18 December 2009
13 December 2009
Chanukah, just a festival of lights?
This seems to promote darkei shalom, “ways of peace”, acceptance and goodwill between the Jewish people and the gentile nations.
Similarly, Chanukah is often presented by some as a holiday celebrating religious freedom. They say the story of Chanukah teaches this: The Jewish people wanted to practice their religion, the ancient Greeks oppressed them and denied it, so the Jewish people courageously revolted and won, recovering their right to religious freedom. What then is the message of Chanukah? The celebration of religious freedom, or, in modern terminology, pluralism.
It is indeed necessary to seek creative ways to explain difficult concepts in Judaism, but it is unacceptable to water down the message in the process. In this case the above presentation detracts from the message and turns Chanuka on its head.
But Chanukah is not pluralism and its message could not be more different.
The Talmud states that the light of the Menorah was “testimony to all the world’s inhabitants that the Divine Presence rests amongst the Jewish people. From it [the Menorah] light goes forth to the world via the “windows that were wide and narrow.” The windows of the Beis HaMikdash were narrow inside and broad outside, so that light could go out to the world. This light reached the entire universe, for the nature of light is to spread ever further without limitation, until the ends of the universe
What was the message of this light that shone to all the nations, and that was restored when the Temple was recaptured? It was the light of the Divine Presence, the holy light of G–d’s absolute Truth. This is the significance of the one jar of oil untouched by the Greeks with the seal of the Kohen Gadol intact. This represents a level of pure truth, uncompromised and unaffected by foreign values.
Any falsehood necessarily conflicts with this truth. Other religions do contain elements of truth stem from Judaism (e.g., the concept of G–d’s oneness promoted by Islam, and the concept of the Moshiach used by Christianity, since they also contain falsehoods, they are incompatible with Torah. For only Torah is the “Torah of truth”, the absolute truth, and the other religions are, well, poor imitations.
It is necessary to respect all mankind since they are created “in the image of G–d,” and to maintain peaceful relations. But it is wrong to distort the truth to make Judaism more palatable to the secular mind. Pluralism is a secular value that maintains that all beliefs are equally acceptable and legitimate. The idea is pure nonsense, for two opposite beliefs cannot both be true.
The Torah rejects this fallacious philosophy and teaches that there exists absolute truth—the Torah—and everything else, which is a mixture of truth and falsehood; there exists absolute goodness—the Torah—and everything else, which is of a mixture of good and evil.
Thus, the Torah does not teach that it is good for non-Jews to follow other religions, or no religion, doing whatever they please as long as they don’t harm (or preach to) others, those philosophies are basd upon principles at odds with the divine doctrines of the Torah.
Rather, it teaches that all mankind should recognize the One G–d of the Jewish people, and unite to follow the Noahide laws as prescribed in the Torah. This is the true message of Chanukah to the world. Accordingly, the Rebbe wants organizers of public Menorah lightnings to publicize the importance of adhering to the Noahide laws.
To set the record straight: In the time of the second Beis HaMikdash the Jewish people sought to serve the one true G–d, the path of absolute truth and goodness. The Greeks, who followed the lifestyle of hedonism and paganism, sought to prevent this. However, the Jewish people fought courageously and won. Truth triumphed over falsehood, good over evil.
So may it be for us, especially with the coming of Moshiach, who will reveal the absolute Truth of G–d to the entire world and automatically vanquish atheism, paganism, and all other non-Torah beliefs forever.
10 December 2009
The secret of a shortage
Ancient Greece had everything: the arts, the sciences, philosophers, etc. except for one thing. Something was missing and they were trying in vain to wrest from the Jewish people the secret of whatever it was they, the Greeks, were lacking.
What did the Greco-Syrian civilization want from the Jews? It was not that they wanted for the Jews to vanish, nor did they clamor to seize the Holy Land. The main objective was different: to replace the pure Jewish faith with surrogate rational thinking. That is why the Greeks did not destroy the Temple nor break oil-containing vessels. They had only defiled everything they could.
Other conquerors - the Babylonians, the Romans – went down in history as destroyers of the Jerusalem Temple but not the Greeks. They did not engage in plunder or murder. They were not even planning to interfere with the lighting of the Temple menorah (though they could have easily destroyed all the oil supplies).
Moreover, the Sages of the Talmud point out that they seemed to have had purposely moved the olive oil from the adjacent rooms and placed in the Holy chamber, where the menorah stood, and it was there that they destroyed the seals guaranteeing ritual fitness and purity of the oil.
This was as if in order to say: “here is the oil, only now in unsealed jars, but this is so trivial, just an unnecessary detail. Go ahead, light the menorah! Why tear down the Temple? Continue coming to the Temple; even keep up your Torah studies - no problems. Just don’t lay claims to holiness and uniqueness. From now on, the oil in the jars will not be holy, Torah study will be deprived of its divine foundation, and the Temple building will be useful to the community, approved by the Greek Ministry of Culture.” This is how the Greeks saw the bright future of the Jewish people.
Temptations of Hellenic culture gradually ripped the Jews away from the religion of their fathers; pagan schools, pagan festivals, and performances in honor of the Greek gods drew the weak in faith, power in the country had been seized by a clique of hard-core Hellenists who, by force or through promises, were pulling people to apostasy, their influence kept growing while the spiritual level of the Jewish people kept falling.
G-d - fearing Jews devotedly clung to the faith of their ancestors, but there were plenty of those who were more and more inclined to follow the Greek ways and paganism.
The chain of religio-moral values is inseparable. And as soon as there is a slack, problems begin to crop up at the level of physical survival.
Over his five years rule, Antiochus managed to profane everything sacred to the Jewish people, he banned Temple services, placed an idol there, and flooded Judea with blood - tens of thousands of Jews were killed and thousands grabbed and sold into slavery. And there was no other choice: either to perish or die spiritually in paganism. However, the response of the Jews to the Greeks was a lot of miracles-paradoxes.
It turned out that logic and rationality of the Greek-Syrian mentality lost the battle. The emphasis on the strong and agile body was a miserable failure. The numerical superiority of the Greek army, the presence of elephants and guns, threatening military marches and excellent ammunition resulted in a clumsy farce which ended in an inexplicable defeat. The Jews won. How and why is unclear. God showed that he loves his children, seemingly weak and militarily unskilled, devoid of body armor and helmets, but safeguarding their own spiritual, subtle, astral purity that eluded a rational explanation. Some Olympic games these turned out to be….
And so we, in our generation, greet Hanukkah not with pompous feasts but with the delicate flame of a candle. Parents decide to send their children to Jewish schools. Women decide to go to the mikvah. Men promise to participate in minyans in the synagogue. A relay of the traditional torch... a torch of Jewish tradition... continues... into eternity.
