connection. Until then there was no lack of direct connection. There was prophecy open all the time. Chanukah was the last time without a prophet but a last flicker vestige of a miracle that was a revelation from a higher world caused by the human beings who had dedicated themselves with that intention. The last time we ever had a direct message. And for two thousand years we've been going on the memory of that vestige, that echo, that remnant of a connection. These are two people who parted long ago and the image that remains in their mind is that last wave, that last poignant meeting when they took leave of each other. That's what Chanukah is. When you light that small light in your window, that's your declaration. You're harking back to that moment when he last spoke. He spoke indirectly but not directly. But much more directly than we see now. And that was the ordeal. The Greeks came to sever that connection. What do you mean a connection? Where? Show us. Where is he around? Put it in the lab. Prove it to me empirically. Bring me proof. And I fear you can't. I have no answer to the Greek. When a scientist demands a rigorous demonstration that you're not an animal, that you're a human. That there's a spiritual world. That there's a God that you believe in. Where's your proof? There's no proof. It's derived from the deep well of your own consciousness. There are no proofs for these things. There are very convincing arguments. There are arguments that can take you right to the brink. Absolutely to the brink. And they're worth going through those arguments. But beyond the brink? That takes Torah. That takes the Torah that's derived from the heart and mind of a Jew. That's the process. The jealousy that was occasioned here is a different kind of jealousy. There are two kinds of marital problems. Listen carefully. There's two kinds of marital infidelity. There's a person who comes between a husband and wife. And he severs the connection. And he acts in disloyalty. And he takes one of those parties into a foreign relationship. That parallels idolatry. There's another kind of marital problem. When a person doesn't relate to his spouse anymore. Not because somebody else tends him. But because the connection has been broken. That's a different kind of disloyalty. When we relate to idols, there's a marital adulterous disloyalty. But there's another kind of jealousy that is very closely related. Not when we relate to a false connection. But we don't relate to the right one. The first is called idolatry. The second is called atheism. The Greek ordeal, and it's still our ordeal today. The Roman Empire's intellectual legacy. and a philosophical legacy of the Greeks. Rome had no intellect and Rome had no philosophy. Rome was Greek philosophy enforced on the world by military might and by an empire. There's no Roman philosophy. The Romans weren't philosophers. They continued the incredible work of the Greeks in the world of philosophy. Immense work of the Greeks in the field of philosophy. That's what they continued. But it's a philosophy that does not, it's not it doesn't hold off a connection with the deeper world. What you can't see, what you can't prove, what you can't know, that's not real. And therefore the jealousy and what the Hashmalayim did, the revenge that they sought there, was the revenge against the people who had severed them, severed us from our connection. And where do you remake that connection? There's no explicit place you can go to remake that connection. It's implicit. It's in the heart, in the heart and mind. That's the idea of Chanukah. The oral law is in the heart and mind of he or she, the Jewish effort to regain that wisdom. And no external help You look in the written law as a point of origin. But the process is the dynamic, the ongoing dynamic process of understanding more and more and each time you understand it it converts itself into something that is in the world and then you have to go for a deeper understanding. That is the process. And therefore in summary, what we studied this evening is the concept that Chanukah is the transition zone. Chanukah is the celebration, the energy that's being manifest now. The vengeance that we have to seek now. The connection, the battle that we fight now is not the battle against something that takes us in a different direction in the sense of a love and an ecstatic connection with something other than God. That's not a problem. Intellectual, spiritual, religious, philosophical problem is that there's nothing to connect with. Nothing to connect with. There's a severing of consciousness with itself. There's a floating consciousness now that's got a whose focus is emptiness. Existential emptiness. When a faculty is taken out of the mind what remains is an empty space. When that organ of connection is taken out of the mind there's now a drive to connect to emptiness. To do nothing, to waste time, to do nothing meaningful. To talk nonsense. To play games. To go round and round in circles not connecting to anything beyond. And as soon as there's a move to anything connecting to the beyond it's beset with doubts. It's attacked by the western empirical tradition. And nobody external can help you. No one can give it to you. It can't be looked up in a book. There's lots of external help you can have yet to begin the process. To ignite that. But in the end that light has to be ignited and brought out of hiding. The swastikas says that where the menorah is now buried in some cavern deep in the hills of Jerusalem was hidden before the destruction of the first temple. Hidden in some subterranean cavern. It's still burning that western light. Still burning in that cave. Just as it always was. But it's not seen. It's not seen. Chanukah is lighting that light, that human light. Until then he lit the lights. Yes, the light that shone in the Mishkan in the desert was a divine light. You have to be blind not to see that. Sinai was a divine revelation. Nobody could fail to see. That leaves the world. The second phase is a phase that you have to make happen. In one peculiar way the lighting of those small lights in a Jewish window is more powerful than all of the divine light that shone before. That was the ignition of the process. But that gets taken away. The test is the long hundreds and thousands of years of exile. When all the proof is on their side, no proof on our side. The scientific evidence, the proof, you want to prove things? Evidence is all theirs. You have to fight against that with something that you draw out of yourself. A very lonely process. The prophet has to be in the gut of the one who brings it out. And that's the challenge. The challenge we face today is the challenge of an existential emptiness, of that gnawing doubt that there's no proof, no explicit. There's no final proof available. And the process, the answer to it is the process of Torah itself. The process of engaging Torah, of learning to bring out that primordial wisdom, that deep wisdom, learning to connect with that inner self, that is the marital reconnection that we seek at the time of G-d.
PodcastTranscript AI