Chanukah - Oil, Wick & Flame

I try to study an idea that I hope will take us to the essence of Hanukkah. Make a difference this year. Try to understand exactly what the battle was between us and the Greeks, Greek thinking, "More important what the battle is between us and their world," which is really where the spiritual battle is pitched right now. You know, the miracle of Hanukkah really was in the interaction between the Jews and the Greeks, the miraculous victory of a war that was fought by a handful of Yashiva men really picked up weapons for the first time and went out to give their lives really in a battle, a seemingly hopeless battle against the Empire. That's really what happened. And miraculously, not without immense effort and suffering, it was a war that lasted for many years, 13 years, over 10 years and with deaths. But despite that, it turned out to be miraculous. Despite the fact that it took extreme effort and protracted fighting and difficulty, but in the end, the Greek Empire was defeated and left an end of Israel and we won the war. We were able to re-deplicate, cleanse the land as it were, cleanse the most emigrant temple, re-deplicate it, rekindle its lights. The Greeks had not destroyed the temple, they simply desecrated its spirituality, the battle was an ideological one. And that was really the real miracle of Hanukkah when we settled on this one, the miracles we refer to that, we don't refer to the light, the miraculous burning of a candle or a flame, an oil flame that burned for eight days when it should only have burned for one. We don't really talk about that. So we aren't so stand here, why if the real miracle was the victory? This battle that ended in victory of the few against the many, extremely few against the almost encountered many, a whole empire. Why is this really commemorating, why is our focus really on the small flame that we lighten our window? What does it mean exactly? Why a flame, what does that mean? Many questions, there are many, many mysteries here. One of the most basic, which is a well-known question, is the issue of why they fought in the first place. Why don't we turn to God, why don't we turn to our shame? After all, everything comes from the spiritual world, surely that's the address. When it came to Purim, Purim was a holocaust decree against the Jewish people, Purim was a time in Jewish history which had happened not that long before Hanukkah. Before Hanukkah, if you go back and examine the history, you'll see that Purim had been a decree of destruction against the Jews in a completely, in a holocaust, a charismatic fashion. There was a decree to wipe out all Jews on one day. All Jews on earth, all Jews on earth then, Purim lived in the same geographical region. Now, at the whole known world, then, at the time, excluding the foist, when there weren't any Jews basically nestled on, do you know, the population figures of China today? China's crisis is having one billion people. How many of those citizens are Jewish? Five. Five. But, the whole known world, Asia, Minor, North Africa, what today's Europe, all Jews on earth lived there and there was all under the dominion of one man. I have various, the king, with Haman, as his minister, a psychic or prime minister, all Jews on earth came under the Jews' diction, all 127 known countries at the time, states. We all fell under the authority of one man and therefore it was literally in their power to wipe out all Jews, like other types of holocausts where they've been remnants of Jews in other places. Here they weren't and there was a decree to kill all Jews on one day. And the response to the Jewish people was not military at all, not at all. They sat down and fasted. They fasted for three days, they're clothing, they pray, they cried out to our show and as it happened, they were saved. So if the corrected dress is, if that's the corrected dress, why on Hanukkah, did when the Jews were not even threatened with destruction, and when they were threatened with destruction, the third Hanukkah was ideological, that's all the Greeks decreed. Death would come to the Jews if they failed to observe the decrees, but the decrees were religious, not to keep Rosh Khodersh and not circumcise children and not to learn Torah, Mitzvahs. So the Jews are threatened by not being allowed to perform Mitzvahs that pick up weapons in a completely hopeless battle against all empire that go to fight. And there's very perplexing, why did the Jewish leaders of the time, why was the Torah sages of the time, why did they extract the Jewish people and put them when they were threatened physically to sit down and pray, deal with it spiritually, and at Hanukkah when they were threatened spiritually to deal with it physically to pick up weapons. But of course, as central, this is an issue of Jewish history, it doesn't, there's no accidents, of course, in Jewish history, there are accidents in the guidance of the sages, obviously. That's exactly the point. Everything is in the hands of heaven, except your spirituality. Acobidesh, my foot's mere shaman, everything is in our hands, hands, nothing moves here, not a flicker of a movement, not the subtlest movement here in this world to explain without his immediate cause, is only one thing that he doesn't call, that he doesn't touch, that's your spirituality. Acobidesh, my everything in the hands of heaven, puts me your shaman, your fear of heaven means your relationship with him. That's the only area you have any say, the only place you get in anything to do, and therefore the response is logical. The decree of destruction is promulgated against the Jews, that this empire is going to wipe out all living Jews on one day, everything is in the hands of heaven. There's no other place to turn, picking up weapons is ridiculous, if everything is in the hands of heaven. Right? No matter what you do, no matter what weapons, let be they souls or be they nuclear elements, aren't going to make any difference if he's decreed otherwise. And therefore, the only hope you have is get him to change his decree so they sat down and prayed, and it worked. But when the threat isn't against Jews, the threat is against the Jewish spirit, against ideology, that's against your shaman, against your relationship with him. That's the only thing that's in your hands, pick up weapons, go and fight for it. When you turn into him for, you don't turn to him when you want to be spiritually developed, you do that as well, you need that as well, you need help as well. But the primary methodology of growing spiritually is you, ultimately it's him too, but the means, let's say, is your own work. And therefore, that's what you have to fight for. You don't fight again, our mentality is so non-Jewish. Our mentality is so non-Jewish, that our tendency, unfortunately, in this generation, that's because we Greeks. That's because we Greeks. Judaism is Greek to us. We think that when we fought, when somebody threatens us physically, let's go and fight them physically. They threaten us spiritually, let's deal with it, let's prank us as a spiritual, not like that at all. When they threaten us physically, you have to turn to the one who controls human politics and history. But when they threaten us spiritually, you pick up weapons, whether you can manage the fight or not, not the point. That's where you, that's with which you're interested. The main point we want to draw out of this for this evening's discussion is that the battle with the Greeks was a spiritual battle. The fact that we fought it physically was our response, it's true. But the battle is a spiritual one. They wanted to extinguish, was that candle, that light, which is the Jewish spirit. We were interested in destroying Jewish bodies. They wanted to destroy the physicality, they wanted to destroy the temple. All they wanted was to make it Greek, that it should have a. And of course, the real Greek problem is the Greeks among the Jews. There's no. That's where the real ideological battle is for. The real battle is with us and how inner enemies. And it's no less painful today than it ever was, of course. It's very painful messages here. If you wouldn't have used to point out during the Babylonian exile, they weren't. You know, the expression of Hellenic Jews, Jews who became hellenized. We called Mityavnim. Jews who became Greek in their outlook. A civilizationists, people who wanted to take on the Greek culture, go and strip their bodies naked and demonstrate them in the games. Try to undo their circumstances for the purpose. Go into Greek culture, Greek philosophy, Greek culture. Mityavnim, it's called. In the Babylonian exile, they were no mid-bub limb. They were no Jews who tried to be Babylonian. In the Roman exile, in the Persian exile, they were Jews who made an ideological business of becoming Persian. In their philosophy, in Greece, that was the problem. In Greece, the Jews became. The problem was Jews who became Greek in their outlook. The battle was in the battlefield as the Jewish mind. The central battlefield is the Jewish mind and the Jewish spirit. And that's the problem. That's the ones where all battles have to be. That's where our battle really is. Our battle really is in your private space of your own mind. That's where. That's where the real battle is. Part of the problem of today's generation is that what Greece gave us. a legacy to Rome, which is where we live today. We're in the fourth exile. Our exile today is Rome. How the Arab people's fitting needs to be discussed also, how they attach themselves to the fourth exile that records them, the Talmud, and I recall it, the first exile, which is our problem today is the Muslim conflict, under the world's problems, not our problems, it's a world's problem. That needs to be discussed, perhaps we have time to do that, find an opportunity. But our problem today, the general setup is that we're in the fourth of four exiles, which is the Roman exile. The Roman exile is not as spiritual threat to us, it's content is Greek. It's content is Greece. Rome, what Rome brought to the world, what Rome enforced by might, and still rules today, rules the world. The beauty and the appeal and the intellect of Rome was really Greece. The Romans didn't have their own, there was no Roman philosophy, the Romans didn't bring to the world, it's important to know, the Romans didn't bring to the world the philosophical approach. The Romans brought to the world the application of might and power to rule yet to spread themselves across the face of the Western rule the world. But the culture that they imposed, that they espoused and that they adopted, that they imposed on the world was Greek culture. The Greeks were essentially a culture. Roman culture today, that means if you've tried examined Western society today for its own values, there's really nothing. One thinker said that examining Western culture today for its ideological centers like peeling an onion. It's like peeling an onion. You peel an onion looking for the substance, you peel a one layer and another layer and another you keep peeling an onion and all you left was the tears in the eyes. That's why one of the essential lacks of modern society is that Greek philosophy brought to the world an identity, that means there was an intellect, there was a dice, there was a mind, and it was so powerful that it swept away Jewish minds, it was a genuine appeal, it was not a superficial or fervilist thing. Today there's no sense of powerful identity, there's no real individuality, that means today the eye, the big eye, that means the eye who is able to live independently and alone, you know I'll also say that in the next world the soul will be alone. You'll be alone in the next world, essentially alone you have to get used to it and like it. Part of the essential spiritual trading of life is to learn to be self-sufficient spiritually and mentally because in the next world it's a very lonely experience, it means it's to be examined alone and to be tested alone and to exist alone. There's other layers too of course where we all bond into one, it's a complicated discussion but today part of Western societies, you know when the Greeks brought their philosophical issue to the world, the problem to the world, we call it darkening the world, we call it darkening the world, that's where we like the light, but we call it darkening the world, right? It's called Khasheq Zayyavan, the positive, the verse in Khumash, at the very beginning of the Khumash says, "The irons I say to you of a boy of the world was void and chaotic, the Khasheq helped me to dim a darkness on the face of the deep, and this is the verse that describes the chaotic formlessness in which the world began, and the morale is famous though, much earlier sources talk about these four words of chaos and void representing the four exiles, the third of them, Yovon corresponds to the word darkness, and we say that the Greeks darkened our eyes with their decrees, touched out their hands to Jewish possessions and Jewish women, and darkened our eyes with their decrees, Greek, Greece is called darkness, that is important to know the fear of darkness, people are afraid in the dark, people are afraid in the dark at night, night times at time of natural fear, understand this deeply, it's not because what is the fear of the night, real night, today there is no night, today we're living in environments where the light is, the night is made light like the day, today there's no difference between light and day, but if you ever lived in the bush, if you've lived in the wilderness, and a genuine night setting where there's no light at all, it's a very powerful experience, it's a completely different mode of existence, and it encourages it builds natural fear, there's a natural fear in the darkness, not because you think that somebody's going to attack you and you won't see them, or because some, you know, be a spirit, dancing, and you know, the essential fear of the night time is that in the real darkness you really alone, if you're really alone in the day, there's a combination that means a relationship with the world around, but in the darkness, in the darkness there's nothing, in real darkness, and the real fear is fear of being alone, for being completely alone, and a completely developed spiritual being does not feel the fear of being alone, and the country feels tremendous thrilled being alone, but the natural mode is a fear, is an experience of fear, and that's Greece brought a philosophy of what they extinguish that, and today in Western culture there's no, there's a tremendous fear of being alone because there's no one to be with, the first part of the battle against Greece is elevating the dyes, that means there has to be, there's to be a genuine persona, genuine personality at home, some, there has to be a thinker before the thoughts, and we live in a world that dissipates that all the time, even the Western concept of meditation, which is supposed to be essentially in a lonely experience of developing the mind, even the way the Westerners grasp meditation is, is a form of mindlessness or relaxation, and that's not the meaning of meditation, genuine meditation is at a six-spanding of the dyes, it's not a state of being without consciousness, that may be restful, but it's not meditation. Meditation doesn't mean switching off the mind, the classic mistake of the Western who studies meditation is that he or she thinks it's a switching off of the mind, meditation is a switching on of the mind, it's a switching off of the external mind, it's a switching off of the mind that is dissipated into externalities so that the inner mind flourishes, it's a very, very deeply away state, we're supposed to do three times a day at least, we're supposed to be doing. Let's see if we can try and think this through, slowly one step at a time, see if we can find a direction here. So the way we celebrate, the way we commemorate, the way we designate that miracle and that phase and the victory in that battle, we light a candle, we light a light classically an ideal attribute, an oil, oil light with a wick and draws the oil, that's called a narrow, narrow Chanukah, narrow Chanukah, the light of Chanukah, the light of Chanukah, narrow, the word narrow is trying to share together what some of the deepest sources say about this, so that this year when you look at those lights, you see something deeper, the mystical sources say you can learn a tremendous amount, mystically by studying a candle flame, by studying that flame. Let's see if we can put a little bit of the learning into gear behind that study so that it will be a little bit more meaningful. Now the word narrow in Hebrew, those of us who have been together for the last period of time, know that we always look at the word itself, the word narrow in Hebrew, as up to 250, the Gamachi, the numerical equivalent of the word narrow, meaning a candle as up to 250, that number happens to be the equivalent of a number of things, one of them is a very deep capitalistic idea, most of which probably, or flow is demand to most of us, but let's try and grasp at least the fringes or the edge of what we can, you know the parts of the body are 248, it's 248 parts of the body, which means that bodily we lack two elements that make the flame ignite, it means our bodies, our bodies are just too short, two elements short of the that flame, and in deep sources it's written that the human body, together with two elements, what we call our divine era, the two modes of relationship with our shaykh, love and fear, right, or the first and second of the ten commandments if you like, which really subsume them all, that is the root of the 250, so accident that the 248 parts of the body, 248 earthly parts of the body, the same number is the Hebrew word Rechem, the womb, the womb, that means the crucible in which that body is formed, that's the same you very quickly, and of course it's no accident that the word Abraham has the same numerical value, Abraham, Abraham of Inter, that means the womb, in whom the Jewish people as it were is formed, that father figure, that point of origin, and his name, that means that Abraham of Inter, he as a man, together with the elements that he brings to the world, the two modes of connecting with the spiritual world, he is the name of the world, he is the light of the world, that's why it says, "Ele told us a shamah, these are the generations of the creation of heaven and earth, the Hebrew arm in their being created, in their being created, the Hebrew arm, the word the Hebrew arm is the same letters as the Abraham, which means the simple In their being created in the coming to existence, the world is coming into existence from nothing. Which incidentally, and not incidentally, is what the Greeks denied. The Greeks said the world had always been the prime-ordial material of the world that had always been here. And we said it was never what was not here before. Fundamental aspect of Jewish belief, Jewish knowledge is that there was nothing before the world was created out of nothing of no manifesting. That word is Bahibaram in their being created, Bahabraham. And he is the person who is, when he shoulders the world rests. The world rests on his shoulders. The Greeks understood that the world rests on the shoulder of a man. They're right, 100% right because his name wrong. But there's a man on whose shoulders the world stands. Now question about that. But it's on a man with two elements in his mind, which are the two modes of his relationship with our share of the positive and negative modes of interaction, love and fear. That adds up to the word "mer", which means the flame, the candle flame. The human soul is that flame. The word nefesh in Hebrew, the word nefesh, which means the soul, the human, the word nefesh, which is the fifth part of the soul, the lowest of five parts of the soul. The part of the soul that connects with the body, the upper parts are all attached to it as it is attached to the body. That level called nefesh, which is the human soul's attachment to the body, those letters, the letters of nefesh, spell "neur till shemin", the three elements of an oil flame. The three elements of an oil lamp, of an oil flame, are near the flame, till the weak, shemin the oil. Those three elements are the elements of the word nefesh. Amazing thing. The human soul, the nefesh, but which part? The part that attaches to the body. Can you hear what's happening? What is a flame? What is an oil flame? That's a physical thing, a weak, let's stand this deeply. That's a physical thing, which is a weak, which dips into a medium called oil, called shemin, and it draws the oil in such a way that it doesn't burn. It provides the medium, the human body, is the channel or the medium. The human body is the channel or the medium that connects to the spiritual world. Ideally, nothing burns. That means in correct spiritual attainment, the person reaches the correct level spiritually, nothing burns. Burning means flame, fire means that the medium becomes part of the fire. Fire means that that which burns becomes itself fire. It's imponding into oneness in fire, but in the lower world it destroys the substrate. In the higher world the fire doesn't destroy the substrate. That means it burns, attaches itself and burns and nothing is consumed. The Torah is that fire, the Torah is called a racer, which means fire. The Torah begins on Sinai, but not at the giving of the Torah in Sinai. But long before we're in Mosul, the Mosul stands on Sinai, he's hurting his sheep and he sees a bush burning, but it's burning and not consumed. So he walks out of it to see what it is, and he sees that the snare, the bush is burning, but it's not being absorbed, it's not being consumed, it burns, but it's not destroyed. And Hashem says to him, "On this mountain you'll serve me, meaning the Torah will be given on this mountain. What you see now is a premonition of the flame that will be the flame of Torah, that will be given at Sinai, and it will be here on this mountain." And the message that he gets, that presages the whole process of exit from Egypt, and standing at a place where a fire comes down, which is the fire that ignites and burns and makes the components fire, it doesn't destroy them. The Torah, that's Torah, Torah means you bond, correct understanding of Torah in its depth, means that the human being, all aspects of the human being, ultimately even the body, become one without sin, and are not consumed. That means there's an identity that is there, does not, does not dissipate. The paradox of Torah learning and character building is that there's a sacrifice of ego, a disappearance of the personality of the individuality, and the paradox is that the result is a swelling of individual existence and consciousness. On the contrary, the substrate is not destroyed, it is more intact than it was before. Is there any accident that many centuries later, when there's a re-dedication of the base of Miktash, and the fire of Torah is reignited in the face of the oral law, the miracle is an oil that's not consumed. The miracle, I think it's an accident, the first time that happened to the Jewish people was a bush burning, when the material that burns is not consumed, and the last time it ever happened to us was when the Thessalonians entered the temple and they re-lit a candle, a flame which burned for many days without consuming what it burns, and it couldn't be a clearer connection of first face to second face. So, let's try and take it further, let's try and think this through further. The truth is that the deeper sources say that the word "nair" which adds up to 250 is the numerically equivalent of three cabalistic, three divine names, or combinations of divine names. There are three, I'm not sure that this is your particular interest, but it should be. There are three versions in the deeper thinking of the names, the divine names, the names of Hashem in the higher world, that form a unit. And these names are the name "ekir", which means "I shall be together with the Yutk Vavk", the name "hello kim", which is another aspect of the divine name together with the "shema" and "shema" and "shema" and "shema" are the names of the Yutk Vavk. Those three combinations together add up to the same as "nair". What does this mean, what does this mean? The first of those names, really in the deeper understanding, is a name that indicates source. It is a coming down from a completely ungraspable, ineffable source and manifesting that way. The next level is the level that that is that divine existence or intensity coming into the world and actually infusing the world with its reality. And the third is the one that connects those two. But the message here is that the higher name, the point of origin, that name, is really the ability, this heart for us to grasp, but it's the ability for that which is manifest in the world to be also connected to, that means also manifestation of the divine name. If we would put this in our clumsy way, in our language, we would say that when there is a communication of the source, when there is a shining out from the source to the external world, there are two ways that can happen. I can communicate with you in two ways. I can either communicate with you through a medium, I can give you a sender a message. That's what the Ram-Hal calls a manifestation that his "hesk" me calls it. In English the best word we can use for something that's "hesk" and we would say it is by convention, we would say it's by, probably the right English word would be, it is by common agreements. It means that you know what the word means because we've agreed. When I name an object in English, the word doesn't mean anything, it could have been any other word. But because you've been told that when I say that word, it means this thing, so when I name the thing, and I use the word, it names it. You understand what I mean? There's nothing in the name. You could have been brought up to use another word and would have been just as good. That's called "hesk" me. That means it's by convention, we agree by convention that this word means this thing. But there's another way to communicate, and that's to say the thing itself. I can communicate with you by sending you a letter, I can send you a telegram, I can send you some message. What does the message do? It tells you something of the source that I wish to convey. But a much deeper way of communicating is when I give myself to you. The real communication, the real projection of one thing into another, there's not where it sends a distant message, there could have been some other message. It is where an emanation of the thing itself is experienced. And the mystery of the world is not by a convention or by agreement telling us about a source. It could have been this way, it could have been another way. The mystery is that the world has the ability to communicate the source itself if you know how to look. What's what those names mean? What does this have to do with the nerve, with the flame? But that's the concept, the concept of a flame is that there's a material interface here, there's a material object, a material system, a physical system, which draws another medium and gives it to be flame. And that's the mystery of the world, the mystery of the world is this thing called neffesh, neffesh means that there's a spirit, the spirit means that there's a human body. And that body is the wake if you like, that connects something deeper with something higher. Shem and the Hebrew, which means oil, which is this medium, Shem and means that which is when Hebrew, Shem and means more, in English oil means oil, and Hebrew, Shem and means more, Shem means, it means beyond, beyond the limited proportions, Shamantha, which [BLANK_AUDIO] You know, Shemin, which means beyond the minimum, is also Ait in Hebrew. Shemin, yeah, is Shmonen. Shmonen Hebrew is Ait. What does Ait have to do with this? Ait is always that which goes beyond the natural. Ait is always that which is miraculous. He was ultimately, we're not only talking about a spiritual connection with the physical. We're talking about a miraculous spiritual connection with the physical. That's where it can go. We don't see that today, we don't see those types of miracles. But the clearest indication of a connection between this world and another is called the Nase. The Nase means a banner uplifted. When you see clearly, you see something clear. That's inherent in the number eight. Because the natural world is built of seven. The natural world is built of seven. The seven elements of the world is seven notes in the scale that we use conventionally in our music. The seven colors in the spectrum. There's a natural phenomenon in the seven colors. It's not an arbitrary perception of human beings. There's seven colors in the spectrum. The reason you're not supposed to look at a rainbow excessively. You shouldn't look at a rainbow too much. It's not good. It's not good to look at a rainbow too much. Make a broker when you see it. The rainbow's a reminder of the curse of the of the broker. The promise, let's say, the covenant that I've shown made with the world that he would never destroy it again. But when he shows you that covenant, he's reminding you, he's showing you that he needs to rely on the covenant. When you see a rainbow, it's a sign that there was not in a good state. Definitely during the best times of history, there were no rainbows. There's a sign that the world now stands on the verge of destruction and it's only the promise that keeps it going. So it doesn't look at it excessively. What's wrong with a rainbow? Nor it's beauty. It's the malbeam explains that a rainbow is the breakdown into seven colors of a light that is essentially one white, lighter, and markable mystery there. The world is created by a light. There were a rise to the light of toruses. It is one light. It's light. But it can be refracted. It can be diffracted into its colors. It can be separated into its colors. When you see the colors, the beauty of the movement. The amazing thing is the beauty of the world is in all its multiplicity. But that's perceived because of the breakdown of one's. For all its beauty, the Jewish mind takes the multiplicity back to one. That's what we do. We don't take the oneness of the world in just broken down. We want to take the broken down bits and pieces of the world back to their oneness. That's the key. That's the clue in the rainbow is that the oneness of the world is threatened. It manifests in it. But the natural world, when you see the breakdown, the existence of the natural world has seven elements. Eight is always beyond that. Eight is where you spend. You know, four. The minimal expansion of the world in our experience is four. In the Morales terms, four is always the expense of the natural world. What we call the plane. The plane surface of the world that we walk is two-dimensional. Two-dimensional is really four elements, right? Left and front-back. The four elements of the physical limited world, that's called poverty in Hebrew, dull. You know, dull it, meaning four in Hebrew, which indicates, by the way, that two, a dull of these two right angle blinds, that's all it is. A dull of these align this way and align that way. That is two dimensions. The letters not only does I say it, they actually show it to you graphically, because letters are all graphic representations. So a dull of the Hebrew is two lines of right angles. That's all of these. And that means poverty. Dull looked in Hebrew means having nothing, because that's what physicality is. When you expand physicality and you put in a spiritual element, you get a hay. What is a hay in Hebrew? Five. How do you draw hay? You put two lines this way, right angles. And then you put another line of right angles to the plane. You see just a dot. So hay is a graphic representation of three dimensions. And that's why five in Hebrew is already an elevation for physicality and spirituality. Hay let's all the social minds of our hearts. These are the generations of the creation of heaven and earth. The Hebrew arm, in there being created, language, verb arm, strictly speaking, "Bahay bra'am" with five he created the worlds. Which worlds this and the next. When there's a connection between this world and the high world, when there's an up-down dimension, when there's a depth to the dimension, the beginning of touching into a world that transcends. That's called five. And therefore the word "hamishali" re-arranges to Simkhah. The letters of "hamishah" spell Simkhah. What is Simkhah? What is joy? Joy is the feeling of expansion of consciousness when something happens that's beyond the limited and finite. What is beyond five in Hebrew? That was four. Five. What's next? Six. Six is where you have the fullness of physicality. The fullness, you're all six is really the fullness of three dimensions. Not? Both polarities of all three dimensions you have a six to express any real object that can really exist in space, the only kind that we have in our world. It needs six sides. And therefore, six in Hebrew is "shaysh", which is "sas" "sas" is much, it's higher than Simkhah. Simkhah is an expansion of joy. Sas'ana is when the joy expands, it's called "sas" on. What is the seventh? When all six of these express something more than the sum of their parts. When there's a unity between these six things that's called "shabbas". That's called "shabbas" the seventh. Right? What is seven in Hebrew? "Shiv-a-ah". The word "shabbas" means "completely full". "Completely full" means "sovereign" means "to be full". Sovereign means "fullness", the sense of complete satiety and fullness that is "shabba". That's the same as seven. What happens when you go beyond the natural? The fullness, complete fullness of the week. Where the six natural days and shabbas the connection to spirituality, you get the shwani, you get the eight, which means shanmein. It's now expanded beyond the fullness of the natural. Right? That's why eight is always that which goes beyond. That's why the only seven elements in the natural world. Eight is always that which is miraculous. Bruce Miller's on the eighth day, taking the body in its ultimate physicality and the navel in it to trance it. That's a circumcision, that's all of it. And the miracle of Hanukah is no accident that it's eight days and what gives it existence is the oil which is shabba and which is eight. What was the oil they found? What was the oil that they found in the bazaimiktash? "Shabba-na-mish-fa". You know what that is? The anointing oil. What is an anointing oil? Let's put on top of the form. Where does the oil go? Where the kayan goggle or where the mushyah? You don't mushyah means an anointing with oil. That's what his name means. Because oil is the transcendent dimension, is the eighth thing, and it goes above the seven elements of physicality. It's in the place of the crown which is the transcendent source. Of course it continues. There's more beyond this as well. The miraculous world has its own expansion. Nine is another whole discussion. Tasha and Hebrew shabba means to turn towards. to turn to. to turn to move towards complete and full. The ten in Hebrew s-air is a shir. That means richness. It's not just having more than the minimum physicality, it means having enough to give. But we focus this evening on eight which is where the natural world transcends. That's what's happening. So the word shmana in Hebrew means eight, not that which is beyond the natural. And of course if you rearrange the word shmana in Hebrew, you get nishamah. Same letters, the same letters that spell eight, meaning the transcendence, the oil that burns that connects the physicality with that which is above. The same word is nishamah, which is the spirit itself, the high level of spirit, above nephage. Of course I presume that your minds are. you're not sitting there passively, your minds are working ahead of me, right? If you rearrange nishamah and shmana again, you get the word mishnah, the mishnah, the same letters, because the mishnah is the repository of the oral law, which is where Torah yet becomes the written law, transmits itself throughout history. And when it finally reaches its lost air, when the prophets finally leave the world, at that point what happens next is Hanukkah. What is Hanukkah? It's the Chagliant, the celebration of the oral law, right? The Mishnah coming to its own with the sages of the Mishnah. The central sage of the Mishnah is Rabbi Akiva, right? Same name as Yaakov with an added alif. And who goes back to the Rabbi Akiva, that name is the same numerical equivalent as the word Mishnah. Don't take a much of Mishnah, Rabbi Akiva. Who is the central sage of the oral law? The only one who entered the orchard, normally, and came out normally, all three others couldn't survive. They entered that deeper zone. One became a heretic, Mishnah bin Avua, bin Zahima lost his mind, bin Hazai died. I literally became a managed to do, do what he had to do there and come out in that higher world. Not a simple matter to take a man on the stature of Rebellisha bin Avua, one of the tunnaim equivalent of Rabbi Akiva, and make him become a denier. Do you know what that means? Do you know what the forces were that there must have been dealing with to make a man like bin Zahima who was capable of entering that world and making him become insane? Do you know it? If a kid was able to do that, go in there and do what he had to do and come out. But that's the oral law. That's the power of the sages of the oral law. That's what Hanukkah is. It's lighting the flame that brings together the phase of history that is the written law and attaching it. This is a sense of attaching of a wick that draws the oil that transcends. That is what the flame is. That's the secret and the mystery of life and that's the essentially Jewish view of the world. There's a physical substrate here. There's a body. There's nothing more physical than the body with all its loneliness and all its natural tendencies to be unclean and all its finite. flesh and there is a wick that connects to an infinite, allows an infinite light to be to be manifest is beyond, beyond description that very. Having spiritual beings that are naturally spiritual who's vessel is spiritual is not, that's called angels, they know wonder, they all know wonder and having beings that are physical beings that inhabit the physical earth is no wonder either. But having a being that inhabits the physical earth his body is so animalistic that a whole generation of mankind can believe that he is only an animal, that he is nothing more than an animal and that's substrate that you look at and make the mistake of thinking that is an accidental animal that is that wick which enables a divine flame to and that's what the Greeks did. The Greeks came to the world and they said there's no connection here, there's no connection, this body is a body, nothing reflects anything higher, the beauty beauty in the world reflects only its own intrinsic beauty, the mutter they brought to the world was art for art's sake, art for art's sake in the West that's the highest value, is art for no ulterior motive that's the pure, there's nothing lower in Jewish thinking than that because the beauty of the body and all the depth of physicality, we see expressing, we see it igniting into a flame, we see its beauty but expressing its spiritual core and the Greeks can teach the world that the beauty of the world itself and their world is beauty, Greek, Greece is yeah, that means beauty, just that's a beauty, an actual beauty, that's exactly what they contribute to. And the correct place of that is for all I shine that means in the tense of the Jewish people is where that beauty belongs because that is the correct ideal, the correct ideal is that the vessel needs to be beautiful, in order to express its contents but the Greeks came and said the vessel needs to be beautiful because it has intrinsic beauty but not only do I say that they elevated that to an ideal and therefore the body needs to be exposed because it's its own, it's its, it is its own value, when the daughter of Caesar met her bishop in Hunanya, right, who was the, who was, who was, ugly to the point of being mischraping, right, he was one of the greatest sage of his day, the Monsieur of Hunanya we're talking about in the Roman times, after Greece already passed on to Roman's legacy, one of the greatest sages we ever lived, the greatest sage of his generation, who was, who was ugly to, to, to, to extreme, when this Roman woman, great Roman woman met him and the Talbo doesn't quite the words of fools and empty people, so her claim here has, has, tremendous death, she said to him, how can such incredible wisdom exist in such an ugly vessel, a Hoh number for earth, how can there be such incredible wisdom but clear in such an ugly vessel, the man was, this was a man when he was a baby, his mother wielded his, his baby carriage, she wielded him into the basement, she used to live in there that his ears should be formed by the sounds of Torah, but that is, the ears are always the, the ears are the place that are the totality of the being, if you discuss that, but, that his ears, that into his consciousness should be, he should be, he should be formed, and the mission that says about him, I'll show you a lot of the, happy is the one who gave birth to such a person, this great sage, but his physicality was tremendously, tremendously beaten, tremendously ugly, which he met this great sage whose fame was, legendary, she said, how can there be such a, it's perplexed, how can there be such incredible wisdom in such an ugly body, we have to understand here, who's asking this question, who's asking this question is a, is, first of all a woman, because a woman is the place of beauty, a woman is where beauty is, what a woman brings to the world, the woman says a, nisha ala noi, a woman, a woman is the, that's where beauty resides, that's what a woman is, that's what a woman's modesty is, is to transfer to a beauty as a spiritual thing, it's very easy for a woman to transfer to a beauty as, as an animal thing, and of course that's the legacy of Greece, that's exactly what it is, on every billboard and every bus stop and every poster and every page of every, that the feminine stung it upset with, that they tolerate, that they tolerate. Woman is the place of beauty, expression of beauty, she knows how to make things beautiful, so a woman asks the question, and which woman a Roman woman, because Rome is a legacy of Greece, Greece is that the vessel must be beautiful, beautiful content, it must be like that, that's how she grasps, there was an accidental question, it's an expression of who she is, she's a woman who expresses beauty in the world, that she's a, she's a child of Greece, which means that, yeah, so she said to her, he said to her, what is your father keep his wine in? So she said, like everyone, he keeps the wine in, in clay, emperor, you know the Greek, the clay vessels, in the cellar, she said surely for a king like your father, one cheese wine should be in golden silver vessels, so she went home and she had a father's wine all put into golden silver vessels, you know when you put wine into metal, the alcohol leaches out the metal and it goes sour, and all the wine went off, so when they tasted the wine she said eat, so the girl said, the Jew told me, so the Caesar, the governor, whoever he was at the time, he was a Caesar, he was the governor of the Middle East, he called him a fisherman for money, and he said to him, what's going on, he said, I only told your daughter, all I did was tell your daughter what she, I just returned her what she said to me, I'm trying to show her, that when the vessel achieves importance it ruins the context, that when the vessel has something to say, other than holding the contents, then it spoils the contents, she wasn't happy with that answer, as it happens, she wasn't happy with that answer, no, she said, if you write about that, if your body is mischraping, you're beaten down so that its physicality is controlled, and minima so that it contains inner beauty, what about your friends, because they were tannoyed, they were here, his associates, his contemporaries, they were those among them, were indescribably beautiful, they really is it, even much larger, the rebeach on it much later was an amoeu, much, much lower generation, rebeach on its beauty was incandescent, literally luminescent, it was said they used to put rebeach on an outside the microfib, that women going home to their husbands on the way from the microfib, they should see that, they should see that, that beauty, that spirituality in that vessel of beauty. So she said to him, how come some of your friends are so beautiful and so wise, and he said to the following words, he said, you have a son, you have a gamut, have they been ugly, they would have been great as spiritually, that means they managed to achieve their great wisdom despite their good looks, but that's the message, that is the Greek, that is Greek ideologies, the body speaks of nothing more than animal on the contrary, the Greeks went further, the uniqueness of our generation is to teach that the body is nothing more than an animal, the Greeks are a much more sophisticated approach, the Greeks said there is a world of spirit, but it serves the body, didn't deny the world of spirit, but they said it's subservient to the body, that means it's, the body is the prime, this is what counts, if there is mind, if there is spirit, it is there to invest the physical of beauty, and the Jewish approach is then if there's physicality, it's there to be a vehicle for the spirit, that's exactly the difference between us, that is where the spiritual battle was pitched, and so what the Greeks did was they darkened the world, they came to teach that the spiritual is not connected, our generation of course is taken into the extreme, that is not spiritually, our generation grasps the human being, not as a creature capable of intense beauty, of breathtaking beauty, who can create worlds of beauty and put spirit into the most beautiful of vessels, our world perceives the human as nothing more than an animal, there's no generation in the history of the world that's ever done, there's been no generation in the history of the world until this generation is ideology, there's been atheism, no matter how so-called primitive any culture has been, they've always, yet all excavations of all cultures on earth, always, unearth deep evidence of a belief in a world after this, of a connection to a spiritual and eternal world in one form or another, so it is this generation that teaches that there's nothing else, that that, no matter how distant the jury is, that that's not part of the jury's soul. You know, if you permit me just for a moment to bring this conversation down to ridiculously course level, why is it that of the four major thinkers of this century until the last two centuries? The four major thinkers have affected the human mind far more deeply than anyone else, and three were Jewish and one wasn't, they're remarkable, isn't it? Three of the major, of the four major shifts paradigm shifts in the last two centuries that changed the human mind radically, not four of them, is that right? The founder of the most sweeping social and economic philosophy is a Jew. The founder of the most sweeping psychiatric psychological paradigm, a Jew. The founder of the most sweeping and deep perception of reality is in space and time, a Jew. But only if the thought, the one who teaches that the human being is a guerrilla, is not "Why? Why? Why? Why? You know why? Because no Jew would say that. But if a Jew thought that he would deny it, because Judaism is the elevation, no matter what is precious to a Jew, no matter what is profane to him, but that is meaning that is specific. When a Jew is an atheist, he is an ideological atheist. When a Jew becomes an atheist, he goes out to prove it to the world and he will go to court for it. He may even be prepared to die for it. The difference between Jews and non-Jews, in the world of ideologies, they are Jews taking seriously. When a Jew has an ideology, that is no matter what it is, it can be an ideology of existential meaninglessness, but it to means a lot to him, it takes a seriously. What you would come up with a theory that you are a meaningless, accidental, chimpanzee, but you really accept that then what else is there after that? You must start hanging around in the trees. And what the Greeks did was they reduced the world of spirit to the world of the physical. That is what they did. They shrank into those proportions. They disconnected it from the source. They stopped that light burning. They stopped that lamp drawing its oil. What were the two major facets of Greek philosophy that were the antithesis of Jewish philosophy? They thought that the world had no point of origin. They thought that the creator or the former of the universe as soon as his distance that did not deny. No one until this generation has denied that he is such a point of origin. And he found primordial matter, that is what the Greeks taught. That the existence, at least the primal matter of the world has always been. It is called "Kadmus Island". The world has always been. What he physics they call a steady state theory, but in his ultimate sense, there has always been a world. He found it and he manipulated it and he shaped it and he formed it. And our teaching is that the world has formed from nothing. And the second great tenet or facet of Greek philosophy that it possesses us, as of Shem is ours, as Shem is not concerned with the world anymore. He is not interested in the world. He has got the bigger things to do. Yes, he created it, the famous watchmaker theory. He made the watch, crafted it beautifully, wandered up to let it run. And now it runs by itself. That is exactly what we hold to be exactly what we hold to be untrue. That is the point of origin of all existence of space and time, let alone the material within those and that is attached to everything that happens in the world, that he cares about every detail. And that is why the Jewish response to that Greek philosophy was to battle it with our lives because that is our life, is the attachment of this world to another. That is what our life is. And that is why he commemorates it with the midst of lighting a light. What could be more appropriate of showing the attachment of a physical medium that brings a light down? And of course, they celebrate it as a mitzvah. Mitzvah means that we and he are one, the word mitzvah and he remains being together. You know that it is simple translation is commandment, but it is deep translation that saftakhada means in one bond, savet in modern Hebrew means a crew, a team, elements that function as one. Mitzvah. Right? Mitzvah is a very strange word in Hebrew, you know that there is no word like that. It should be tzivui. Anyone who knows in Hebrew knows that commandment should be tzivui. That means not mitzvah, there is no -- needs discussion, but -- and therefore, and therefore, the way they celebrate this victory was the new mitzvah. That means the Greeks thought that there is no togetherness, there is no concern about what happens here. And the Jewish victory really was the celebration of a new mitzvah. What came out of the Greek torment was another mitzvah. Right? Another element that we ourselves create is the generation of the oral law, after all. We where we ourselves become creators in this process. And therefore, in summary, what we begin seeing what we are, where we need to direct our consciousness on Hanukkah, is that in the depth of the winter, where the light of days, as short as it can be, in the nights as long as they can be, with the loneliness of the nightmanifest, and this turning point is the time in the winter when the days begin to become long. These are the eight days the measure says that Adam thought the world was ending. He saw the days getting shorter and shorter and shorter as the winter approached. Not that he began to mourn. He thought that the world would close in the impermanent night, after all, this was the first season of the world's history. He was created by Shoshana time, according to that opinion, and the days got shorter and shorter and shorter, and he thought the days were closing out. And then says the measure, at the time we saw the days get longer, when he reached the shortest day of the year, and then he saw the days get longer, he made a seven-day celebration. And that became the eight days of Hanukkah, you know where Hanukkah began? Was the original celebration, to begin with, the Greeks? The source of Hanukkah says the measure, is when Adam saw the first day in the darkness of winter that was longer than the day before, and he celebrated for seven days. This incidentally is the deep answer to the question, that's the most classic question of all in Hanukkah. It's why we celebrate for eight days in the first place, after all, if there was oil for one day, and it burned for eight, only seven days of miraculous. You hear that question? That's the most classic, there's a famous book in Hebrew called "Nairn la Mera", which means a light to a hundred. That book contains a hundred answers to this question. The most classic question in all of Hanukkah, it was oil for one day. So the miracle was seven days, it burned the first day and I'm married. But the source is here, I mean in terms of tonight's discussion, I presume we all grasp together, that the reason we celebrate eight days is because the one natural day is the substrate for the miraculous days, that's part of the miracle. In turn, I'll be together, despite all the other hundred answers. This is the one to remember. You can read the book too, but remember this one. There were of course seven days that were miraculous, but the Jewish nature, the essence of Judaism, we count the natural day, we celebrate that together with the seven days of miracle. We're interested in eight. The seven that are miraculous elevate the natural to the miraculous too, they're not counted. And incidentally, incidentally, incidentally, if there's a culture in the West, I'll speak very carefully here, but if there's a culture in there, do you know what it is? What is the culture of the West, if there is one? What is the ideology of the, what is Greek, Greece becoming the West today? What is the central ideological core among the Western nations today? It's across the road. That's what it is. It is that culture that also celebrates eight days, you know that? Also celebrate that day, it's two weeks away from us. That celebrates an eight day period, you know that, begins on the 25th of this 2nd of month. And it continues through the 1st or 2nd of the next, it's eight day period, you know when they got that from, this is the, this is, yeah, these were the eight days of Hanukkah, in fact in their tradition, they celebrate on that day that they celebrate the birth of a certain individual and eight days later, which is the everyday celebration, he's circumcision, this is a deep tradition they have. And what is it the heart of their ideology, is the separation of the physical and the spiritual, that's why they're symbol, it's two worlds that have no intersection, they have no commonality, you know what I mean, there's a deep source to them, you know what it means, it means they bring it down with spirituality into the, into oneness, its manifestation here and it's the return of the same thing to the higher world. These two, you know, they're the six, you have to understand the six facets of reality that mesh into the seventh, which is their unity, but they will grasp the distinction between these, that the two cannot meet, that if you want to be spiritually, you have to become completely spiritualized, to leave the body behind, there's no way to become spiritual, engaging the body is intrinsically sinful and problematic, to become spiritually the elevators of beyond the body entirely, become a celibate or a monk or a nun, leave the world, their body draws down to sin and how teaching is that the body elevates to a mixer, the more degraded potential the body has, the more degrading and degraded, they'll higher the possibility of its use. that's exactly what we are. That's where our battle is pitched, our battle is pitched at the level of a materialism that is devoid of spirituality. If there is a spirit that's invested in the service of the physical, it's in a culture that teaches that the extent of a total dissipation of the Oneness of Consciousness all dissipated into complete externalities so that there is no one left to be conscious. It's a culture that banishes the night because the night is that sensation of being alone. The only hope of reaching spiritualities to completely abjure, deny the physical, to transcend it completely and leave it. Our view is the opposite on all of us. That's what kind of case. Chanuk is where the lights finally go out in the depth of winter and the prophetic messages left the world. His views come along and they fight a battle that's worth our lives. It's a battle to reinstate the assertion that we are witnesses to something higher, that there was not the void of that. It's not been separated from that. That's what our candle is. That's the 250 aspects. That's exactly what it is. It's why I hustle and color, bright and groomed. Moving towards the Hobo we carry two candles, two is or why two. We'll discuss another time. But in now, each one is a completion here of two together. Each one is 250 elements, which is the 248 elements of the body and the two modes of connecting to the spiritual world. That's what it is. That's the names, the divine names, that bring down the souls which is beyond all expression. Bring them down into physical manifestation. Bring the physical up. Therefore what we want here and what we want to try and reestablish in a world of tremendous darkness in many ways much deeper than the Greek era. Unfortunately, in many ways in the Jewish world, even deeper. Jews who aren't negating spiritual teaching like they did then. But Jews don't even know that there is anything to negate. Jews who've drunk in and absorbed the philosophy that teaches them that they are completely out of, that they're nothing more than animals. The problem, the real problem is among us. That's where the real problem is. And therefore, when you like that small flame in your window, you got this coming week. For the one here there's a very small action, a small lighting of a flame, something that recalls an event in history. But in death, that small flame is the rekindling of an ashama. It's a naffesh. Nareptil Shemin, that's your ashama that birds in it window. That's a statement that there was a miracle that occurred here. And the consciousness has to be that there's a miracle that does occur. Not that it occurred once. But the same miracle is the miracle of connection of spirit to body, of ideology to human thinking, of our ability to transcend a culture that teaches all the opposite of those things. And that's where the battle is put. And therefore, the battle today is put on your windowsill in the space of your mind, between you and yourself. And it's that light that you get used to spell that immense darkness that we are lighting in the flame and the hope and the knowledge that that light which burns now and consumes, that which it burns will ultimately be a light that burns without concern.