Light for Great and Small: Faith in Providence

148Chazal set the time of the Chanukah lamp from sunset until the foot ceases from the marketplace, which Rabbah bar bar Chanah, in the name of R' Yochanan, measured as until the feet of the Tarmodians [a people who sold kindling in the market after dark] are gone.¹ We may explain their words this way. The Chanukah lights belong equally to every living soul: they light up the eyes of Israel, from the greatest down to the small and lowly. Take the great, whose thoughts cleave to Hashem all day long, of whom it is said, “And the wise shall shine like the radiance of the firmament.”² The light of their holiness shines like the light of the sun. Even so, at times they come down from their level, and the light of their sun, their bright light, sets. Then the holiness of the Chanukah lights lights up their eyes and makes the light of their souls shine. This is “Its mitzvah is from sunset”: from those people of great worth, whose sun has set, “until the foot ceases from the marketplace,” down to the lowly who stand in the market. Then “the people who walk in darkness,” until now, “have seen light.”³ And all this comes through the light of faith in Hashem. The point is in the verse “The wise man's eyes are in his head,”⁴ together with the well-known words of the Ramban in his sefer [Emunah U'Bitachon]: “Wisdom and faith go forth from one place.” Faith sets wisdom right, and so “his eyes are in his head.”

149The Gemara also reads the phrase another way: “Or else, for its shiur, its measure.” This is in the spirit of the holy Zohar on “Her husband is known in the gates (she'arim)”: “each one according to what he measures (meshaer) in his heart.”⁵ If a person weighs himself and belittles himself in the truth of his heart, measuring in his heart and yearning in his innermost being to know ad kamah, the Gemara's “until when,” here how far the lowness of his worth reaches, so that he truly knows nothing at all, he comes to faith. For truth and faith are one, as the holy Zohar says: “He is truth and She is faith,” as male and female.⁶ Then he believes in Hashem and in His providence: that He gives being to all that exists and causes every cause, and that He did, does and will do every deed by hashgachah pratis, His watchful care over each individual, above nature and above human understanding. This is not the impure wisdom of the Greeks. He knows the truth: everything is from Hashem, and “even a little bird is not caught without Heaven.”⁷ For the seed of Israel, His treasured people, the attribute of mercy is nature itself.⁸ R' Elimelech of Lizhensk, zt"l, said on the verse “And Bnei Yisrael walked on dry land in the midst of the sea”⁹ that even when Bnei Yisrael walk on dry land, it is for them the same miracle as when they walked in the midst of the sea. For “in every generation they rise against us to destroy us.”¹⁰

150aThe Creator, blessed be He, in His great majesty and kindness, watches over every creature by hashgachah pratis, in its situation and in its place. He created man to suit the nature of that place and time, so that people can live on the face of the earth. This explains Chazal's saying. A man asked Hillel, “Why are the eyes of the Tarmodians terutos, soft?” Hillel answered him, “Because they live among the sands.”¹¹ Rashi explains that their eyes are dim because of the sand that blows into them. The holy Kozhnitzer Maggid explained: presumably, since we see that their eyes are too dim to see, the inner meaning hints that they come from low worlds, whose eyes are plastered over and cannot gaze at holiness.¹² And “because they live among the sands” means they are in the world called reshus harabim, the public domain, and turei deperuda, “the mountains of separation,” the realm where things stand scattered and apart. That realm is called chol, “profane,” the same word as chol, sand. For sand has no cohesion and does not gather together; each grain keeps coming apart from its fellow.

150bAlong the lines of our words, we may say that Rashi's second explanation fits with the first one, as the holy Maggid read it. On “because they live among the sands,” Rashi explains there that the place changed them, so that the slit of their eyes would not be long like ours and let the sand in.¹³ Here is how the two fit. The Tarmodians come from low worlds, whose eyes are plastered over from seeing holiness, as the holy Maggid said. Because of this they lacked faith, denied Hashem's providence, and said that everything is chance and nature. They imagined that even the change in their own make-up, their terutos eyes, came by way of nature: the land grows people with such eyes. But the faithful seed of Israel believe in Hashem and in His providence: He watches over each and every creature by hashgachah pratis.

150cHashem “devises many plans so that no one banished should stay banished from Him.”¹⁴ He looks ahead to where each creature will live and creates for it the tools that suit that place. Had the slit of the Tarmodians' eyes been long like ours, the sand would have entered it and dimmed their sight. So the Creator, blessed be He, in His hashgachah pratis, had the Tarmodians created with terutos, round eyes, without a long slit like ours, so that the wind would not blow the sand into them, and they could live on the face of the earth with open eyes. In the same way, those who live in Africa have wide feet, as Rashi writes.¹⁵ And the cause of the Tarmodians' lack of faith is that “they live among the sands”: each one is a creature unto himself, with no bond to the community of Israel. This is the hint in sand, which has no cohesion and does not gather together, and each grain comes apart from its fellow. [See below, the second maamar.]¹⁶

151This is the meaning of “until the rigla of the Tarmodians are gone.” Rigla (ריגלא) means feet, but here it is read as regilus (רגילות), habit, from the same root: until their habit is gone. The Chanukah lights light up the Tarmodians' eyes, “and every creature will see that You made it”:¹⁷ everything is from Hashem, and nothing comes by chance, Heaven forbid. And this is “until the regel, the foot, ceases from the marketplace”: regilus, the habit of the merchants who stand in the market. They think their own strength and the might of their hand made them this wealth;¹⁸ they too will know the truth, that everything is from Hashem and comes by His power. As it says in Parshas Eikev, “You shall remember that it is He Who gives you strength to make wealth,” which the Targum renders, “He gives you counsel to acquire possessions.”¹⁹ They are not like the fools who imagined that their own cleverness, their skill at good business, made their trade succeed. This is also “they defiled all the oils”:²⁰ the Greeks darkened the eyes and the thoughts of Israel with their wisdom and the accursed philosophy we have described. Afterward, “when the kingdom of the house of the Chashmona'im grew strong,” not by the way of nature, they came to faith in Hashem, “and defeated them.”

152a“Defeated them” means that through this faith they won free choice; until then they had been handed over into the hands of the Greeks. My holy father and teacher, zt"l,²¹ said on “When you go out to war against your enemies, and Hashem your God gives him into your hand”:²² It is like the verse “God made man yashar, upright.”²³ Yashar is the middle line, with no leaning and no tipping toward either extreme. Then a person has the power of choice, to choose life and good. But when a person strays from the path of reason and is caught in the net laid at the feet of the yetzer hara, he is held captive in its hand. Choice no longer applies to him, since he has already veered from the middle line. It is like a man standing at a crossroads: he can choose, turn and go down whichever road he wants, right or left. But if he has lost his way and wants to choose his road, right or left, he must first go back to the crossroads, and there choose his way.

152bThis is “and Hashem your God gives him into your hand”: into your reshus, your domain, as in “and he took all his land from his hand.”²⁴ Through the war of Torah a person is privileged to have the yetzer hara given into his reshus. That is, you will not be under its domain; choice will be free in your hand, and you can return to walk in life as before the sin you sinned. And this is what Rashi says [there]: “Scripture speaks of a milchemes hareshus,” a war of choice.²⁵ It is a war to go free of the yetzer hara: to leave its reshus and be in one's own reshus, with free choice to choose the good and upright path.

153And this is “and defeated them”: through their strong faith in the Oneness of Hashem they were privileged to defeat the Greeks, who were handed over into their hands and their reshus. The Holy One, blessed be He, lit up their eyes out of the Greeks' darkness. This fits what is written in Sefer HaChaim on the words of the Shulchan Aruch, “The many feasts held on Chanukah are feasts of reshus,” that is, optional:²⁶ through the Chanukah feasts a person comes into his own reshus, his own domain, and to free choice, as with Rashi's “war of choice.” “And they found only one cruse of oil”:²⁷ the knowledge of the Oneness of Hashem was awakened in them anew. They knew that He is the One and Only, Who causes every cause and gives being to all that exists, and that “everything is from You, and from Your hand we have given You.”²⁸

154The gist of our words is a lesson for life. The Creator, in His abundant kindness, for He is “abundant in kindness,”²⁹ looks ahead to the end of all the generations, to every Jew in all his distress and straits, in every olam, shanah, nefesh, world, year and soul:³⁰ that is, at whatever time and in whatever place it may be. For the Holy One, blessed be He, does not come with impossible demands on His creatures.³¹ He creates for each person the tools that suit that place, so that he will not be held back and kept from his deeds, and so that he can save his soul from this world, from the raging sea. As Chazal said, “A person should always make himself a kabarnit,” a ship's captain:³² he should work out how he can do the mitzvah, and so cleave to the Source of life.