Chanukah
Money as the Source of Holiness
Aryeh Bernstein, 5764
In years past, I have at times grumbled about the material emphasis on Hanukah. The focus on gifts and accumulation of stuff seemed awfully incongruous. On Shabbat and the rest of our holidays, we put aside all of our money and gadgets and beepers and cell phones and garden tools-all the distractions that control us throughout the week-to focus on what is really important. On Hanukah, we load each other with more money and gadgets and beepers and cell phones and garden tools, and this is considered a religious act. It felt like a wannabe imitation of the way we saw our neighbors celebrate Christmas. The materialistic Hanukah, however, is not to be dismissed as a modern corruption: in a profound way, Hanukah is about money.
The Rambam frames his Hilkhot Hanukah in the Mishneh Torah around money. When he retells the story that serves as the basis of the holiday (3:1), he mentions not only that the Greeks decreed against Jewish religion and the study of Torah and defiled the Temple, but also that the Greeks "stuck their hands into [the Jews'] money" ("פשטו ידם בממונם"). I have found no mention of the Greeks stealing our money in the gemara in Shabbat (21a) or the Al HaNissim paragraph of the liturgy, which are the Rambam's sources. At the end of the book (4:12), the Rambam makes one of the strangest comments in the whole Mishneh Torah:
| The mitzvah of the Hanukah candle is a very precious mitzvah...Even if one has nothing to eat other than from tzedaqah, one should borrow or sell one's clothing in order to buy oil or candles and light. | מצות נר חנוכה מצוה חביבה היא עד מאד...אפילו אין לו מה יאכל אלא מן הצדקה שואל או מוכר כסותו ולוקח שמן ונרות ומדליק: |
At almost all costs, we must purchase the materials for ner Hanukah. We don't find such a comment about any other mitzvah object in the Mishneh Torah.
It is important to recall that this expenditure of money for the Hanukah candle is not at all functional. Nightly, after we light, we say the "HaNerot Halalu" paragraph in which we affirm that "for all eight days of Hanukah, these candles are sacred and we have no permission to make use of them, but only to look at them". ("וְכָל שְׁמוֹנַת. יְמֵי חֲנֻכָּה הַנֵּרוֹת הַלָּלוּ קֹדֶשׁ הֵם. וְאֵין לָנוּ רְשׁוּת לְהִשְׁתַּמֵּשׁ בָּהֶם. אֶלָּא לִרְאוֹתָם בִּלְבָד") Halakhah mandates that we spend money for no practical use whatsoever in order to observe the one mitzvah of Hanukah. This is how we broadcast the miracle. Moreover, even though, strictly speaking, the mitzvah is merely to have one light in the household each of the eight nights (Talmud Shabbat 21b), everyone observes what the Talmud calls "Mehadrin min ha-Mehadrin" (which means, more or less, "extra-special, super-duper"), to add an extra light each night. Not only that, but the almost universal Ashkenazi minhag is that each member of the household lights his or her own lights (Rema on Shulhan Arukh, OH 671:2). That means that over the course of eight days, a family of five will splurge for 180 candles that have no practical use.
Each year, we begin Hanukah having just read Parashat VaYishlah. There, we read of Ya‘aqov Avinu's anxious preparation for his meeting with Esav. In a confusing turn of phrase, the Torah tells us that Ya‘aqov brought his whole family across the stream, "And Ya‘aqov was left alone and a man struggled with him until dawn" ("וַיִּוָּתֵר יַעֲקֹב לְבַדּוֹ וַיֵּאָבֵק אִישׁ עִמּוֹ עַד עֲלוֹת הַשָּׁחַר"-Bereishit 32:24). What? If he went with his family over the stream, how was he left alone? Rashi quotes a midrash that fills in that he went back to the other side after he brought over his family. Why did he do this? For spiritual meditation? To get a quiet night's sleep? No; "שכח פכים קטנים וחזר עליהם"-"he forgot little jugs and returned for them". The family is in danger and a major confrontation is coming up and it is dark, but Ya‘aqov, a rich man, went back to collect his little "chotchkies". Lest you think the midrash is criticizing Ya‘aqov for becoming too materialistic in Lavan's household, the gemara (Hullin 91a) learns from this midrash that "Righteous people worry themselves more about their money than about their lives" ("מכאן לצדיקים שחביב עליהם ממונם יותר מגופם"). It should not be lost on you that the specific kind of chotchkie mentioned in the midrash-פכים/jugs-is the same kind of chotchkie mentioned in the gemara (Shabbat 21b) as the container of oil that miraculously burned for eight days.
The Shulhan Arukh writes that proliferation of festive meals is not obligatory on Hanukah, but the Rema says that maybe it is a bit of a mitzvah, because these were the days on which the altar was dedicated (OH 670:2). In connecting our observance of Hanukah and the Temple altar, the Rema might be unlocking the whole point. The Ramban spills much ink at the beginning of his commentary on Bemidbar explaining that the mitzvot of lighting the ner tamid (the "eternal lamp") and dedicating the altar are really a kind of halakhic foreshadowing for the mitzvah of Hanukah. The gemara (Shabbat 22b) tells us that the point of the ner tamid in the Temple was to testify to the Shekhinah's presence among Israel. One would think, then, that with the destruction of the Temple, the Shekhinah is gone from us. What the Ramban is really getting at in connecting the commandments of ner tamid and Hanukah is that the Shekhinah is still with us. Hanukah, the Rabbinic mitzvah par excellence, is our audacious insistence that God does not need an address: God is with us even in exile.
The gemara in Berakhot 8a tells us that since the Temple was destroyed, "מיום שחרב בית המקדש אין לו להקדוש ברוך הוא בעולמו אלא ארבע אמות של הלכה בלבד"-"God has nothing at all in this world other than the four ammot of halakhah". That is, God's dwelling place is in the meticulous attention to detail that pervades each of our lives as much as we decide it will. "Righteous people worry more about their money than about their lives" because they understand the sacred potential in everyday items. They are not stingy, greedy, or shallow; their keen attention to detail guides them to unlock many more sources of value and meaning that most of us manage to, in our stinginess, greed, and shallowness. Year round, when our chotchkies disrupt us from doing things that are truly important, we pause on Shabbat and the holidays to refocus our attention to the sacred, so we may inhabit it. On Hanukah, we take the profane and make it sacred. On this Rabbinic holiday, we proliferate money and stuff, asserting that profane objects can be the most sacred, if we unlock their potential. We celebrate mainly at night, not day, again affirming our potential to turn the profane, the useless, the abandoned, into the sacred time of recognizing that miracles happen and they happen through the natural channels of our "פכים קטנים", our "little jugs". Taking a glimpse into this possibility makes it a "very precious mitzvah" indeed.