Paradox: A Chanukka Dilemma (Video)
Hanukkah teaches us how to survive exile and how to accomplish the purpose of it.
Hanukkah teaches us how to survive exile and how to accomplish the purpose of it.
In ruach hakodesh, the person who’s assuming the role of boots on the ground is the initiator and decision maker. They choose a goal, mission, problem or project and pursue it with action and prayer.
Chanukka lights bring healing to the corruptions of power that surround our light and lively Chanukka observance.
The whole drama of geopolitics comes down to “who eats who?”: In the end, whose narrative is going to prevail, and absorb everyone else into its story line.
Chanukka 5781 / 2020
This holiday is called Chanukka because it is training (chinukh) and practice for the future redemption. How so?
Chanukka references toward the future, R. Luria associates them with Mashiach ben David, when “the woman of valor becomes the crown to her husband.”
The kabbalists read into Chanukka’s eight days, a journey of progressive tikun down through the sefirot from Binah to Malchut, beginning and ending on a feminine note.
Those who seize this occasion to meditate on the Chanukka lamps will be changed by it, says the Zohar.
Chanukka 2016 / 5777 The menorah symbolizes the Oral Torah—the light that we shine back to HaShem.
Chanukka 2015 / 5776 Our simple affirmation now becomes a deep teaching about the practice (and powers) of meditation.
When is the time for lighting Chanukka candles? The earliest time is sunset but one can still fulfill the mitzvah until pedestrians disappear from the street.
The deepening union between the Shekhina and HKBH occurs in a very different way on Chanukka than on any other day of the year.
Hanukkah holds the secret of how to survive exile and how to accomplish the purpose of it. And that brings us to the paradox of “isolation and integration”.
Hillel says to start with one candle and add another each day until there’s eight; Shammai says to start with eight and remove one each day until we’re left with one.
When the High Priest lit the menorah his intention was actually a prayer, that the lights now kindled should impart to the people an even deeper understanding of what it means that G-d is one.
Our world view, our sense of truth, our vision of perfection, our vision of what’s possible… all this is tainted by our long years of exile and association with foreign cultures.
There is no person or nation that does not have at least a miniscule sliver of holiness. Otherwise it could not exist.