A Chanukah dvar tefillah, a little late
Dec. 19th, 2009 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhuLast night, I was reading a book about how one observes Israel Independence Day and stumbled across a beautiful discussion of one of the central prayers of Chanukah. I want to share it, even if it’s a little late.
First, I must give credit to my source: This is based on the essay שעשה נסים לאבותינו בימים ההם ובזמן הזה by רב מנחם מ' כשר on page רפז of הלכות יום העצמאות ויום ירושלים edited by נחום רקובר.
Rabbi Kesher’s essay is on the bracha that we recite on Chanukah and Purim, thanking God שעשה נסים לאבותינו בימים ההם בזמן הזה -- “who performed miracles for our ancestors in those days at this time.” He brings down a variant nusach (text) that we do not use today: “בימים ההם ובזמן הזה -- in those days and at this time. The same variant is found in the same sources for the Al Hanissim prayer.
So the usual way we understand this phrase is that “in those days” means many years ago, and “at this time” means at this point in the annual calendar cycle. But by introducing the letter vav, the alternate nusach forces us to reconsider that interpretation.
One explanation is thus: God performs miracles for us every day; some are visible and some are hidden, just as in the time of our ancestors. On Chanukah and Purim we are reminded of this by the details of those historical miracles, and so we thank God both for “miracles for our ancestors in those days” and also “at this time.” That is, rather than “in those days” specifying the year and “at this time” specifying the date; they could be interpreted as two different sets of miracles -- the ones that happened then and the ones that happen nowadays.
The Taz cites this reasoning, in fact, in explaining why some people have the “erroneous custom” to say “בימים ההם ובזמן הזה” with the extra vav.
But Rabbi Kesher brings a more compelling argument, which is what got me all excited.
מאי חנכה? What is the miracle of Chanukah? The simple answer that we tell the children is that it’s about the little jar of oil that lasted eight days.
But that’s a pretty useless miracle. If the oil hadn’t lasted eight days, they would simply have used oil that was tamei. There’s a principle that if we can’t perform the rituals in a state of tahara, then communal rituals can be performed in a tamei state. We didn’t need the oil to last eight days in order to rededicate the Temple.
The real miracle, as we learn in the text of the Al Hanissim prayer, was the military victory by a small band of guerrillas against the best militia of their day. The Maharal asks in his commentary on Masechet Shabbat: Why in the Al Hanissim do we not mention the miracle of the lights at all? The essential reason that they established the days of Chanukah is because of the defeat of the Greeks.
The problem, though, writes the Maharal, is that people would give credit for that victory to the strategy and strength of the Maccabees, figuring they’d pulled off a military “miracle.” His conclusion is that while the true miracle was the hidden hand of God that provided the military victory, the halachically unnecessary miracle of the lights was needed to make the people realize that the military victory was also a miracle.
But if so, then we have a new problem. That military victory, the ikkar (essential part) of the miracle, didn’t happen on the 25th of Kislev, so we err when, in the liturgy, we say “at this time.”
That mysterious vav returns, as it were, to hint at a solution to our problem: there are indeed two miracles, "שעשה נסים", but they’re not “then” and “now” in the sense of “past” and “contemporary.” Instead, the phrases "בימים ההם" and "בזמן הזה" are to be interpreted from the point of view of the historical Chanukah: The first miracle is the military victory, that happened “in those days” recently concluded, and the second miracle is the oil, that happened “at this time.”
Similarly, at Purim, we express our thanks not only for the visibly miraculous events of the 14th of Adar, when those who tried to kill us were themselves slain without any casualties on our side, but also for the נס נסתר, the hidden miracles, of Vashti’s sudden modesty, of Bigtan and Teresh’s assuming they couldn’t be overheard, of Achashverosh’s insomnia and Haman’s bad timing, and all the other “setup” miracles that happened “in those days” so that the visible miracle could redeem us “at this time.”
(It is interesting to note that these two explanations are opposites of each other in classic Talmudic chiasmus. In the first, we learn to better appreciate the miracles “at this time” from “in those days”, and in the second, we learn “in those days” from “at this time.”)
In the end, of course, we don’t say the beracha or Al Hanissim with that vav. The text is “בימים ההם בזמן הזה” and its simple meaning is, in fact, “a long time ago at this time of year.” But these other two interpretations are grammatically valid understandings of the same text, and give us insights into an enriched appreciation of God’s miracles --- that there are hidden and revealed miracles today “at this time” just as there were “for our ancestors in those days”, and that the simple stories of Chanukah and Purim that prominently feature visible miracles on the 25th of Kislev and the 14th of Adar, “at this time”, should not be allowed to obscure the more hidden but also more essential miracles that happened “in those days” preceding the famous dates.
My prayer for us is that just as we learn to recognize the miracles that surround us “at this time” from the model of their historical precedent “in those days”, may we also merit to see the ultimate redemption, which will turn the miracles of “at this time” into the “setup” miracles of “in those days”.
First, I must give credit to my source: This is based on the essay שעשה נסים לאבותינו בימים ההם ובזמן הזה by רב מנחם מ' כשר on page רפז of הלכות יום העצמאות ויום ירושלים edited by נחום רקובר.
Rabbi Kesher’s essay is on the bracha that we recite on Chanukah and Purim, thanking God שעשה נסים לאבותינו בימים ההם בזמן הזה -- “who performed miracles for our ancestors in those days at this time.” He brings down a variant nusach (text) that we do not use today: “בימים ההם ובזמן הזה -- in those days and at this time. The same variant is found in the same sources for the Al Hanissim prayer.
So the usual way we understand this phrase is that “in those days” means many years ago, and “at this time” means at this point in the annual calendar cycle. But by introducing the letter vav, the alternate nusach forces us to reconsider that interpretation.
One explanation is thus: God performs miracles for us every day; some are visible and some are hidden, just as in the time of our ancestors. On Chanukah and Purim we are reminded of this by the details of those historical miracles, and so we thank God both for “miracles for our ancestors in those days” and also “at this time.” That is, rather than “in those days” specifying the year and “at this time” specifying the date; they could be interpreted as two different sets of miracles -- the ones that happened then and the ones that happen nowadays.
The Taz cites this reasoning, in fact, in explaining why some people have the “erroneous custom” to say “בימים ההם ובזמן הזה” with the extra vav.
But Rabbi Kesher brings a more compelling argument, which is what got me all excited.
מאי חנכה? What is the miracle of Chanukah? The simple answer that we tell the children is that it’s about the little jar of oil that lasted eight days.
But that’s a pretty useless miracle. If the oil hadn’t lasted eight days, they would simply have used oil that was tamei. There’s a principle that if we can’t perform the rituals in a state of tahara, then communal rituals can be performed in a tamei state. We didn’t need the oil to last eight days in order to rededicate the Temple.
The real miracle, as we learn in the text of the Al Hanissim prayer, was the military victory by a small band of guerrillas against the best militia of their day. The Maharal asks in his commentary on Masechet Shabbat: Why in the Al Hanissim do we not mention the miracle of the lights at all? The essential reason that they established the days of Chanukah is because of the defeat of the Greeks.
The problem, though, writes the Maharal, is that people would give credit for that victory to the strategy and strength of the Maccabees, figuring they’d pulled off a military “miracle.” His conclusion is that while the true miracle was the hidden hand of God that provided the military victory, the halachically unnecessary miracle of the lights was needed to make the people realize that the military victory was also a miracle.
But if so, then we have a new problem. That military victory, the ikkar (essential part) of the miracle, didn’t happen on the 25th of Kislev, so we err when, in the liturgy, we say “at this time.”
That mysterious vav returns, as it were, to hint at a solution to our problem: there are indeed two miracles, "שעשה נסים", but they’re not “then” and “now” in the sense of “past” and “contemporary.” Instead, the phrases "בימים ההם" and "בזמן הזה" are to be interpreted from the point of view of the historical Chanukah: The first miracle is the military victory, that happened “in those days” recently concluded, and the second miracle is the oil, that happened “at this time.”
Similarly, at Purim, we express our thanks not only for the visibly miraculous events of the 14th of Adar, when those who tried to kill us were themselves slain without any casualties on our side, but also for the נס נסתר, the hidden miracles, of Vashti’s sudden modesty, of Bigtan and Teresh’s assuming they couldn’t be overheard, of Achashverosh’s insomnia and Haman’s bad timing, and all the other “setup” miracles that happened “in those days” so that the visible miracle could redeem us “at this time.”
(It is interesting to note that these two explanations are opposites of each other in classic Talmudic chiasmus. In the first, we learn to better appreciate the miracles “at this time” from “in those days”, and in the second, we learn “in those days” from “at this time.”)
In the end, of course, we don’t say the beracha or Al Hanissim with that vav. The text is “בימים ההם בזמן הזה” and its simple meaning is, in fact, “a long time ago at this time of year.” But these other two interpretations are grammatically valid understandings of the same text, and give us insights into an enriched appreciation of God’s miracles --- that there are hidden and revealed miracles today “at this time” just as there were “for our ancestors in those days”, and that the simple stories of Chanukah and Purim that prominently feature visible miracles on the 25th of Kislev and the 14th of Adar, “at this time”, should not be allowed to obscure the more hidden but also more essential miracles that happened “in those days” preceding the famous dates.
My prayer for us is that just as we learn to recognize the miracles that surround us “at this time” from the model of their historical precedent “in those days”, may we also merit to see the ultimate redemption, which will turn the miracles of “at this time” into the “setup” miracles of “in those days”.