Transforming the Rebels

The objective of the lighting of the Chanukah lights goes well beyond dispelling the darkness associated with rebelliousness. Its true goal is to transform defiance into an extraordinary and unconventional positive force.

The Chanukah Connection

Chanukah always occurs right before or during the week in which we read the Torah portion of Vayeishev which discusses the saga of Joseph and his brothers.

Many commentators have drawn parallels from their rivalry and struggle and the struggle of the Jews during the historical period that led up to the miracle of Chanukah.

When the Talmud discusses the appropriate time to kindle the Chanukah lights, it speaks of lighting them when people can still be seen outside in the street. This timing is to ensure that the Menorah brings light to the public and that the miracle of Chanukah will be properly publicized.

The Tarmudites

The Talmud describes the deadline for the lighting in the following manner:

“Until the feet of the Tarmudites cease from the marketplace.”

Rashi explains that the Tarmudites would sell their wares in the marketplace and would tarry there later than the other vendors.

If we were to rearrange the Hebrew letters of Tarmud, it would spell Moredes, meaning “rebel.” Chassidic literature thus reinterprets this legal requirement of when to light and retranslates the foregoing phrases in a spiritual vein, as follows:

“One must kindle the light of Chanukah until it causes the legs (read: lowliest aspects of) the rebels to kalya-cease from the marketplace.”

The word kalya that is translated as here as “cease” can also be rendered as “expired.”

Chassidus explains that the ultimate goal of lighting is to enable the souls of the rebels to achieve the spiritual state of ecstatic passion for G-d, where the soul’s desire is to expire so that it can be united with G-d.

In simpler language, this implies that the objective of the lighting of the Chanukah lights goes well beyond dispelling the darkness associated with rebelliousness. Its true goal is to transform defiance into an extraordinary and unconventional positive force.

Joseph’s Name

What is it about Joseph that was so powerful?

Joseph’s very name, which means “may he increase,” reveals some of his uniqueness. Joseph is about continuous growth; never standing in one place. A mountain climber cannot dare stay in one place. To prevent oneself from falling, one must continue to grow.

This theme is associated with Chanukah’s requirement that we increase the number of lights kindled each night. The term employed by the Talmud for this progressive increase is “mosaif,” similar to the name Joseph. Chanukah is all about embracing the Joseph ideal.

Chanukah, too, was a war against the forces who attempted to adulterate the purity of the oil and light in the Bais Hamikdash. The antidote to that poison in our own day is to continually add light and not settle for the light that has already been generated.

But the demands of the Joseph ideal are not satisfied by mere incremental increases. He received the name Joseph because his mother exclaimed: “May G-d increase for me another son.” When Rachel sees the soul of Joseph at his birth, she realizes that he will do much more than just fight rebelliousness. Joseph, according to the Tzemach Tzedek (the third Lubavitcher Rebbe), represents even more than just continual positive growth. Joseph is about taking the “other” and transforming him into a son.

Living the Joseph ideal is the hallmark of the Messianic Age. Moshiach will not only add to the light and goodness, his role is also to transform the otherness and negativity of the world into potent positive forces.

We don’t want to be Excluded

There is another, opposite, approach to understanding the motives of Joseph’s brothers. Rabbi Aryeh Fromer (Rosh Yeshivah of the famed Chachmei Lublin Yeshivah in Poland, martyred by the Germans, yemach shemam) explains that they feared Jacob’s special relationship with Joseph threatened their own ability to carry on Jacob’s legacy.

From past experience it was clear that Abraham, who fathered 8 sons, only entrusted his teachings and spiritual role to Isaac. Isaac, too, would ultimately give his blessings to one son, Jacob, making him the true heir. Eisav was pushed aside and lost his role in the Divine plan that would pave the way for the giving of the Torah. Eisav was thus expelled from the process that would lead inexorably to realization of G-d’s purpose in Creation—to make this world a dwelling place for Him.

Joseph’s brothers were terrified that Jacob’s special relationship with and apparent preference for Joseph was a sign that they, like Eisav, were going to be excluded from this process.

For them, spiritual alienation was worse than death. They therefore devised a scheme to prevent their apparent fate by killing Joseph first.

Judah, however, argued that all they had to do to realize their objective of distancing him from their father was to ensure that Joseph would not remain loyal to his father. They would accomplish this goal by selling their brother into slavery in Egypt, a country was known for its immorality and depravity. Surely, they imagined, Joseph would not be able to remain a true follower of the legacy of the Patriarchs in the spiritual cesspit that was Egypt.

Once Joseph was out of the picture, physically or spiritually speaking, Jacob would be forced to turn redirect his attention to his other sons.

Joseph and Moshiach: the Channels

Obviously, Joseph’s brothers were utterly mistaken. Jacob’s affinity for Joseph was not going to be at their expense.

On the contrary, Joseph was to be the conduit through which the lofty ideals of the Patriarchs would be channeled into the other brothers. Only Joseph was endowed with an uncanny ability to reach the spiritual heights and draw that spirituality down to the lowliest places.

This idea of reaching for the heights and bringing it down into our ordinary existence is one of the signal characteristics of Moshiach and the Messianic Age. Moshiach embodies the loftiest spiritual ideals, but unlike other righteous people, he serves as the ultimate leader who can relate to even the simplest and most “distant” Jew.

Moreover, Moshiach, like Joseph, possesses the ability to instill the most sublime levels of G-dly light, exemplified by the Chanukah lights, into the most ordinary and even alienated, rebellious person; thereby transforming the “other” into a most sublime “son.”

From the book Light from the Future: Chanukah by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.