Hashem's Name Joined to Us: The Lights' Joy

29aThe word Chazal use for establishing these festive days of Hallel and thanksgiving, keva'um, “they established them,” is the same “established” that Sefer Yetzirah says of the letters of speech, “He established them (keva'an) in the mouth,” as the Shelah explains those words.¹ This is the chain of which the Yerushalmi speaks in Ta'anis. On the Mishnah [“For the third blessing he says: He Who answered Yehoshua at Gilgal, He will answer you and hear the voice of your outcry this day. Blessed are You, Hashem, Who hears the trumpet blast (teru'ah)”], the Yerushalmi says: “Reish Lakish said in the name of R' Yannai: The Holy One, blessed be He, joined His great Name to Israel. It is like a king who had the key to a small palace. The king said, ‘If I leave it as it is, it will be lost. Rather, I will make a chain for it, so that if it is lost, the chain will show whose it is.’ So He said, ‘If I leave Israel as they are, they will be swallowed up among the nations. Rather, I will join My great Name to them, and they will live.’ What is the source? ‘The Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear, and they will surround us and cut off our name from the earth. And what will You do for Your great Name?’ Your Name, which is joined to us. At once, ‘Hashem said to Yehoshua: Kum lach, get up’: kam lach, what you mentioned [My Name] has stood up for you.” So far the words of the Yerushalmi.²

29bThat is, those who established these days understood that every Jew is joined by a chain to the Source of life, and that with his mouth and his speech he moves all the worlds. Through this they came to know before Whom they pray, as the saying goes that a Kohen must know for Whose sake he serves. Through this they turned the days to good. This is “and they made them yamim tovim,” good days, “with Hallel and thanksgiving”: through their own Hallel and thanksgiving they made and raised up the days, so that they would be good days for Hallel and thanksgiving.

30aPerhaps this is why they fixed the main remembrance of the miracle on the lights. Their main plea had been “And what will You do for Your great Name,” the Name joined to us: the portion of Yaakov within us,³ which comes from the One Who breathed it in, for “one who blows, blows from within himself” [so the soul is a part of Hashem Himself].⁴ So when the salvation came, their main joy, too, was in the salvation of His Name, blessed be He, as in “All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.”⁵ It was not mainly in the victory in the war, for that was also a good for their bodies and their bodily life. Not so the lights, which are, as the Gemara says, “testimony that the Shechinah rests in Israel”:⁶ that is, the Shechinah rests in every single Jew. It is in the spirit of “He forsook the Mishkan of Shiloh, the tent where He dwelt ba'adam”:⁷ ba'adam means “among men,” but here it is read as “within man.” And the Gemara there explains the testimony: “This is the western lamp.” Ma'aravi, “western,” is read here as me'urav, “mingled”: it is the soul, which is mingled in every part of the body. All beginnings come from it, and with it, as with the western lamp that closed the lighting, everything is completed, to the end of all things and the end of all the generations, until the days of Moshiach.

30bSo it seems, too, from Midrash Chazis, the Midrash on Shir HaShirim, which Rabbeinu Yonah brings: “‘This is the day Hashem has made; let us exult and rejoice bo, in it.’ We do not know in what to rejoice, whether in the day or in the Holy One, blessed be He.”⁸ That is, one does not know on what to set the main joy and the name of the miracle. The answer must be: in Hashem, as the verse says, “We will exult and rejoice in You,” in You precisely, in Your salvation. This is the heart of prayer, as the Pesikta explains: “Why were the early generations answered when they prayed? Because they prayed with the Name.” And this is why the days were established for thanksgiving and praise. It is also the meaning of “Whoever prays for his fellow while he needs the same thing himself is answered first”⁹ [for whoever prays for the salvation of Hashem's Name is praying for his own as well]. As the verse says, “He remembered His kindness and His faithfulness to the House of Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.”¹⁰