Parshat Miketz - 5762Shabbat Chanukah - 5762

Yehudah and the “Chag HaUrim,” the Holiday of Lights

In Parshat Miketz, there are several elements that stress the Jewish belief in the eternity of the soul.  One is where Yehudah says to his father, regarding his request for guardianship of Binyamin (Bereshit 43:9), “I guarantee his return; you may seek him from me.  If I do not bring him back, and present him to you, I will have sinned against you for all the days.”  And RASHI explains Yehudah’s expression, “all the days,” as including the World-to-Come.

The events surrounding the Holiday of Chanukah represented a clash between the culture of Greece and the Mityavnim, Jews who had assimilated into the culture of Greece, and the culture of Israel.  The culture of Greece, or Yavan, represented beauty, logic, music, a “sound mind in a sound body,” the Olympics.  But it rejected, in fact denied, the basis of morality, the existence of the religious spirit abiding in the eternal soul.  And it denied as well the fundamental idea of religion, that the human being is a servant of G-d.

In “Maoz Tzur,” a traditional Chanukah song, that gives an overview of all of Jewish History, one stanza refers specifically to the Chanukah conflict: 

“Greeks gathered against me then in Hasmonean days;
They breached the walls of my towers;
And they defiled all the pure oil.” 

”And from the one remnant of the flasks,
A miracle was performed for the people
Who are compared to roses; 
Men of insight established a holiday of eight days
For song and jubilation.” 

The miracle was that the oil lasted eight days when it should have lasted only one, until additional pure oil could be prepared. The number “eight” frequently represents in Jewish Tradition - as it does in the case of “Brit Milah,” the Covenant of Circumcision, that is performed on the eighth day of life, and which represents the Divine Command that the Jewish People perfect itself morally – that which is above Nature, residing in the realm of the Spirit.

Chanukah is called in modern Hebrew, “Chag HaUrim,” the Holiday of the Lights.  “Urim,” Lights, are in the plural.  The reference may be to the lights of the Temple that were discovered at the time of the victory over the “Mityavnim,” and also to the lights that CHAZAL instituted that we light as a commemoration of the miracles of the oil and of the victory, “ner ish u’vaito,” a light for each household, in order to make public and announce to all our belief in HaShem, Who performed the miracles.

Another possible (but not very likely) meaning of the use of the plural with respect to light is the discovery in the twentieth century of the dual aspect of light: the aspect of the particle and the aspect of the wave.  An early theory of light was the “corpuscular” theory, that held that light was a stream of particles, or small “corpuscles.”  In “corpuscle” we see the Latin (give credit where credit is due) root of the words “corporeal” and “incorporeal,” meaning “physical;” and it is a fundamental principle of our faith (the third of the RAMBAM’s thirteen principles) that G-d is incorporeal; a Supreme, non-physical Being.  The wave, while still an integral part of all of nature, is mathematically more abstract, somewhat separated from and above the realm of “substance,” which itself is created in a marvelously complex and subtle manner.

Jewish Tradition also speaks of two types of light.  One was that which flooded the Universe on the First “Day” of Creation, after HaShem uttered (Bereshit 1:3), “Let there be light.”  The other type, the more spiritual, was not appropriate to be enjoyed by the wicked in This World, and therefore, according to RASHI citing the Midrash on verse Bereshit (1:4), was hidden away for the righteous to enjoy in the World-to-Come.

We also speak of the soul of the human being as “the light of G-d,” in the verse (Mishlei 20:27), “The light of G-d is the soul of Man, searching out all the inner recesses of the human being.”  Here we see the conscience built into the human being by its Creator, portrayed as the “light of G-d,” examining the motivations of each action, by the light of “Right or Wrong” or “Good or Evil.”

The Hallel, the Song of Praise to HaShem composed by King David, is recited on Chanukah. In its second stanza, which speaks of the Exodus of the People of Israel from Egypt, there is a reference to Yehudah (Tehilim 114:2), “Yehudah acted to make Him holy, Yisrael to make Him the King.”  When Nachshon ben Aminadav, Prince of the Tribe of Yehudah, plunged into the waters of the Yam Suf, he declared, made public and announced to all his belief that HaShem rules over Nature, and is capable of splitting the waters of the Sea at will.
 
In Tehilim (30), “Mizmor Shir Chanukat HaBayit L’David,” “A Psalm, a song for the inauguration of the Temple – by David,” a direct descendant of Yehudah, we find the verse (Tehilim 30:10), “Can the dust give thanks to You; Can it tell of Your Truth?”  This can be understood as meaning that without a soul, the human being, as envisioned by the Greeks, is ultimately just dust, even when alive.  But with the immortal soul, a gift of G-d, we rise to the level of the last verse in the chapter (Tehilim 30:13), “So that my soul might make music to You and not be stilled; HaShem, my G-d, forever will I thank You.” 

Rabbi Pinchas Frankel

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