Fire in the Ashes: The First Night's Three Blessings

71The sefer Mateh Moshe writes that one who lights on the first night of Chanukah says three blessings: “to kindle the Chanukah lamp,” “Who performed miracles” and Shehecheyanu, “Who has kept us alive.” Its sign for them is the verse “Make yourself a saraf, a fiery serpent, and set it upon a nes, a pole, and whoever is bitten shall look at it and live.” Saraf, a burning one, stands for the kindling; nes, which also means “miracle,” for the miracles; and vachai, “and live,” for Shehecheyanu.

72To explain this, we may draw on a Mishnah in Rosh Hashanah [that goes on to speak of this very serpent]. On the verse “And it was, when Moshe raised his hand …,” it asks: “Do Moshe's hands make war or break war? Rather, it is to tell you: as long as Israel looked upward …, they were victorious.”¹ My holy father and teacher, zt"l,² explained: as long as they knew, and saw with an open eye, the eye of the mind, that all their movements and strength, the five senses of man, and wisdom, understanding and intellect, all come from Hashem and from His power, in the spirit of the verse “For everything is from You, and from Your hand we have given You,”³ they prevailed over everything. That is “as long as they looked upward.” This is also the meaning of “I have set Hashem before me always”:⁴ to know that all the life in a person is power and vitality from Hashem's own portion, which He breathed into him. When the time comes for him to leave the world, Hashem takes back His portion, and he is left lying like a lifeless lump. When a person takes this to heart, he cannot forget Hashem for a single moment. Those are his holy words.

73aPerhaps we may also explain the Mishnah through the words of the Rambam: “When a person contemplates His great and wondrous deeds and creatures, and sees from them His wisdom, which has no measure …, and when he thinks about these very things, at once he recoils, is afraid and trembles, and knows that he is a small, lowly, dark creature, standing with slight and meager knowledge before the One perfect in knowledge. As Dovid HaMelech said, ‘When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers … what is man that You should remember him?’”⁵ The Rambam implies that a person should first contemplate Hashem's greatness, and only afterward see his own lowliness.

73bPut simply, when a person reflects on his own ways, even if he is privileged to serve in holiness day and night, he must know that all his worthy deeds and good thoughts come not from his own strength and might but only from the Creator's power and help. As Chazal said in the Midrash, R' Binyamin said: “All are presumed blind until the Holy One, blessed be He, gives light to their eyes.”⁶ He must also know Chazal's saying, “If you have learned much Torah, do not claim credit for yourself, for that is what you were created for.”⁷ What does Hashem gain from his mitzvos and good deeds? As the verse says, “If you are righteous, what do you give Him?”⁸ And does a person have any claim on his Creator?⁹

73cThe same holds the other way round. When a person reflects on his bitter, lowly state, that “from the sole of the foot to the head there is no soundness in him,”¹⁰ he must still not say to himself, “There is no hope. How can I dare again to enter the King's gate in sackcloth,¹¹ and speak before the King on high?” Humility is a very good trait, but its purpose is that through it a person should then rise to greatness in serving the Creator. That is, he should contemplate Hashem's great exaltedness: so great is He that it is in His power to have mercy on this man too, and to bring his soul out of prison.¹² For who can grasp the essence of the One Who has no limit? Even those who know Him have no knowledge of Him. In His great mercy and kindness He seeks a way up even for people sunk in the depth of the end, “so that no one banished should stay banished from Him,”¹³ as the verse says, “There is hope for your future.”¹⁴ This is the true purpose of humility. As the verse says, “For Hashem is exalted, veshafal yir'eh.”¹⁵ The words mean that He sees the lowly, but here they are read that the lowly one sees Hashem's exaltedness, and from this his heart catches fire for His service.

73dAs R' Moshe of Kozhnitz, zt"l,¹⁶ said on Rashi's words “Kasis lamaor, crushed for the light, and not crushed for the menachos,” the meal offerings:¹⁷ though I have charged you to be crushed, it is only “for the light,” so that through your humility you will shine and catch fire in the service of the Creator, and set your deeds right. “And not crushed for the menachos”: menachos (מנחות) is read here as from munach (מונח), lying still. Your humility should not lie idle in you, so that you give up on yourself and your heart does not dare to approach the holy, for that is sadness, not humility. This is what Chazal meant by “when they looked upward.” Even in their lowliness they looked upward, to Hashem's exaltedness, which is beyond measure, and they did not tell themselves there was no hope. They added strength and courage besides, for they trusted in Hashem and His salvation, and so they prevailed.

74aThis is what Chazal say in Bereishis Rabbah of Avraham, and at length of Yaakov: “‘I lift my eyes to the mountains; from where will my help come?’ [Yaakov said:] Eliezer, Avraham's servant, had ten camels, and I have not a single nose ring … He turned again and said: Shall I give up my hope in my Creator? Heaven forbid, I will not give up my hope in my Creator; rather, ‘My help is from Hashem, Maker of heaven and earth.’”¹⁸ The Os Emes strikes out the word chazar, “he turned again,”¹⁹ but perhaps the reading is right as it stands, and there is no need to strike it.

74bFor Yaakov Avinu looked squarely at his lowly state: Yaakov is small and poor, and he sees that he has neither nose ring nor bracelet. Even so, he said that he had no claim or complaint against the Creator, for what claim does a person have on his Creator? Then he “turned again” and said, “From where will my help come?” Though I see my low and poor state, I see as well the exaltedness of Hashem, Who is beyond the grasp of any created mind. “My help is from Hashem”: I trust in His great exaltedness, that He will have mercy on me from the Source of great mercy, where no thought can grasp Him at all,²⁰ in the spirit of “For My sake, for My sake I will act.”²¹ For “I, Hashem, search the heart and test the inner thoughts.”²²

75We know the holy, Godly words of the great Maggid, R' Ber, zt"l:²³ “Fire is sought in ashes” [in Yiddish, “Where does one find fire? In ash”]. That is, as has been said on Rashi's words in Vayeishev, “One spark goes out from your bellows and burns it all.”²⁴ A spark of the One God, of the power of “Hashem your God is a consuming fire,”²⁵ is within you, and it “goes out from your bellows,” in the spirit of the words “One who blows, blows from within himself”²⁶ [for the soul Hashem breathed into man comes from within Him]. This power lies within the treasured people. When they blow on their share of this spark, that one spark drives away much darkness and burns all the screens that separate and divide a Jew from our Father in Heaven, and his soul wakes from the sleep of folly. Through his humility and his bittul, setting himself aside, before Klal Yisrael, he is privileged to awaken the Divine spark within him. When he rouses himself and stirs this spark, it grows into a fire and burns everything, all the screens. For his help comes me'ayin (מאין), “from where,” read as from ayin, nothingness: through the trait of being nothing, help comes to awaken the Divine spark within him. This explains the holy words of the Maggid. By making himself like dust to all, in the spirit of “I am dust and ashes,”²⁷ a person is privileged to awaken the sparks within him, the embers and “flashes of fire, a flame of God,”²⁸ which are his innermost point.

76aThis is the hint in “Make yourself a saraf” for the blessing “to kindle the Chanukah lamp.” As is known, there are three unifications on Chanukah, unions of holy Names whose sum is ner (נר), “lamp”: the Four-Letter Name joined with Ekyeh, with Elokim and with Adnus.²⁹ This is “to kindle the ner of Chanukah”: with it a person kindles the hearts and souls of Israel, for “the soul of man is the lamp of Hashem,”³⁰ and the Divine spark catches fire. That is what “Make yourself a saraf,” a burning one, hints at: this spark burns all the screens that separate and divide a Jew from our Father in Heaven. The tried counsel for finding the fire is to look in the ashes, in the trait of “dust and ashes,” as we saw with the Maggid's “Fire is sought in ashes.” Through it a person will see Hashem's exaltedness, as in “For Hashem is exalted, and the lowly will see.”³¹

76bAnd this is “and set it upon a nes.” Nes is the same word as in “Raise up a nes, a banner”:³² know Hashem's exaltedness, which is above even the exaltedness of the middos, His attributes, and above any created mind; for this is the essence of true humility. All this comes from Hashem's kindnesses, from a very high and exalted place. The blessing “Who performed nissim, miracles” hints at this as well.³³ “Whoever is bitten shall look at it and live”: for when they look upward they prevail, as we saw in the Mishnah. As Dovid HaMelech said, “They were quenched like a fire of thorns; in the Name of Hashem I will cut them down”:³⁴ through my trust in Hashem's Name and His salvation I will cut down all the briars and thorns. And this is “shall look at it and live”: he will be privileged to be truly alive.

76cAnd this is the blessing Shehecheyanu, “Who has kept us alive … and brought us to this time”: a person sanctifies and purifies the time, so that his soul is awakened by the holiness of the time. The blessing covers all the days, and through it he will be truly alive: he will cleave with a wondrous longing to the Life of all life, and “his heart and his flesh will sing out to the living God.”³⁵ This is the “bundle on high, of the House of the life of all”:³⁶ he binds himself to the One on high, the House of the life of all, “for with You is the source of life.”³⁷ So the days and the years are given life and renewed, for Chanukah comes from chinuch, dedication: it dedicates and renews.