Chanukah as Chanu Koh: Grace Comes to the Humble

55aThe name Chanukah (חנוכה) is formed from chanu (חנו) and koh (כה), two holy Names, as the holy Arizal writes in his Siddur. To understand it, we begin with Rashi's words in Parshas Va'eschanan: “Although tzaddikim could rely on their good deeds, they ask only for a free gift.”¹ This is in the spirit of the verse “In Your light we see light.”² The closer a person comes to Hashem, and the higher and higher the level he reaches, the more it seems to him that his light has grown dark and he sees nothing at all. For the light he has is a nehora uchma, a “dark light,” beside the higher light. This is “In Your light we see light”: in Your light we see that this is not yet the great light. By contemplating this, the tzaddikim became utterly nullified, truly as nothing. And through this they were granted chen, grace, for, as the verse above says, it is to the humble that He gives grace.³

55bAnd chen is nothing other than chanun, the plea for an unearned gift: it comes to one who asks only from the treasury of free gifts. This is the meaning of “Esther found grace”:⁴ she found it through her humility. For she said, “And so I will go in to the king, which is not according to the law,”⁵ like a poor man who goes from door to door asking for a free gift. He stands at the doorway, for his face changes color again and again, and he is ashamed to lift his head. This is what she meant by “which is not according to the law”: I have no claim; I trust only in Hashem's kindness, that He will be gracious to us from the treasury of free gifts. And this is why she said uvechen, “and so” (ובכן): its numerical value is 72, the number of the Name of 72.⁶

56So too the gloss on Tosafos explains that the attribute of Chanun is to have compassion on one who cries out even without right.⁷ The Baalei HaTosafos explain the same on the verse in Parshas Mishpatim, “I will hear, for I am gracious (chanun).”⁸ In truth the lender acted against the law of the Torah when he did not return the pledge. Even so, the borrower is crying out without right: you borrowed money from him and gave him the pledge, so how can you cry out against him? Yet the Holy One, blessed be He, listens, as the verse says, “I will hear, for I am gracious.” So it is with one who does not reckon well the account of his soul and his standing, and cries out without right: even so, he is granted the attribute of Chanun.

57aThis is what we say in our prayers: “For the sake of our fathers, who trusted in You, and whom You taught the laws of life to do Your will with a whole heart, so be gracious to us and teach us.”⁹ This seems very hard to understand. How can someone as lowly as I compare himself to the holy Avos? The laws and the Torah were the very core of their life. A person's existence rests above all on bread, and if he does not eat he cannot live. In the same way, the holy Avos drew their very life from the “laws of life”: chukei, as in the verse “my allotted bread (lechem chuki),”¹⁰ the bread that gives life. And chaim, “life” (חיים), has the numerical value of chacham, “wise” (חכם), as in the verse where Wisdom says, “Come, eat of my bread”:¹¹ the wisdom of God was the core of their life. “To do Your will with a whole heart” means with both hearts, for the word is levav (לבב), with a doubled beis, not lev: Avraham Avinu made the bad into good.¹² How, then, can we be so bold and brazen as to ask, “so be gracious to us and teach us”?

57bThis answers the question. In truth, as we said, tzaddikim ask only for a free gift. And if even the Avos' request was only for a free gift, and not according to their good deeds, what difference does it make who asks? A free gift is a free gift. This is chanu koh (חנו כה), whose chanu comes from the root of chinam, a free gift, and of Chanun: because the tzaddikim knew that all this was a free gift, not due to them at all, they were granted the attribute of Chanun, as the verse says, “and to the humble He gives grace.”