Poor Wicks and Oils: Light While the Spark Lives

141Rav permits lighting on Chanukah, on a weekday or on Shabbos, with the wicks and oils that Chazal ruled out for Shabbos, and R' Yirmiyah gives his reason: if the light goes out one need not attend to it, and one may not make use of its light. But Rav's reason needs explaining. Were the mitzvos not given as a yoke on our necks?¹ On the contrary, we should say that if it goes out one must attend to it, and that one should go out of his way to find fine oil! The commentators write that Rav is speaking of one who has no other oil.

142Perhaps we may explain it through what we said earlier on Chazal's words, “It is a mitzvah to place it at the entrance of one's house, on the outside”:² the light of Chanukah is for those who still stand outside and do not yet grasp holiness. But sparks of awakening stir within such a person, all the more when he sees the whole of Klal Yisrael lighting while he stands outside. “His soul mourns within him,”³ his heart is faint, and he asks, “Why should we be left out?”⁴ Chazal tell him to light, for “the kindling makes the mitzvah,”⁵ as we explained when we saw that the doing of the mitzvah is itself the preparation. That is, let him light in the midst of his darkness, and kindle himself into a flame in doing the mitzvos. Let him not think at all about what was and what will be, or ask, “How can I dare, how can I be so brazen, as to enter the King's gates in sackcloth?”⁶ He should simply light. This answers the question about Rav: how can we tell such a simple, lowly man, “Go and first prepare yourself with the great preparation, properly and fittingly, with fine oil and fine wicks”? Perhaps in the meantime the spark will be spent and go out. “One who watches the wind will not sow,”⁷ for how far does the awakening of such a man reach?

143So too the hint that has been given on bikkurim, the first fruits, through Chazal's words: “A man goes down into his field and sees a cluster that has ripened first, a fig that has ripened first. He ties a reed around it as a sign and says, ‘These are bikkurim,’” and he goes to Yerushalayim and stands in the middle of the Azarah, the courtyard of the Beis HaMikdash, and so on.⁸ This world is called a “field,” in the spirit of the verse “I passed by the field of a lazy man.”⁹ A man who has gone down and is sunk in earthliness may see “a cluster that has ripened first, figs that have ripened first”: he sees the Creator's hashgachah pratis, His watchful care over each individual, and sparks and embers of the fire of the love of Hashem stir within him. He takes to heart the greatness of Hashem and, against it, how deeply sunk his own state is. If he wants this thought to stay sealed in the treasuries of his heart, Chazal tell him, “He ties a reed around it as a sign,” and afterward he goes to Yerushalayim. For how far does the awakening of a man who has gone down into his field reach?

144To understand it, we begin with what the Ramban writes on the verse “Why should you awaken, why should you stir up the love, until it please?”¹⁰ When some awakening of awe and love for the Creator comes to a person, he must at once, right away, see to making it a vessel; that is, he should do some mitzvah at once. This is the meaning of the verse “Why should you awaken, why should you stir up the love, until it please (shetechpatz, שתחפץ)?”: chefetz, from the same root, also means a vessel. An awakening that comes to a person needs a vessel at once, right away. That is what Chazal meant by “one may light with them,” with the wicks and oils ruled out for Shabbos: let him include himself in Klal Yisrael, for one kind joined to its own kind is strengthened, and the burning goes up into a flame. For even if some drop of unfit oil is found among much fit oil, it does not spoil or blemish the oil.

145This is what Rashi writes on the words “and one may not make use of its light”: “so that it is recognizable that it is a mitzvah lamp.”¹¹ That is, even if he keeps the mitzvah now just as it is [with poor oil and wicks], still, as the days go by, he will remember and feel that he kept the mitzvah of lighting the Chanukah lamp.