D'var Torah by Dr. Kalman Stein, Interim Head of School
Dear Hebrew Academy Community:
When Jews light Chanukah candles following the almost universally accepted pattern they are, knowingly or not, not only performing a Mitzvah but are also engaged in Hiddur Mitzvah, that is, beautifying its performance beyond its minimum requirement. Why? Because all we need to do to earn credit for the Mitzvah is to light one candle in our home each night of Chanukah. The practice of more than one person in each home lighting candles and of each of us lighting more than one candle on Nights 2-8 of the holiday is an expression of our desire to make this Mitzvah as beautiful as we can.
Rav Avigdor HaLevi Nebenzahl, the Rav of the Jewish Quarter, has an interesting take on why Hiddur Mitzvah was made an almost indispensable part of our Chanukah observance all the way back when the Menorah in the Mikdash was being kindled with that one little cruse of pure oil.
During the century before the Hasmonean Revolt a not insignificant number of Jews, including important segments of the upper classes, had been attracted to Hellenism. Even if many of those Jews remained somewhat observant, it was clear that the value system of Hellenism, not that of the Torah, had become their central frame of reference. Rav Nebenzahl argues that this attraction to Hellenism was at least partially the result of the behavior of the Kohanim, the community’s religious leaders. Malachi and Chagai, the last of the prophets who lived in the early Second Temple era, castigated the priests for their slipshod observance of temple rituals and for a marked lack of substance and purpose in their service to Hashem in the Mikdash. As Rav Nebenzahl put it, the Kohanim were Shomrei Shabbat and careful to eat only Glatt but they were observing Mitzvot only because that’s what Grandpa did and keeping Shabbat because they lived in a religious neighborhood and didn’t want to make waves.
Thus, when Jews came to the temple, the center of Jewish ritual, they encountered a group of Kohanim who were just going through the motions. Consequently they saw nothing beautiful or edifying or inspiring in Judaism. Finding little to “turn them on” in their own tradition, many Jews turned to Hellenistic culture with its veneration of physical and structural beauty.
When the Hasmoneans were victorious—over both Antiochus and his Jewish Hellenistic allies—they entered the Mikdash and found just that one lone cruse of ritually pure oil. But that should not have been a problem. The Halakha is clear. The rules of spiritual impurity are suspended when an item is needed for public use: It would have been perfectly acceptable to use ritually impure oil while waiting for a new supply of pure oil. The Hasmoneans, who understood why so many had defected from Judaism, however, decided that the first act in the rededicated Mikdash should be one of Hiddur Mitzvah, of insisting to use pure oil even if that wasn’t necessary. Their point, of course, was to remind their fellow Jews of the internal beauty of Judaism. Using oil that was just good enough would have been sending the wrong message.
Therein lies our challenge as parents and educators. Is the Judaism we are holding up to our children’s eyes meaningful, substantive and beautiful enough to inspire them? And, of course, in our community which values the beauty of the best of the art, music and literature of modern culture we need to be even more concerned that our children not get the idea that beauty and inspiration are to be found only outside our tradition.
Do we show our kids that we are not just going through the motions of ritual? Are we doing more than belting out “Tradition,” which might have worked on Broadway and in a Polish Shtetl but doesn’t resonate well with kids when they ask us why we are doing what we do?
It takes a lot more than kindling a few additional candles to deliver the message to the next generation.
Shabbat Shalom & Chag Samai’ach,
Dr. Kalman Stein
Interim Head of School
