Chanukah celebrates the victory of the
Macabees. These were the pious Kohanim who cherished Torah and
fought so selflessly for its cause, and in this merit they received
a miraculous victory. In the Tefilla of Al Hanisim which we add in
the Shemonah Esrei and Bircas Hamazon throughout Chanukah, we
highlight their mesiras nefesh, their sense of personal sacrifice
and devotion as we thank HaShem for delivering “the strong into the
hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few”.
Many have asked about the following
lines of that prayer, “the impure into the hands of the pure, the
wicked into the hands of the righteous and the wanton into the hands
of the diligent students of Your Torah”. Why are these descriptions
an example of a miraculous rescue? Are the pure and the righteous
always at a disadvantage against the impure and the wicked? Is that
disadvantage so stark that any victory they score must be viewed as
supernatural?
Rav Eliyahu Shlesinger in his sefer
“Mitzvas Ner Ish U’Baiso” answers this question with specific
detail. The gist of what he says is that the pure, righteous, and
diligent students of the Torah are at a disadvantage against their
brazen and wicked counterparts because of their very spirituality
and morality. Their decency and refinement, their lives of kindness
and compassion, do not make for good fighting men. The Macabees were
out manned, out muscled, and “out savaged,” and still they
prevailed. From where does such strength, the very strength
necessary to even take on the fight, come?
It comes from faith in HaShem. Their
faith no doubt drew upon so many role models of the past. Certainly
among them was Yakov Aveinu.
We read this morning in Sedra Vayaishev
that ‘Yakov settled in the land of his father’s sojourning’. A well
known Medrash states that Yakov sought to dwell in tranquility, but
it was not to be. The anguish of Yosef’s ordeal was about to pounce
upon him. Yakov has experienced so much suffering to this point. He
has struggled with Esav and Lavan and all of their treachery. He has
borne the pain of the loss of his mother and of his beloved Rachel,
the anchor of his home, and endured the entire episode of Shechem
including the kidnapping and violation of his only daughter Dinah.
And after all of this, he remains the ish tam, the whole person who
is ‘whole’ with HaShem. Why must Yakov have more travail?
Yakov is the last of the Avos. As such,
he is the father of the entire Jewish nation until the end of time.
There will be generations that will not have his perfect faith and
they will have their struggles. These offspring need a picture of
victory over all types of adversity that they can hearken back to,
study from, and be inspired by. Yakov needed to endure struggle
after struggle, in all forms, so that his offspring could have the
benefit of his paved path of spiritual victory amidst the worst of
life’s setbacks.
Rabbi Eliyahu Kitov explains this
concept further. The tranquility of the righteous is good for them
but not good for the world. This is because they have such clarity
as to what is good and worthwhile in life. In a peaceful existence,
far from distress, they will only involve themselves in that which
is pure, and turn away from anything that may contain even the trace
of sin. Thus, they will not need to toil in the grey areas of life,
for they will be occupied solely in the sublime, in a serene and
peaceful life. This can leave their children, and their generations
to come at risk. If they lack their ancestors piety, they may focus
superficially only on the serenity of the life that was lived by
their sainted father, and not on the deeds done in that life. This
can lead to lives lived solely for the sake of this world, lives
driven by a constant desire for comfort and stability that can be
most easily realized physically and materially. When the tzadik has
struggles, when he must prevail in this world against a dark stage
that conceals the master plan of HaShem’s love and His purpose for
testing him in this particular manner and at this particular time,
and when he does indeed prevail and remain true to his soul with
abiding faith, he leaves a legacy to his offspring. They must, as
their father did, dedicate all of their days to searching out the
elusive truth from the life they have been dealt, casting off the
bad and embracing the good.
Over a millennia and a half have passed
from the time of Yakov until the rise of the Chashmonaim. And
certainly, the chasmonaim were living in a time of terrible trials.
To bear witness to such overt attacks upon our Torah by the outside
world was horrific enough, but to add to that the inordinate amount
of misery that was suffered at the hands of our very own people, the
Hellenists, must have been crushing. Yet, they were not crushed.
They summoned the strength to fight the fight that logically could
not be won. There can be no doubt that Yakov’s model helped serve to
inspire these great men.
Another important dimension to the
courage demonstrated by the Macabees was their willingness to wage a
conflict that would be long, tiring, and costly, the way guerrilla
warfare must be fought. For this also they could look to Yakov for
inspiration.
Rashi, in the beginning of the Sedra of
Toldos, states that Esav got his name from all of the people who saw
him at birth. The name Esav implies “ready made.” Esav was ‘ready
made,’ developed with the hair of an older child from the moment he
entered this world.
Why was Esav born this way? The Yalkut
Yehudah answers with a powerful teaching. The way he was born was
symbolic of the way he would develop in this world; he would be an
instant success. He would immediately establish a power base, and
with his establishment of a family, he would lay claim to an
ancestral homeland. Not so at all for his twin brother Yakov. He
needs time to even develop the physical signs of manhood. As for
political and national autonomy, that will wait hundreds of years,
only to come after Diaspora, bondage, revelation, wandering and
military conquest. Why the difference? That which is important and
enduring takes time to develop. Esav is an instant success and his
nation comes into being almost overnight because he is a ‘flash in
the pan’ – he will not make such a mark on the world. Yakov will
toil in an endeavor that will take much time – but that is its very
sign of lasting purpose.
The Macabim could look to Yakov and know
that though their battle would be long and hard, that would be the
very sign that it would be a watershed event in the world, long
remembered after the Greeks would be gone and forgotten.
Toward the end of the davening on most
weekday mornings, we say Chapter 20 from Tehilim, “Lam’na’tzai’ach
mizmor l’Dovid, “For the conductor, a Song of David.” In this
chapter, we say “yan’cha HaShem b'yom tzara, ye’sa’gevcha shem
elokai Ya’akov,” “May HaShem answer you on a day of distress; may
the Name of the G-d of Jacob strengthen you.”
The Aruch HaShulchan (132:3) elaborates
upon our inclusion of this chapter. Yakov had much distress in
raising his family and so much misery from Esav and Lavan, and
HaShem delivered him from all of these calamities. So too it was for
Matisyahu and his noble and heroic family. So too, we pray, shall it
be for us.
Shabbat Shalom!
