'וישב יעקב בארץ מגורי אביו בארץ כנען: אלה תלדות יעקב יוסף וגו (“And Ya‘aqov settled in the land of his father’s sojournings, in the land of Këna‘an. These are the offspring of Ya‘a-qov, Yoséf....”). So begins our parasha.
Rashi comments, quoting the midrash (בראשית רבה פפ"ד סי' ג'): ביקש יעקב לישב בשלוה קפץ עליו רוגזו של יוסף צדיקים מבקשים לישב בשלוה אמר הקב"ה לא דיין לצדיקים מה שמתוקן להם בעוה"ב אלא שמבקשים לישב בשלוה בעוה"ז (“Ya‘aqov sought to settle in comfort [bë-shalva]; the rage of Yoséf [rugzo shel Yoséf] sprang upon him. 'Tzaddiqim seek to settle in shalva?' Said the Holy One, Blessed is He, 'Is it not enough for the tzaddiqim what is established for them in the coming world, that they seek to settle bë-shalva in this world?”).
The word shalva is difficult to translate into English. It refers to a state of well-being, of contentment born of a surfeit of what one needs, such that one is at ease and free of worries.
What exactly are Hazal, through Rashi, getting at? What is the implication of Ya‘aqov’s “settling,” so obviously contrasted with his father’s “sojourn,” that rugzo shel Yoséf, which will occupy us for most of the rest of Genesis, should be imposed to disturb his sense of shalva?
Last week, we considered the upcoming holiday of Hannukka as the commemoration of the Hashmona’i victory over the Seleucids, and the subsequent miracle of the oil. This is true enough, but no Jewish holiday is merely an historical commemoration, and this is especially true of Hannukka, a unique holiday not least in that it is the only one mandated purely in the Oral Torah (since the events occurred after the Anshei Kënesseth ha-Gëdola sealed Tanach). In a sense, as we shall see, as the Oral Torah is the living, beating heart of Yiddishkeit, so is Hannukka.
The halachic ramifications of the nér Hannukka are well known: At least one light must be lit on each of the successive eight days (the prevailing custom is hiddur mitzva, increasing the number of lights with each successive day).The lights should ideally be placed outside one’s door to the left (so that the entrance to one’s home is guarded by the mëzuzza on the right and the nér Hannukka on the left), be within ten tëfahim (a tefah is equivalent to approx. 0.048m בשיעור החזון אי"ש) of the ground, and should contain enough oil to burn from the onset of darkness until people generally leave the marketplace (שבת כ"ב. ושו"ע או"ח תרע"א).
Since the general purpose of lighting the Hannukka lights is mi-shum pirsumei nissa, to publicize the miracle of the oil, the positioning of the light seems strange; after all, would it not be more visible, and provide more publicity, if it were placed higher? The position below ten tëfahim seems even odder when one considers that most other mitzvoth which involve a measure of height require ten tëfahim or more; indeed, the mënora whose miraculous lighting we are commemorating stood 18 tëfahim high (עיי' מנחות כ"ח:), and, as the Talmud elsewhere asserts: מעולם לא ירדה שכינה למטה מעשרה (“The Divine Presence [Shëchina] does not descend below ten [tëfahim]”; סוכה ה.').
The Birkath Tov suggests that the reason derives from another unique aspect of Hannukka: דכל המצות הן מלמטה למעלה שמעלין דבר התחתון והגשמי למעלה ובנר חנוכה הוא להיפך שמורידין אור עליון להאיר למטה ולכן אסור להשתמש לאורה וגו' (“that all the [other] mitzvoth are from below upward, in that we elevate a lowly, physical object upward [in spirituality]; and with the Hannukka light it is the opposite, for we bring down the supernal light to illuminate the depths, and for this reason, it is forbidden to use its light [for mundane purposes]”; ע"ע פרי עץ חיים שער חנוכה פ"ד ועוד מקומות).
Viewed in this way, Hannukka is a precursor of the future time in which the lower realm in which we dwell will come to be suffused with the supernal light, as the prophet Yëhezqél sang: והארץ האירה מכבודו (“And the earth absolutely shines from His glory”; Ezekiel XLIII, 2). This has always been the intended state of Creation, as is suggested by the very word for G-d’s manifest presence in this world, Shëchina, derived from the root shin-kaf-nun, “lie down, rest, dwell, inhabit,” and Hazal insist that the intended “habitation” is this world: עיקר שכינה בתחתונים היתה (“the essential habitation [Shëchina] is definitively in the lower realms”; בראשית רבה פי"ט סי' י"ד), or נתאוה הקב"ה כשם שיש לו דירה למעלה כך יהא לו דירה למטה (“The Holy One, Blessed is He, is passionately desirous that, just as He has a dwelling above, so should He have a dwelling below: מדרש תנחומא בחוקותי ג'). Indeed: אותה אורה שברא הקב"ה ביום הראשון הי' אדם צופה ומביט בה מסוף העולם ועד סופו וכיון שראה הקב"ה דור אנוש ודור המבול ודור הפלגה עמד ונגנזה והתקינה לצדיקים לע"ל שנא' "ואורח צדיקים כאור הנוגה הולך ואור עד נכון היום" (“That very light which the Holy One, Blessed is He, created on the first day was [such that the first] man was able to observe and look with it from one end of the world to the other, and when the Holy One, Blessed is He, saw the generations of Enosh, and the Mabbul, and the Haflaga, He stood up, and it was laid aside, and He established it for the tzaddiqim in the future, as it is said: ‘The path of tzaddiqim is like the light of a bright dawn which grows progressively brighter until the day is stable’ [Proverbs IV, 18]”; במדבר רבה פי"ב סי' ז).
The Mishkan (again, from the same root as Shëchina) and the succeeding Béyth ha-Miqdash come to dispel the darkness which had overtaken the world, stemming from those three problematic generations, the re-establishment of the Divine “residence,” as it were, home of the supernal light here below, in the form of the mënora, the glorious glow of Torah (עיי' למשל העמק דבר לשמות פכ"ז כ). The windows of the Béyth ha-Miqdash were designed so as not to let light into the Sanctuary, but rather to let the light from within radiate outward (ויקרא רבה פל"א סי' ו' ותנחומא בהעלותך ב).
G-d Himself spoke of this purpose: ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם (“And [Israel] shall make for Me a Sanctuary [miqdash] and I shall reside [ve-shachanti] amongst them”; Exodus XXV, 8), or: וידעו כי אני ד' אלקיהם אשר הוצאתי אתם מארץ מצרים לשכני בתוכם וגו' (“And they shall know that I am Ha-Shem their G-d, Who brought them out of the land of Egypt for Me to reside [le-shochni] amongst them”; ibid., XXIV, 46). The site of the Béyth ha-Miqdash in Yërushalayim is called המקום אשר יבחר ד' לשכן שמו שם (“...the place where Ha-Shem chooses to establish [lë-shakkén] His Name”; Deuteronomy XXVI, 2).
This, then, is the reason why the nér Hannukka is positioned below ten tëfahim; the light of the nér stands in place of that of the mënora which had been so miraculously fueled; the mitzva performed in lighting the nér Hannukka with proper intent draws down the supernal light from on high to illuminate the depths here below.
All this is well and good, but how is it connected to Ya‘aqov’s “settling” where his father “sojourned”?
Ya‘aqov, remember, was born into the despairing darkness of the world after those three fateful generations mentioned above. Further, as we have established over the last few weeks, Ya‘aqov’s birth as the epitome of rahamim was the culmination of a process which had begun with his grandfather Avraham, who was pure hesed, and continued through Avraham’s son and Ya‘aqov’s father, Yitzhaq, who was entirely din. Ya‘aqov, as the merger of hesed and din, sought to apply rahamim to relieve the world’s distress. In his prophetic dream, he had seen for himself the distance of the Shëchina, stationed at the head of the great ladder, from the lower realms (cf. Genesis XXVIII, 13). Ya‘aqov sought to re-establish the Shëchina in this world, and once again draw down the supernal light, thereby establishing ‘olam ha-ba’, the coming world. The Anshei Kënesseth ha-Gëdola describe the serenity of shabbath, מנוחת שלום ושלוה והשקט ובטח (“the repose of peace, and shalva and tranquility and security”; מל' תפלת מנחה של שבת). Ya‘aqov’s intent finds allusion in the gimatriya, the numerical value, of shalva, 341, equivalent to that of nér Hannukka (also taking into account the two words of the phrase). Shabbath, as Hazal tell us, is מעין עולם הבא, a taste of the world to come, a sixtieth part thereof (ברכות נ"ז:).
But it was too soon. Many of the exactions of din remained to be worked out (it is perhaps instructive to note that judgment, din, is distinct from justice, tzedeq); it would require not only Ya‘aqov’s ‘avoda, but that of the many generations of his descendants to establish completely the merger of hesed and din which had commenced with him; there would be setbacks in the attempt to restore the Shëchina and the supernal light in the lower realms, transcending physicality and abolishing the tyranny of time. The occasion was not, is not, yet; it will be heralded, as Yëhezqél ha-navi’ sang, with the establishment of the Third Béyth ha-Miqdash (cf. Ezekiel XL-XLIII).
D.
In the meantime, we learn Torah and perform its mitzvoth, and in particular that of lighting the néroth Hannukka, the mitzva on which we are about to embark, so that at least over the span of these eight days the material world, the world of teva‘ bound and defined by cycles of seven, is conquered, and the supernal light is brought down, suffusing the lower realms and pushing back the darkness of this darkest period of the material, solar year, the light ever increasing and growing (surely one of the reasons that the hiddur mitzva in which most of us engage is to count the nights by adding successive lights), until, finally, Yëhezqél’s vision cited above will be realized, and the earth will shine with His glory, the supernal light of Torah.
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