This was forwarded to me by Reb Yossel Friedman who received it from a group post by Reb Baruch Kelman. All I would like to add is that before seeing this post I told my chevrusa that this can serve as yet another answer to the Bais Yosef's question as to why we celebrate eight days of Chanukah: It is is the zeh l'umas zeh of the Solistice Holiday. V'yesh l'ha'arich!
-------- Original message --------
From: Jeff Bienenfeld
Hi All,
The Chanukah story took place in the 2nd
Century B.C.E. However, there is a fascinating historical antecedent to
this eight-day festival, a primeval Chanukah if you will, that harks
back to the dawn of Creation. Here’s how
the Talmud (Avodah Zarah 8a) relates the tale (in loose translation):
When Adam experienced the first winter of
Creation and saw the duration of daytime gradually decreasing, he said,
“Woe is to me; perhaps because I have sinned, it is becoming a darkened
world for me and the cosmos is returning to a
state of astonishing emptiness, and this then is the form that the
death sentence decreed upon me from Heaven will take.” Adam then arose
and engaged in fasting and prayer for eight days. However, once he
experienced the Winter solstice and saw the daytime
gradually increasing, he said, “This phenomenon is evidently part of
the natural cyclical occurrence of the world.” In thanksgiving, he went
and established eight festival days. The following year (l’shana acheres), he established both these and those
as festival days (l’Yamim Tovim).
The phrase, “the following year (l’shana acheres),
…” is found almost verbatim in only once other source in the entire
Talmud; to wit, when our Sages discuss the miracle of Chanukah (Shabbos
21b), “The following year, they [the Chashmonaim] established these eight days as festival days (l’Yamim Tovim).” The comparison is striking and no mere coincidence. If Chanukah then can be traced back to
primordial man, what message inheres in this startling linkage.
An answer might be found in part in an insightful essay by R. Shlomo Volbe (20th C., Israel) in his acclaimed
Alei Shur (Vol.I:22).
For all the similarities between these two accounts, there is one clear
difference. In the Chanukah of Creation, it is Gd and He alone who
establishes
the laws of Nature. Man looks on passively, and in perceiving the
orderly and fixed cosmos, is consoled by its predictability and
undeviating regularity. Gd, the Creator, notwithstanding the periodic
darkness, has not abandoned the world. His daylight returns.
In the Chanukah of the Maccabees, the story
also begins with an impending darkness. The Hellenistic influence on
Jewish life was denominated metaphorically as an ominous, shady period.
“Darkness – this refers to the Greek tyranny which
imposed terrible decrees upon the Jewish people” (Bereishis Rabah 2:5). However, in this story, the marvelous turnabout, the transition from darkness to light, did not
occur by the Hand of HaShem, but rather was a consequence of the
intrepid courage of one small priestly family who, by their heroism,
inspired their generation to rise up and defeat the overwhelmingly
powerful forces of the Syrian Greeks. The famous
Chanukah miracle only occurred - Gd only intervened - after these
Maccabees acted
first.
In this bold display of faith, the Chashmonaim
behaved quite differently than the First Man. At Creation, man merged
with the natural order, identified with its deterministic laws and, at
this stage in his anthropology, viewed
his reality as defined by his biological pushes and fantasies. Would he
be, could he be anything more than a sophisticated animal? Could he
ever apprehend the holy and majestic, the great transcendental
experience of an expansive and free will existence through
which he could forge ahead and rise to a level of moral behavior which
would crown him as a “bit lower than the angelic?” Aboriginal man was
comfortable within the natural order, but he was not great. In contrast,
the Maccabees, by transcending - I would say,
defying - the bounded biological and physical law, triggered the
miraculous occurrence. Invited down by man’s seemingly futile effort to
rededicate the Temple by an ineffectual act of kindling the Menorah
flame with one small bit of pure oil, Gd destabilizes
the natural law He created and thus demonstrates that Nature as such
can be transcended through man’s daring initiative.[1]
The message then of both the Chanukah of
Creation and the Chanukah of the Maccabees is plain. No person should
ever feel he is compelled to behavior or act, that “he can’t help
himself,” that nothing can change because “he is what
he is.” To buy into this bankrupt philosophy is to endorse a
Hellenistic view of man as a
homo sapiens, just a smart animal and nothing more. Our Chanukah
declares that man can be so much more, that he “reach beyond his grasp”
because when he attempts to rise above his biology, he sets in motion
HaShem’s miraculous interventions and is able to soar to unimaginable heights of greatness and holiness.
Such Godly involvement may not be as dramatic and as openly miraculous as a small cruse of oil lasting eight days, but
HaShem’s intimate involvement in the affairs of man should never
be questioned. At any moment, man’s valiant and righteous deeds can
activate a Divine response - concealed perhaps, but no less real - that
in the wink of an eye (k’heref ayin) can
turn a bleak and gloomy night of defeat and failure into a bright and
glorious day filled with promise and bathed with lasting meaning and
worth.[2]
Good Shabbos and Happy Chanukah.
[1]
Rambam (Hilchos Chanukah 4:12)
writes, "The
mitzvah
of the
Chanukah
lights
is an
extremely beloved
commandment…"
Rambam
does not
use expression for any other mitzvah.
Why should Chanukah
be so cherished? The Shulchan Aruch
(OH
671:6)
rules that the Chanukah lights should be lit below ten
tefachim
(~3 feet). In Chassidic lore, this
halacha
implies that
HaShem
is prepared to come down
to our level
notwithstanding the fact that the Talmud rules (Succah
5a)
that generally
the
Divine Presence (Shechinah)
does
not descend below ten
tefachim. On Chanukah, however,
HaShem
chooses to respond to man’s light and happily
lowers Himself, as it were,
to listen to us,
to
illuminate
us
with His
light of holiness
and
elevate us
to Him.
And with that uplifting, miracles happen!
[2]
The Chazon Ish was once approached by a man pleading poverty and desperate for a miracle but sadly understood that “לאו בכל יום מתרחש
ניסא, that not every day do miracles occur” (Pesachim 50b). The
Chazon Ish corrected him and said that this rabbinic phrase should be read as follows, “לאו,
It isn’t so! Miracles do happen every day.” It all depends upon us!
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