Humbled Hearts Kindled: The First Night's Miracle

10aThe Rishonim ask: on the first night, where was the miracle, when the cruse held enough oil to burn for one day?¹ Perhaps we can answer through what the Rokeach writes: the Torah hints at Chanukah in the words “slaughter an animal and prepare,” in Parshas Mikeitz [for their letters hold the word Chanukah].² To explain this, we start with Chazal's teaching: “Vehachen, ‘and prepare,’ means nothing but Shabbos, as it says, ‘They shall prepare what they bring.’”³ The holy Zohar says: “All the blessings above and below depend on the seventh day, because from that day all six upper days are blessed.”⁴ And the holy Zohar also says: “One rite is to set the table like one who eats before the King, as it is written, ‘This is the table that is before Hashem.’”⁵ That is, the heart of preparing is that a person know that all his power to prepare comes only from the power and providence of the Creator, blessed be He. It is in the spirit of the verse “For everything is from You, and from Your hand we have given You.”⁶ Without His power and life-force we could not make a single movement.

10bDuring the six workdays a person is busy with his work, sunk in the World of Asiyah, the world of action, which is called “a world of falsehood,” and he drifts far from the truth. He imagines that his own strength and the might of his hand have won him this success,⁷ in material and in spiritual matters alike. But when the light of holy Shabbos begins to sparkle, he moves away from falsehood. As the holy Arizal said, falsehood flees on Erev Shabbos at nightfall.⁸ And the Yerushalmi says that even an unlearned man is afraid to lie, for “the awe of Shabbos is upon him.”⁹

10cThen he can see in truth, with open eyes, how bitter his state is. He sees and knows that he lacks understanding and has not grasped even its faintest edge. He looks closely at how great his darkness is and at all his ways through the workdays, and above all at the great force of the darkness just before holy Shabbos. The Mishnah speaks of “Erev Shabbos at nightfall,”¹⁰ and the holy Arizal wrote that on Erev Shabbos at nightfall the kelipah, the husk that hides holiness, grows strong, with the harsh judgments and the accusers. When he sees all this, through his great humility and broken heart he comes to feel the sweetness and radiance of Shabbos's precious holiness. This is the hidden sense of “erev Shabbos im chashechah.” The words mean “Erev Shabbos at nightfall,” but here im chashechah is read “with the darkness,” and erev (ערב) as arevus (עריבות), sweetness: with the darkness before holy Shabbos, a person comes to taste the sweetness of Shabbos's holiness. Holy Shabbos is the inner center of the six workdays, like the soul that gives life to the body. It is the source and root of the workdays, and the workdays are its branches, as in the words of the holy Zohar we cited: “From that day all six days are blessed.”

11aThe accursed Greeks darkened the eyes of Israel, as Chazal say of the kingdom of Greece, which told them, “Write on the horn of the ox that you have no portion in the God of Israel.”¹¹ This rests on another teaching of Chazal: “There are three partners in a person: the Holy One, blessed be He, his father and his mother.”¹² The soul is the Holy One's share. So is every power of life in a person, sight, hearing, knowledge, understanding and intellect, breath, speech, touch and walking: all of it is power and life from Hashem's portion, which He breathed into him. All a person's work, too, is nothing and emptiness in itself, like a body, a form without a soul; all the power in his work comes from Hashem's portion. He is the One Who puts soul and life into a person's work, and through the living breath of the soul that comes from Hashem, the thing comes alive. As the holy Torah says, “But you who cleave to Hashem your God …”:¹³ when you cleave to Hashem your God, in Whom is the life of all, the true Source of life, then “you are all alive today.” And as the paytan, the liturgical poet, says in the prayers of Yom Kippur night, “And they shall live from the Source that is with You.”

11bBut the accursed Greeks, with their impure wisdom, darkened the eyes of Israel and put into their hearts and thoughts that they had no portion in the God of Israel: that all their deeds and work came from their own strength, and not from the power and life of Hashem's portion. That is what Chazal mean: “Levi corresponds to Greece: this is the third tribe, and that is the third kingdom.”¹⁴ Levi speaks of joining, as in “This time my husband will be joined (yilaveh) to me.”¹⁵ And Greece stands “one opposite the other”:¹⁶ the Greeks wanted to tear Israel away from its bond with the Creator, blessed be He, and from deveikus, cleaving to Him, by telling them, as we saw, that they had no portion in the God of Israel.

12aMatisyahu the Kohen lit the Menorah, which stands for the Menorah on high, in holiness and purity and with mesirus nefesh, the readiness to give his life. By the power of his holiness he lit up the hearts of Bnei Yisrael and kindled the sparks of the souls of Israel, which are likened to a lamp. As the verse says, “The soul of man is the lamp of Hashem,”¹⁷ and as the holy sefarim write, nefesh (נפש), soul, is formed from the first letters of ner (נר), lamp, pesilah (פתילה), wick, and shemanim (שמנים), oils. The brightness of that great light opened their eyes to see their bitter state, and they became humble and lowly. Out of that true humility, “the people who walk in darkness have seen a great light,”¹⁸ for “there is a light that is bright in the skies”:¹⁹ He Who fills all worlds, the Cause of all causes, Who brings all being into being. Without the flow of His power and life we could not make a single movement. All power and life come only from Hashem's portion, which He breathed into them, and He is the true Giver of life. From this knowledge they took on themselves the yoke of the kingship of Heaven with love and did teshuvah out of love, and afterward they were worthy of Hashem's salvation.

12bThis is the verse “Let not the downtrodden (dach) turn back ashamed”:²⁰ dach (דך) has the letters of kaf-dalet (כ״ד), twenty-four. Through their humility and broken hearts on the twenty-fourth of Kislev, they were worthy of having the separating screen removed from them. Sparks and flashes of fire, “a flame of Yah,”²¹ blazed up within them, and the burning broke out into flame, like a coal with sparks of fire in it, which bursts into flame when one blows on it. They did teshuvah out of love and came to fulfill “let the poor and needy praise Your Name”²² with the lighting of the Menorah on the twenty-fifth of Kislev.

12cFrom that first day the light goes out over the other seven days, as the holy Zohar says: “The first day is the day that goes with all the days.” And the Kozhnitzer Maggid, R' Yisrael, wrote on “they are eight days”²³ that the first day holds all the seven days within it, like “the mother of the children, joyful.”²⁴ This day bestowed its flow on its branches, the seven days. This answers the Rishonim's question: the chief miracle was on the first night itself, for on the twenty-fourth of Kislev they had reached great and true humility. In their humbled hearts the Kohen's lighting could stir their hearts as well and kindle their souls for the service of Hashem. That is why Chazal set the heart of the miracle on the lights. This was their chief joy and salvation: the lighting of the Menorah kindled the flame of Hashem in their own hearts too. They saw the “light that is bright in the skies,” and saw that all their life comes only from the power of the Divine portion within them, and that He is the Giver of life.

13aThis is the hint in the Rokeach: in “vetavoach tevach vehachen,” “slaughter an animal and prepare,” the ches (ח) of tevach (טבח) together with the letters of vehachen (והכן) spell Chanukah (חנוכה). It speaks of their great humility and broken hearts, in the spirit of “The offerings (zivchei) of God are a broken spirit,”²⁵ and of their great trust in their time of trouble that “Hashem's kindnesses have not ended,”²⁶ and that there is still balm and healing for the sickness of their souls, for “Hashem is close to the brokenhearted.”²⁷ By accepting the yoke of the kingship of Heaven anew, they become vessels made ready to receive the holiness on high from the bright lights. As the holy Rebbe of Mezhibuzh writes in his sefer Ohev Yisrael,²⁸ Chanukah comes from chinuch, dedicating something anew. So it was with the dedication of the Kohanim's garments for their service, as the verse says of the garments, “to inaugurate them in them,” to serve as Kohanim.²⁹

13bThis humility was a guard, so that the outside forces, the powers opposed to holiness, could not take hold of the lights, and it cut away all the thorns and briars that surround the rose on high.³⁰ This too is “slaughter an animal and prepare,” as the holy Rebbe of Belz, zt"l, zy"a,³¹ explained a passage in the Beis Yosef.³² The Beis Yosef found it written in the sefer Chayei Olam that sharpening the knife on Erev Shabbos is learned from the verse “They shall prepare what (es) they bring,” reading es (את), “what,” as the iron blade of “plowshares (itim, אתים) and pruning hooks.”³³ That is, the preparation of sharpening the knife is to cut off the outside forces so that they cannot take hold of holiness, and to cut away everything harmful. In the same way, through their great humility on the twenty-fourth of Kislev, hinted at in “Let not the downtrodden (dach) turn back,” they came to cut away everything harmful and to see a great light, as it says, “The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light.”³⁴

14This is what the holy Arizal set into the zemer for Friday night: “Great joy will come, and upon one, two.”³⁵ When the first night of Chanukah falls on Shabbos, there are two holinesses, and the joy is doubled: this is “upon one, two.” As is well known, holy Shabbos bestows its flow on the workdays that follow it. And the first day of Chanukah too is a giver, as we said: it is “the mother of the children,” for this day bestows its flow on its branches. And we ask, “Light will reach her, and abundant blessings”: may we be worthy to draw down ever more of the flow of blessing to the lights and to the days that come upon us, for good. Amen.