From Darkness and Cold to Light and Warmth: The Deep Meaning of the Month of Kislev in Light of Chassidus

00:00 Let’s talk a little today about the special month we’ve just begun, the month of Kislev. First of all, I want to wish each and every one of you a good and blessed month—a month of light and joy. This really is a month of light. At the end of the month we’ll celebrate Chanukah, the festival of light. May each of us have light. May we merit to see darkness turn into light. We are all yearning and waiting for great miracles “in those days, at this time,” as there were on Chanukah. May we, this year and this month too, merit to see that the light is good—the light of the complete Geulah with Moshiach Tzidkeinu, together with the building and dedication of the Third Beis Hamikdash. Today we’ll talk about the month of Kislev: the meaning of its name, its number, and the significance of the special holidays and occasions we have this month. First, I want to open with a story I heard from my mashpia, the Rebbe’s renowned chozer, the chossid Rabbi Yoel Kahn, a"h. He was the one who would repeat the Rebbe’s sichos. As you know, the Rebbe held farbrengens mainly on Shabbos—long, full, holy farbrengens, with depth in every area of Torah. With his special ability, Rabbi Yoel could repeat them word for word, explain them, and absorb them, teaching us the depth of the Rebbe’s Torah and of Chassidus in general. In connection with this... he related that he was at the Rebbe’s wedding to the Rebbetzin, which took place in Kislev 5689. On 14 Kislev there was a large and very joyous wedding in Warsaw, Poland. Afterward, there were sheva brachos meals, some of them in Warsaw. Others were already in Riga, where the Frierdiker Rebbe, the father of the bride, lived. They returned there during the seven days of celebration and completed the sheva brachos there. So on 19 Kislev, the day celebrating the liberation of

02:25 the Alter Rebbe, which chassidim call the Rosh Hashanah of Chassidus, it was one of the last days, or the last day, of sheva brachos. There was a large meal and a large farbrengen. Among other things, the Frierdiker Rebbe said these words. He said, “My fellow father-in-law”—meaning the Rebbe’s father, the kabbalist and tzaddik Rabbi Levi Yitzchak. He was known to be a great kabbalist. So the Frierdiker Rebbe said, “My fellow father-in-law, Rabbi Levik, is known as a kabbalist. He speaks of everything at its source, in the secrets of Torah and Kabbalah, and he is certainly explaining the wedding now according to Kabbalah.” I want to clarify that the Rebbe’s parents did not merit to be present at the wedding. They remained in Russia. Despite all the efforts to arrange it, this was the beginning of the Communist era, and it was impossible. Sadly, the Rebbe’s parents remained in... actually, in Ukraine, in Yekaterinoslav, Dnipropetrovsk as it is now called, and they could not come to the wedding celebrations. As Rabbi Levik, the Rebbe’s father, explained, this also connects with the weekly parsha we read around this time. Yaakov Avinu married Rachel and Leah in Charan, and he too did not have his parents at his wedding. Returning to the story: the Frierdiker Rebbe was at the 19 Kislev farbrengen in Riga, Latvia, and he said, “My fellow father-in-law, the groom’s father, is certainly explaining the wedding according to Kabbalah. We will say just one thing: the wedding is in the third month from Tishrei.” If we begin counting from Tishrei—Tishrei, Cheshvan, Kislev—then Kislev is the third month from Tishrei. The Frierdiker Rebbe said: The third month is the month of the Giving of the Torah, but that was Sivan. If we count Nissan, Iyar, Sivan, as the Torah says, “In the third month after the children of Israel went out from the land of Egypt,” that was when we received the Torah. So Sivan is the third month

05:02 from Nissan, when we received the Torah, the revealed Torah. As we know, Moshe Rabbeinu gave the Torah, the Ten Commandments, and that was when the Torah was revealed—the revealed Torah, the Ten Commandments, and the entire Torah that Moshe received at Sinai and passed on to Yehoshua, and so on. The hidden dimension of Torah remained hidden. Of course, the entire Torah was given in Sivan. G-d forbid that we divide the Torah into separate parts. At the Giving of the Torah, we received all of it. Nevertheless, we know that the hidden dimension of Torah remained hidden, as its name suggests. Then, thousands of years later, it began to be revealed through Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. Afterward it was hidden again, until the Arizal. Then the Baal Shem Tov and the Alter Rebbe came and began revealing the inner dimension and secrets of Torah, which were revealed in Chassidus. So he said: Just as Sivan is the third month from Nissan, when we received the Torah, Kislev is the third month from Tishrei. Sivan is in the summer months, and Kislev is in the winter months, when the inner dimension of Torah is revealed. As we know, Kislev is the month in which the inner dimension of Torah, Chabad Chassidus, began to be revealed through the Alter Rebbe. 19 Kislev is the anniversary of the passing, the hillula, of the Maggid of Mezritch, the great disciple of the Baal Shem Tov. On that same day, a number of years later, the Alter Rebbe was released from imprisonment. That day became what chassidim call—and what the Rebbe Rashab called—the Rosh Hashanah of Chassidus. On that day began the fulfillment of “your wellsprings will spread outward,” the revelation of the inner dimension of Torah to the whole world. So the third month is the month of the wedding. He connected the idea of a wedding with the Giving of the Torah, which the Midrash regards as a wedding. The Midrash says that the Giving of the Torah was the wedding of Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the Jewish people, as

07:16 the Mishnah says at the end of Tractate Taanis, “On the day of His wedding—this is the Giving of the Torah.” So here, too, there is a wedding, and it is connected with the entire matter of the revelation of the inner dimension of Torah. That is what the Frierdiker Rebbe said. What did Rabbi Yoel, my mashpia, tell us? He pointed out something very moving: Years later, the letters that the Rebbe’s father wrote to the Rebbe at that time came to light. As we said, Reb Levik, the Rebbe’s father, was in Ukraine, where he served as a rabbi. He could not get to the wedding, but he sent letters, and many years later they were published. The Rebbe agreed to have those letters printed. When we look at them, we find a letter from those very days in which the Rebbe’s father writes to the Rebbe about the wedding, offers him blessings, and explains, according to Kabbalah, every detail of the numbers and the wedding date—the day of the month, the day of the week. He explains it all at its source according to Kabbalah, in the distinctive, wonderful, profound way of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak’s teachings. And there he writes precisely the same thing. He says that the wedding is in the third of the winter months, corresponding to the third of the summer months, and just as the Giving of the Torah is a wedding, this too is a wedding in the literal sense. In the language of our Sages, two prophets spoke in a similar style. So here we see something remarkable as we learn about the month of Kislev as a whole. What is the essence, the secret, the depth of this month? It is the third month, resembling the third month, Sivan. But there is a difference: there we are speaking about the summer months, and here about the winter months. There the Ten Commandments and all the Torah that Moshe Rabbeinu revealed were disclosed—primarily the Torah of halachah, the revealed dimension of Torah

09:22 As it says in the Zohar, the month of Kislev is about the revelation of the inner dimension of Torah. The question is how all this connects specifically to winter. What is the significance of the third month? Why is it called Kislev? And what is the connection to Chanukah, a festival established in the Oral Torah that emerged during the Second Beis Hamikdash? How do all these festivals and special days connect to Kislev, and what does it mean for us today? So first, let’s talk about the third month. In the discussion of the giving of the Torah in Tractate Shabbos, page 88, the Gemara speaks about the Torah being given in the third month. It says, “Blessed is the Merciful One, Who gave us a threefold Torah on the third day, in the third month.” The Gemara lists several things connected with the number three. In short, Sivan was the third month, and the Torah itself says, “In the third month after the Children of Israel went out of the land of Egypt, on this day they came to the Sinai Desert.” That is when the whole process of the giving of the Torah began. What is it about the number three? Why make such a big deal of it? If we think about it, we don’t need much knowledge of Kabbalah or Chassidic thought. It makes sense on the simplest level. The number three expresses unity and peace. When there is only one, there is no disagreement. One is one; disagreement doesn’t apply. As Rashi tells us about the first day of Creation, why is it called “one day”? “And there was evening and there was morning, one day”—because Hakadosh Boruch Hu was alone in His world. There was nothing besides Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself,

11:22 so disagreement was impossible, and there was no need for peace. On the second day, disagreement was created. Why, of all the days of Creation, does the second day not say, “And G-d saw that it was good”? Rashi, drawing on the Midrashim, says that “it was good” is not written about the second day because disagreement was created on that day. The firmament separated the upper from the lower, the heavens from the earth, the upper waters from the lower waters. It was an act of separation, of division, and where there is division, there is no “it was good.” So it makes sense that two can give rise to disagreement. As long as a person is alone, he is alone. The moment there are two, a conflict can arise: two opinions. Their views are not the same. Each thinks differently; one pulls this way, the other that way. Then the third comes along. In the words of our Sages, “The third verse comes and resolves between them.” With a third, you have a triangle: the third connects the two, brings them together, brings peace and unity. That is the essence of the third month in connection with the giving of the Torah. As our Sages say, the Torah was given to bring peace to the world. Before the giving of the Torah, the upper worlds—Hakadosh Boruch Hu and spirituality—were all above: “The heavens are Hashem’s heavens, but the earth He gave to mankind.” There was a kind of division, a separation, a barrier between above and below, between the upper and lower worlds, between holiness and the physical, material world. These were two things that could not come together. The physical was physical; the world was a material world. To connect to the spiritual worlds, you had to be a holy person. But bringing the two worlds together was impossible. The great innovation of the giving of the Torah was that Hakadosh Boruch Hu—“Hashem descended upon Mount Sinai”—came down here into this physical world and gave us a Torah and mitzvos involving physical things,

13:21 giving us the ability and the opportunity to unite the physical and the spiritual. The Torah was given to bring peace to the world. That is why the Torah was given in the third month: to express that the Torah comes to join the heavenly realm and the earthly realm, to bring above and below, the physical and the spiritual, together as one. A Jew takes something from the physical world: he takes an animal and makes tefillin from it, makes tzitzis from it, makes wool from it; he sets aside tithes and offerings from physical produce, and so on. Meat for Yom Tov, meat for Shabbos. He takes physical things from the world and turns them into objects of holiness, objects of mitzvah. That is the whole purpose of the giving of the Torah. This joining is also what a wedding is about. What is a wedding? It is a union. The whole idea of a couple, a man and a woman, is to bring two worlds together. And from that union come children, an everlasting home, sons and grandsons engaged in Torah and mitzvos. That wedding, that union, is what began in the third month, with the giving of the Torah. But what is the difference between summer and winter? Summer is a time of light, a time of sunshine. Winter is a time of cold and darkness. This is the basic difference between the festivals associated with the first part of the year—Pesach and Shavuos—when the Jewish people were living in a time of light. The Jews left Egypt; a new nation was born. Hakadosh Boruch Hu took us out of Egypt with tremendous, wondrous miracles: all the miracles of the Exodus, the splitting of the sea, which gave us Pesach, the seventh day of Pesach, and then the giving of the Torah and its wondrous Divine revelation. We received the Torah. These are festivals associated with sunshine and light, a time when light and warmth fill the world. “For Hashem G-d is a sun and a shield.” Then the winter days arrive, a time of

15:30 darkness and cold, long nights and short days. Even during those short days, there generally isn’t much sunshine outside; there is cold and chill. What does that represent? It represents a time of darkness. For the Jewish people, it represents the period of exile: days and eras without light. On the contrary, darkness prevails in the world, there is cold in the world, and there are times of trials and concealment, when G-dliness is hidden. All this is symbolized by winter. And it is precisely then that we see something remarkable about the secrets of the Torah, the inner dimension of Torah. When did the secrets of the Torah begin to be revealed? We know that until Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, there was almost nothing, hardly a trace. It was in the time of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who lived after the destruction of the Second Beis Hamikdash, during the terrible period of Roman rule—a time of darkness, when it was dangerous to live as a Jew in the Land of Israel, with all the decrees and the harshest conditions. Rabbi Shimon himself, as we know, hid in a cave for thirteen years because the Romans wanted to kill him. And it was precisely then that the secrets and inner dimension of Torah began to be revealed: a light that breaks through the darkness. Later, they were revealed in the time of the Arizal. The Arizal, too, lived in a time of terrible darkness, the Middle Ages, the time of the Inquisition. Precisely then, in the deepest darkness of a bitter exile, the Arizal and the Ramak appeared—the great Kabbalists of Tzfas who revealed the secrets of the Torah. Some years later came the most difficult periods in Russia, Europe, and Poland, the persecutions of 5408 and 5409, and so on. That was when the Baal Shem Tov and the teachings of Chassidus were revealed. We see that precisely in periods of great darkness, the great light of the inner dimension of Torah was revealed. And that is the allusion, the symbol, the essence and the meaning of the third month, the month of Kislev. Precisely

17:50 In the summer, there is the third month counting from Nissan. Here, it is the third month counting from Tishrei. In the winter, when it is dark and cold, we need a stronger light. The light of the revealed Torah is not enough. That is why the deep light of the inner dimension of the Torah had to be revealed—and that is what the month of Kislev represents. We can see the connection to Chanukah here. Chanukah, too, is a festival that arose in a time of darkness. In the time of the Greeks, the Jewish people were already in the Land of Israel. The Second Beis Hamikdash was standing, but we know it was not an easy period at all. There was a great deal of darkness: the Greek decrees. The Greeks wanted to force the Jewish people to bring Greek wisdom into the Land of Israel and to turn the Jewish people into Hellenists: “To make them forget Your Torah and transgress the statutes of Your will.” Those were the Greek decrees. Later, it became a war. Then we had the Maccabees, the Chashmonaim, who stood firm with self-sacrifice. “Whoever is for Hashem, come to me!” It was the self-sacrifice of the Chashmonaim that turned everything around—that is the whole story of Chanukah. The great miracle of the few defeating the many, the pure defeating the impure. The victory of holiness, the victory of light. Then they found the small flask of oil, and the great miracle of Chanukah was that it burned for eight days. What does Chanukah represent? Exactly this point: in a time of darkness, a Jew’s innermost depths are awakened. Precisely in times of decrees and darkness, the tremendous power hidden in a Jew’s soul is revealed. That is why we celebrate Chanukah with oil. What does oil represent? It represents this very idea. You take an olive, which is hard and bitter, and put it through the entire process of extracting its oil: “pure olive oil, crushed for the light.” Until drops of

20:13 oil come out. And it is precisely from that olive—as our Sages say, when an olive is crushed, it yields its oil—that the oil for the menorah comes, oil that gives light. That was the whole miracle of Chanukah. It was precisely all the hardship and trials that awakened the depths of the Jewish soul. Through the Chashmonaim, the Jewish people stood firm; darkness was transformed into light, and we merited the great miracle of Chanukah, lasting eight days. We know that the number eight represents what is beyond nature. Seven represents nature—the seven days of the week. Eight is above nature. This was revealed precisely through breaking through the darkness, through transforming darkness into light. And that is what the month of Kislev represents: the deepest revelation of the inner dimension of the Torah. That is why 19 Kislev was the day the Alter Rebbe was released from prison. He, too, had to pay a heavy price: the suffering of exile, the suffering of darkness, the suffering of imprisonment. As is well known, the Alter Rebbe said that for fifty-three days in prison he endured mortal suffering. He was suspected of all kinds of things, which later proved to be entirely unfounded. And it was precisely through this that he came to reveal such depth. It is known that precisely after his imprisonment, the Alter Rebbe began to reveal the full breadth of Chabad teachings—the profound, wonderful, expansive teachings of Chassidus. He applied to this the saying of our Sages: “When an olive is crushed, it yields its oil.” Precisely because of his imprisonment, he reached the depths of the inner dimension of the Torah, the teachings of Chassidus that were revealed as a result. That is the symbol and essence of this month. How is this expressed in the word Kislev? The Rebbe gave a wonderful explanation of this in a maamar at a farbrengen. If we divide the word Kislev, we find two parts. The first two letters, kaf-samech, evoke kisui, “covering”: something covered, hidden, concealed. Lamed-vav, thirty-six, represents the exact opposite: revelation.

22:30 Why? There are several reasons—listen to how interesting this is. First, lamed-vav has the same numerical value as eileh, “these”: aleph, lamed, hei—thirty-six. Eileh refers to something right before your eyes. When speaking of several things, you say “these,” just as for one thing you say “this,” pointing to it and saying, “This.” Likewise, eileh means things right before my eyes. I say, “These—here they are, I can see them.” Something revealed. Also, notice that thirty-six is the number of candles we light over Chanukah. If we add up the candles lit from the first day through the eighth—one plus two plus three plus four plus five plus six plus seven plus eight—we get thirty-six. So what makes up the word Kislev? Concealment and revelation. First comes a time of darkness, when things are covered, hidden, concealed—when Hashem’s face is hidden. Then the kaf-samech becomes lamed-vav: eileh, the thirty-six Chanukah candles that transform darkness into light and bitterness into sweetness. That is the whole meaning of this month. And that is the message we take from it. This is the month of Chanukah, the month of the festival of 19 Kislev, and of several other significant days and celebrations in Chassidus. They all express the same point: this month, we have the ability to do this. The message of the month, the message of the oil, is that you take something that at first seems bitter and hard. But you do not despair. You work with it, you break through it, you keep going, you break down the barrier. Then oil comes from that olive, and from that oil come wisdom, light, and warmth that spread and transform darkness into light throughout the world. This is present in the soul of each and every one of us, through the power of studying the inner dimension of the Torah. This is a month when each of us needs to make the

24:49 decision to study more Torah in general, and the inner dimension of the Torah in particular: to study its secrets, its depth, its inner meaning, revealed especially through the teachings of Chassidus. Then we will merit to transform darkness into light, sweetness into bitterness—bitterness into sweetness. May we truly merit to see the great revelation, when all the wonderful things, the hidden treasures that Hakadosh Boruch Hu promised us, will be revealed. As it says in Daniel, “No eye has seen, O G-d, besides You.” May those concealed and hidden things, those great treasures, be revealed this month. May we truly merit the complete Geulah through Moshiach Tzidkeinu and see the revelation of the inner dimension of the Torah, so that there will be light throughout the world. And may what we say in the Chanukah prayers truly come to pass: may we see it already at the beginning of Kislev. Just as in those days there was the dedication of the altar and the dedication of the Beis Hamikdash, may we also merit to see the dedication of the Third Beis Hamikdash, which will be built speedily in our days. Amen, may it be His will.