A.
ויהי מקץ שנתים ימים ופרעה חלם והנה עמד על היאר: (“And it was at the end of two years of days, and Pharaoh was dreaming, and behold, he was stand at the Nile”). So begins our parasha, introducing the account of Pharaoh’s troubling dreams, which induced him to seek interpretation which he did not find, until the sar ha-mashqim suddenly “remembered” Yoséf from his stay in prison two years before.
The Shëlah ha-qadosh famously tells us (in a comment on last week’s parasha) that there is an intimate connection between the parashoth and the season in which they are read. As we are reading this one, we find ourselves in the midst of Hannukka. What connection can we find between this story of troubled sleep and the rise of Yoséf, and our holiday?
B.
Aside from lighting the Hannukka lights, one of the things we do during Hannukka is add the paragraph ‘Al ha-nissim (“For the miracles”) to our thrice-daily prayers. The paragraph contains the following line: ולך עשית שם גדול וקדוש בעולמך ולעמך עשית תשועה גדולה ופרקן כהיום הזה (“and for Yourself You made a great and holy name in Your world, and for Your people Israel You made a great deliverance and salvation, like this day [këha-yom ha-ze]”).
There are several things a bit puzzling in this sentence; for instance, what do we mean when we say that through the Hashmona’i victory over Antiochos’ Græco-Syrian forces G-d “made a great and holy name for [Him]self in [His] world”; was G-d then unknown before this time? And what does the odd phrase këha-yom ha-ze signify?
In order to begin to approach an answer, we need to understand some things first. The Creation account climaxes with a very odd turn of phrase, wherein we learn that G-d blessed and sanctified the Sabbath כי בו שבת מכל מלאכתו אשר ברא אלקים לעשות (“...for on it He rested from all His creative labor [mëlachto] which He created to do”; ibid., II, 3). Rashi explains that the reference is to המלאכה שהיתה ראוי' לעשות בשבת כפל ועשאה בששי וגו' (“the mëlacha which was meant to be done on shabbath; He doubled up and did it on the sixth [day]”).
Next, we note that the Ba‘al Shém Tov famously comments on Psalms CXIX, 89: לעולם ד' דברך נצב בשמים (“For the world [lë-‘olam], Ha-Shem, Your word is positioned in the heavens”), that it refers to the original Divine utterances which brought about Creation and which continually vitalize and maintain Creation in existence; that is, these utterances were created in order that they should do something, continually sustaining the physical realm (מובא בספר התניא שער היחוד והאמונה פ"א וע"ע בעש"ט עה"ת פרשת בראשית סי' מ"ח-נ"א, ומקורו כנראה במדרש שוחר טוב שם בתהלים ובזה"ק ח"ב צ"א:).
As I have discussed several times in these pages, the fundamental level of physical reality underlying every object and phenomenon in the universe consists of a set of mathematical expressions, wave functions, first defined by Erwin Schrödinger and Louis de Broglie. The ultimate, metaphysical reality which generates these wave functions and thus brings the physical realm into being consists of tzirufei othiyoth, combinations of letters forming words and phrases in the Holy Language (the letters themselves having a mathematical dimension), through which the Creation came about and is sustained. The great consistency of what we prefer to consider the “laws of nature” lies in the fact that (as the Ba‘al Shém Tov says) the original words continue to exist and are “positioned” to maintain constancy and consistency.
In fact, Hazal famously tell us, "הליכות עולם לו" אל תקרא "הליכות" אלא "הלכות" (“‘The ways [halichoth] of the world are His’ [Habakkuk III, 6]; read not halichoth but halachoth”; מגילה כ"ח:). The laws governing the universe, including the spatiotemporal singularities which account for what we think of as “miracles” have the force of halacha, of Torah law, and are derivable from the text of the Torah itself.
That text, Ramban famously tells us in the introduction to his commentary on the written Torah, is composed entirely of names of G-d, strung together to form the words and sentences which we read and learn. The word ‘olam can be shown to be derived from a root meaning hide or conceal and the universe is called by that term because its gross physicality serves to conceal from us the sublime metaphysical workings which infuse and sustain it. As the saying goes, we are generally unable to see the forest for the trees.
A nés, a miracle, derived from a root meaning “move, drive away”, serves to part the curtain, as it were, to pierce the veil and afford us a momentary glimpse of the ultimate reality which informs and sustains the physical realm. Hence, the ‘al ha-nissim is telling us, through the miracles of Hannukka G-d brought into the world a “great and holy name”. a tziruf othiyoth which otherwise would not have been perceptible to us.
Now, for one more piece of the puzzle, we turn to Hoshéa‘ VI, 2: וחיינו מימים ביום השלישי יקמנו ונחי' לפניו: (“And our lives will He set up from the two days on the third day, and we shall live before Him”). Rashi and Radaq both understand “the two days” to refer to the exiles Israel have undergone with the destruction of each of the first two Temples (Mëtzudath David comes close to saying the same thing); we have had to pick up the pieces and start over on each of those occasions, but we will not be completely restored until the “third day”, the third and final Temple which will be built by ha-melech ha-mashiah; until that time, G-d sustains us in exile.
C.
Now, let us see how our introductory verse alludes to all of the above, and more:
Va-yëhi mi-qétz shënathayim yamim... Hazal tell us: דבר זה מסורת בידינו מאנשי כנסת הגדולה כל מקום שנאמר "ויהי" אינו אלא לשון צער (“This thing is a tradition handed down to us by the Men of the Great Assembly: Every place in which it is said va-yëhi is none other than an expression of pain”; מגילה י:), presumably because the word sounds like vai hi’, “it is woe.” The end of our exile comes about only after suffering, only after we have internalized the twin tragedies of the Temples’ destruction, and worked to correct the shortcomings which brought them about.
U-far‘o holém...The word par‘o can be viewed as if it is derived from the root pé-réysh-‘ayin, meaning “uncover, reveal” (cf. e.g. Numbers V, 18); the restoration after that long period of travail, both exiles with the entire era of the Second Temple – throughout most of which Israel also was not free – in the middle, comes about because of a revelation, the product of the dream of national, spiritual revival which can finally be realised with the achievement of the qétz, the “end” of those two phases of our exile.
Vë-hinné ‘oméd ‘al ha-yë’or... אין עמידה אלא תפלה, Hazal tell us; “‘amida [standing] is prayer” (ברכות ו:). The navi’ proclaims of that Third Temple: והביאתים אל הר קדשי ושמחתים בבית תפלתי כו' כי ביתי בית תפלה יקרא לכל העמים (“And I shall bring them to My holy mountain, and make them rejoice in My house of prayer... for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all of the peoples”; Isaiah LVI, 7), and the Zohar tells us that it is ביתא דאתפרעו ואתגליין מני' כל נהורין וכל בוצינין כל מה דהוה סתים מתמן אתגלי ובג"כ קב"ה אפיק כל נהורין וכל בוצינין בגין לאנהרא לההוא קול כו' (“the house from which are uncovered [ithpar‘u] and revealed all the lights and sources of light [butzinin], everything which had been hidden from there [i.e., the physical realm], and for this reason the Holy One, Blessed is He, brings forth all the lights and all the butzinin in order to illuminate that voice....”; ח"א ר"י.), the “voice” which, earlier on the same page, the Zohar defined as prayer.
And for what, precisely, is the prayer, the ‘amida? It is ‘al ha-yë’or, the letters of which also form the word rë’iya, “sight, perception”: העם ההלכים בחשך ראו אור גדול ישבי בארץ צלמות אור נגה עליהם (“The people who were going in darkness saw [ra’u] a great light; those sitting in the shadow of death, an actinic light was upon them”; Isaiah IX, 1). And what would they perceive by this light, after having suffered through the double period of exile? The initial letters of Va-yëhi mi-qétz shënathayim, in reverse order, spell out the word shëmo: “His name”, the above-referenced tziruf othiyoth of the othiyoth ha-Torah.
And butzina, in the passage above from the Zohar, is the Aramaic word for nér, “candle”....
D.
What makes the shém, the Divine name, that tziruf othiyoth which was revealed through the miracles of Hannukka “great and holy”? It is the fact that, like all the other Divine utterances, it continues to stand in the heavens, shaping and sustaining our world for just such moments in history as ours.
Think of what had transpired: The civilized world, from the Adriatic to the Indus, had been conquered by the Greeks under Macedonian leadership; Greek civilization, culture, and mores prevailed over the entire area. Even after the break-up of Alexander the Great’s empire, the diádochoi, the successor states, had more in common with each other than not. This culture ate at the vitals of the Jewish nation, beckoned to assimilation, to oblivion amongst the nations – until Yëhuda ha-Makkabi arose and declared Mi la-Shem élai! “Who is for Ha-Shem, rally to me!”, and against all odds, all the “laws” of history and military science, the victories described in the ‘al ha-nissim of גבורים ביד חלשים ורבים ביד מעטים וטמאים ביד טהורים ורשעים ביד צדיקים וזדים ביד עוסקי תורתך (“the mighty at the hands of the weak, and the many at the hands of the few, and the defiled at the hands of the pure, and the evil at the hands of the righteous and the arrogant at the hands of those involved in Your Torah”) returned the Béyth ha-Miqdash to our hands and there brought about a hithgalluth oroth, a revelation of light which shone and illuminated that darkest of times.
As the Hannukka lights, over these eight days which are the mark of mastery over nature (which operates in cycles of seven) illuminate the darkest time of year, so does that shém gadol vë-qadosh stand ready to be invoked, with the aid of tëfilla, to illuminate other dark periods, even këha-yom ha-ze....
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