Friday Night
THE TORAH TELLS us to wait seven days after the birth of a boy performing Bris Milah.
Similarly, it also teaches us to wait seven days from the birth of a
potential sacrifice before offering it up on its eighth day. The Kli Yakar asks (Parashas Emor, Vayikra
22:27) why the Torah thinks we might have offered the animal earlier
than its eighth day, since it would still be quite young and vulnerable.
He answers, because even such a young animal already looks like an
adult animal from birth, just much smaller.
Then he asks, why the eighth day? Is it just the first day after the seventh day, or is it specific? The Kli Yakar
explains that the number eight always represents a more spiritual,
supernatural level of existence. Since God made the world in seven days,
seven represents the natural world. Eight therefore is a step
beyond the natural realm, and therefore it is the eighth day that
spiritually transforms the animal making it fitting to be a sacrifice.
Perhaps this is also why Bris Milah is only possible from
the eighth day of birth, and not a second earlier. Physically, there is
no difference between a baby that is eight days old, or just seven days
and 23 hours old. But spiritually there is a world of difference, one
that transforms the baby to make it fitting for a covenant with the
Master of the Universe.
So why then is Pesach not a Torah-sanctioned eight-day holiday? Succos is. Shemini Atzeres may be considered a holiday of its own, but it comes as the eighth day after seven days of Succos. And even though the Midrash
says that it is only the “eighth day” because God didn’t want to make
the Jewish people have to travel back to Jerusalem 50 days later for
another holiday, we would not be able to access its light if the eighth
day of Succos was only one of convenience, and not a specific portal to the supernatural light of Shemini Atzeres.
This is also why Chanukah is eight days long. True, it is eight days long because it was a miracle that we found even one jar of undefiled oil for the Menorah at all, and that it took seven additional days to produce new undefiled oil. But God could have arranged for two
or more jars of oil to be spared, lessening the miracle of finding them
and the days of supernatural burning. Besides, we were even allowed to
use defiled oil until the new oil was ready.
It’s like matzah. People think we eat matzah during Pesach
because there wasn’t enough time to bake bread. The real truth is that
we didn’t have enough time to bake bread in order that we should eat matzah during Pesach. Matzah is not incidental to the redemption process, it is the redemption process, but that’s a different essay.
Likewise, Chanukah is not an eight-day holiday because we
miraculously found one jar of undefiled oil that miraculously burned for
seven extra days. We miraculously found one jar of undefiled oil that
miraculously burned for seven extra days so that Chanukah would be an eight-day holiday. It reminds us of the spiritual transformation at that time that allowed the Chashmonaim to rise to the occasion and supernaturally overcome their enemies.
Shabbos Day
WHAT ABOUT PESACH? No holiday is more supernaturally based than Pesach! As the Leshem
explains, one plague would have been enough to free the Jewish people,
and with a lot less fanfare too. Furthermore, splitting the sea to save
them was extra since they had already gone past it, and had to circle
back to become stranded on its shore before the Egyptian army.
But God was making a point. He was telling the Jewish people that He
was prepared to change the laws of Creation for them if they completely
placed their faith in Him. He was teaching them that the physical world
would not be an obstacle for them if they placed their trust in His
salvation and only His salvation. God went out of His way, so to speak,
to specifically make Pesach a supernatural time, so why isn’t it also an
eight-day chag?
There are three gemoros that can help with this. The first is about a particular student of the great Hillel:
Hillel HaZaken had eighty students. Thirty of them were
sufficiently worthy that the Divine Presence should rest upon them as it
did upon Moshe Rabbeinu, and thirty of them were sufficiently worthy that the sun should stand still for them as it did for Yehoshua bin Nun, and twenty were on an intermediate level between the other two. The greatest of all the students was Yonason ben Uzziel, and the youngest of them was Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai…It was said of Yonason ben
Uzziel, the greatest of Hillel’s students, that when he sat and learned
Torah, any bird that flew over him was immediately burned up. (Succah 28a)
That was how intense the learning of Rebi Yonason ben Uzziel
was, enough to burn up any bird that flew over him at the time, quite
the spectacle. But if that is what happened to birds flying over Rebi
Yochanan when he learned, what happened to a bird when it flew over
Hillel while he learned? It didn’t burn up.
Which is the greater miracle? Which is the greater spectacle? It
depends on how you look at the world and the way God runs it, as Rebi
Chanina ben Dosa told his daughter one Erev Shabbos:
One Friday night he noticed that his daughter was sad and asked her, “My daughter, why are you sad?”
She answered, “My oil container got mixed up with my vinegar container and I lit Shabbos candles with it.”
He told her, “My daughter, Why should this trouble you? He Who had
commanded the oil to burn will also command the vinegar to burn!” (Ta’anis 25a)
What’s the greater miracle, that vinegar burned once, or that shemen zayis
burns each time? What’s the greater spectacle, that something not known
to be combustible combusts, or that something can even be considered to
be consistently combustible? That the sun stood still for Yehoshua bin
Nun in the Valley of Ayalon, or that God makes it rise the same way
each day, day after day, year after year, millennium after millennium?
If Creation is on auto-pilot, then the first one. If everything that
happens every moment is a new act of Divine will, then clearly the
latter, making nature just consistent, and therefore a deceptive
miracle. Every birth is its own spectacular miracle, no matter how many
times it occurs in a single day, or any other aspect of life for that
matter, awesomely large or awesomely small.
This leads to the third gemora:
Rebi Yosi said: “May my portion be among those who complete Hallel every day.” Is that so? Didn’t the Master say: One who recites Hallel every day is one who curses and blasphemes God? It refers to the verses of Pesukei Dezimra. (Shabbos 118b)
Seudas Shlishis
THOUGH ONE QUESTION was answered, the bigger one was not: What’s wrong with saying Hallel every day? What could be better than praising God each day, as we say in Shemonah Esrai:
Blessed are You God, Beneficent is Your Name, and to You it is fitting to offer thanks.
It’s what we’re here to do, whether in speech or deed, and Hallel is one of the ultimate prayers of thanks. Blasphemy? Just the opposite should be true and would be if not for the fact that Hallel
basically praises God for the large and more obvious miracles that God
has performed for the Jewish people. It doesn’t focus at all on the
smaller and far less obvious miracles that happen quite naturally every
day and as a matter of fact, referred to here in the prayer Modim:
We thankfully acknowledge that You are God, our God and God of our
fathers forever. You are the strength of our life, the shield of our
salvation in every generation. We will give thanks to You and recount
Your praise, evening, morning and noon, for our lives which are
committed into Your hand, for our souls which are entrusted to You, for Your miracles which are with us daily, and for Your continual wonders and beneficences.
You are the Beneficent One, for Your mercies never cease; the Merciful
One, for Your kindnesses never end; for we always place our hope in You.
There are two spiritual levels a person can live on. There is one on
which a person takes the miracles of life for granted and is only
impressed when something obviously supernatural occurs. Then there is
the one on which a person is as impressed with the everyday, hidden
miracles of life as others are with the spectacular ones. While others
trudge through what they perceive to be a mundane world, they are
euphoric from everything they experience. Witnessing the supernatural is
a gift but discovering it within the natural as a function of personal
will and struggle is greatness.
This is why Pesach could only be a seven-day holiday, and
not eight days. Yes, God performed spectacular miracles to free the
Jewish people from the Egyptian nature-bound way of thinking. But that
was just to show us on the outside what actually exists on the inside, Ohr Ain Sof, the infinite
light of God. But once we learned about it, it was up to us to “mine”
it in everything we experienced from that point onward. As Rebi Chanina
told his daughter, the miracle is not new, but always there if you know
to look for it.
This idea can help with the following disagreement regarding a midrash about the nature of miracles:
Rebi Yochanan said: “The Holy One, Blessed is He, made a condition
with the sea to split before the Jewish people, etc.” Rebi Yirmiyah ben
Elazar said, “Not only with the sea, but with everything He made during
the six days of Creation, etc. (Bereishis Rabbah, Ch. 5, Siman 8)
The question is, if all miracles were set up in Creation from the
beginning, how can they be considered changes in nature, which is what a
miracle is? Technically, what we would call miracles would just be
“natural” events that had yet to occur until they were needed by the
Jewish people. The miracle would be when they happened, not how they happened.
But that’s not what we believe, or what it says:
All that God wished, He did. (Tehillim 135:6)
which is taken to mean that a miracle is not the result of a
pre-ordained condition going back to Creation itself, but the result of
God willing it anew at that moment. Is it a contradiction, or a hint to a
deeper and more profound understanding of what Creation is and how it
works?
Ain Od Milvado, Part 47
THE STARTING POINT is understanding what the Ohr Ain Sof is, or more accurately, what it isn’t.
It is unlimited. It is unbound. It is beyond measurement, beyond time,
just pure will of God that makes everything and anything possible. And
incomprehensible, it is the basis of all that exists and occurs within
the realm of measurement and time, without ever losing its infinite
integrity. This is the deeper meaning of Ain Od Milvado, there is nothing other than God, as Rebi Chanina told his daughter.
This is what makes the natural world so miraculous, that it cannot
exhibit properties of finiteness while existing because of the infinite
light of God. The most concrete realities are really just the opposite
because of what they have at their core, Ohr Ain Sof. Miracles
are built into them, incredible wonders that most people completely
overlook just because they happen consistently and so often.
Since Chanukah alludes to the Messianic Era and the miracles of that time, it is eight days long. But Pesach
alludes to the miracles of history until that time, which exist within
Creation just as our miraculous and hidden souls live within and give
life to our bodies. Therefore, it is only seven days long to teach and
celebrate this awesome and liberating reality.
For to know this is to gain access to this inner, hidden light, and
ultimately to live supernaturally even while part of an otherwise
natural world. This is how an individual can reach levels of personal
freedom while the rest of the world remains enslaved to the se’or sh’b’issa.
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