Chanukah in the Summer
Rebellion against authority is embedded in our soul’s genes. Don’t try to stifle it. Channel it to tear down the walls of exile!
Right and Left
The Torah, our Sages tell us, is the blueprint of creation. Therefore everything that exists can be found hinted at in the Torah. Even events that transpired after the Torah was written—or will transpire in the future—are all alluded to in some fashion in the Torah. In some cases the hint is glaring while in other cases one must probe to find it.
The story of Chanukah has been “discovered” in this week’s parsha of Shoftim. Chanukah, we know, occurred in the days of the Second Temple, hundreds of years after the last Biblical book was completed.
In the beginning of the parsha the Torah addresses the issue of judicial authority. After commanding us to appoint judges and officers, we are told, “you must obey the words that they will tell you… You should carefully obey everything they instruct you. You should act in accordance with the teachings that they instruct you and according to the judgments they issue to you. You must not divert from the words they tell you, either to the right or left.”
When the Talmud discusses the text of the blessing we recite when lighting the Chanukah candles it raises the question: How can we recite the words “Blessed are You, G- d our G-d, who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to light the Chanukah lights?” Where in the Torah does it command us to observe the laws of Chanukah?
The Talmud answers by citing the aforementioned verse in which the Torah admonishes us to not divert from the words of our Sages, either right or left. In other words, G-d has indeed commanded us indirectly to light the Chanukah candles since He instructed us to heed the words of the Sages, and they in turn commanded us to light the Chanukah candles.
The Hints
Where is Chanukah hinted in this verse?
The Hebrew words for “the words they tell you” are “yagidu lecha.” The numerical value of these words is 83, the same number as the word Chanukah (spelled without a vav).
There is an additional and more revealing hint to Chanukah in this verse.
In Talmudic times—and even today in many communities, as is the Chabad custom—the Chanukah menorah is placed on the left side of the doorway of our homes opposite the Mezuzah which is affixed to the right doorpost. Hence the Mitzvah of Chanukah is connected to both the right and the left.
What is the deeper meaning of this hint? Why is rabbinical/judicial authority associated with Chanukah specifically, and why is it represented by the right and left?
Questioning Authority
In our day and age the entire world seems to be suffering from the lack of submission to authority. From the sixties onward the leitmotif is “challenge authority”! Initially this challenge to authority was directed against the corruption of powerful leaders and institutions. It ultimately evolved into challenging authority for its own sake. “Authority” became a dirty word. Unfortunately what happens in the secular world infiltrates the most religious of communities as well. Increasingly we see even the most observant individuals ignoring rabbinic instructions and expressing cynicism about heretofore unchallenged aspects of Jewish authority.
From what source did this movement to challenge authority derive? And why has it become so pervasive?
To be sure there were so many grievances that society had against the systems of government as well as other institutions that it is understandable why people began to speak out and revolt. And, from that perspective, it is not a new phenomenon. The real question is why does it appear that we are living in an age where rebellion and revolution have permeated every segment and all strata of society?
Oxymoronic
Furthermore, what we see in society today is selfcontradictory. While we find so many people who have become non-conformists that it is interesting, and even amusing, to see how they conform to their particular brand of non-conformity. Emblematic of this phenomenon is the image of a group of non-conformists who live together in the same commune, take the same drugs, wear the same ripped jeans, etc.
Where does this oxymoronic approach to life originate? Why are we rebels in our conformity and conformists in our rebellions?
While psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists will certainly find explanations within their respective disciplines for this phenomenon, Kabbalah and Chassidic thought teaches us that the ultimate answer must lie in the spiritual realm, which is the source of everything physical.
All physical phenomena evolve from their spiritual counterparts. Nothing occurs in a vacuum.
When G-d created the world he created it with a system. There are laws and rules that are an integral part of existence. The structure, however, conceals its spiritual energy. But even this is part of a system which the Kabbalists trace to the process of tzimtum. This refers to the Divinely generated process where G-dly reality that defies categorization and institutionalization is filtered through various curtains and screens. Some screens are transparent—although they do not allow all the intensity of the light to shine through them—some are translucent and some are opaque with virtually no light shining through them.
Two Soul Dynamics
Our role in this process is to break down these barriers and remove the screens. This we do in two ways. The first is to make the system conform to the Divine will by observing the “positive” or prescriptive commandments.
For example, when a Jew puts on Tefillin, he takes the natural world of leather as well as the human arm and head and makes them conform to G-d’s will so that the screen of nature is not obstructive. When a woman lights the Shabbat and Holiday candles she allows the Divine light to shine through the screen.
The second approach is to negate those aspects of the “system” which are stifling and obstructive. This we accomplish primarily by observing the so-called “negative” or proscriptive commandments. When we shun the negative influences in our world and resist their apparent charm and appeal, we remove many of the barriers.
And this is the true meaning and origin of revolution. It derives from the soul’s desire to break out of the elements of our world that prevent it from fulfilling its G-dly mission of conforming to G-d’s Divine system.
In reality, the soul actually possesses two desires and two ways of expressing itself: The first is to make our world conform to the ultimate Divine plan for this world, and the second is to negate and remove the negative components of the system.
Clearing the Misinterpretations
When a person is not in tune with his or her soul’s interests and passions he or she will still acquire some of the soul’s feelings but without proper direction. As a result, instead of rebelling against the things that frustrate G-d’s plan for the way the world should be structured, they rebel against anything that smacks of order and authority. As a result, instead of conforming to the Divine system, they conform to the whims of their animal soul.
And while this dynamic of misinterpreting the signals from the soul has always been in existence, it has now become much more pronounced.
This can be attributed to the fact that we are in Messianic times when the twin struggle to simultaneously conform and rebel is at its most critical juncture.
Our generation’s role is to bring G-d’s plan to fruition and to make the world conform to the original Divine plan. It is also in our generation that we will realize the negation of the stifling structures that stunt our soul’s ability to break out of the system that confines it. These soul energies are stronger today than in any previous era. However, when these energies become misdirected they translate into indiscriminate rebellion against authority in the pursuit of conforming with the mores of a secular lifestyle and Galus/exile mindset.
Our mission thus is not to repudiate rebellion and conformity but to channel it into rebelling against the exile mentality, against conventions of society that limit our potential even as we conform to the highest Divine order.
Chanukah: The Light of Moshiach
This may explain why the Chanukah Menorah lighting is hinted in the Torah section dealing with conforming to authority and with the “right” and “left” metaphor.
The Talmud states that the “right” should be used to bring someone close, while the “left” should be used to distance someone.
One of the interpretations of this maxim is that the right symbolizes the way we observe the positive commandments to get closer to and conform to G-d’s system. The Mezuzah, which is placed on the right doorpost, exemplifies the idea that this structure/house is in total conformity with G-d’s plan for the world.
Conversely, the left symbolizes the rebellious nature which we must develop to fight against all negative and confining influences. There is no holiday like Chanukah in which this dynamic is so overtly played out. In fact, it is the only Jewish holiday that commemorates and generates the spirit of rebellion, rebellion against the imposition of Greek pagan culture. Chanukah, on the left, represents its ability to banish the greatest darkness by bringing light into the darkest places that exist in the “outside.”
Chanukah is thus the holiday that exemplifies the idea of accepting the proper authority of the Torah and of the Sages in whose hands its teachings have been entrusted, even as we wage war and rebel against the idea of conformity.
By admonishing us to not deviate from their words right or left, the message emphasizes that we should not get our notion of right and left mixed up by rebelling against the things to which we should conform and conform to those things against which we ought to rebel.
Chanukah, the Midrash tells us, is a holiday which will be prominent even in the Messianic Age because Chanukah epitomizes the synthesizing of the right and the left in the most ideal and harmonious fashion.
We can have Chanukah in the summer when we commit ourselves to conform to the teachings of our Sages and, particularly, to the directives of the Rebbe who told us repeatedly that we must prepare for the Redemption by redoubling our efforts towards doing more goodness and kindness (the right) even as we reject and revolt against the Galus mindset (the left).
From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Shoftim by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.
