The Oil in the Torah: The Meaning of the Great Light of Chanukah - in Light of Chassidus

00:00 The Baal Shem Tov taught us about hashgachah pratis, Divine Providence. Everything that happens in the world, everything a Jew sees and hears, has a purpose. It comes to teach us something. Hakadosh Boruch Hu watches over every detail of creation with individual Divine Providence. Nothing happens by chance. This applies to the simplest, most basic things—even a leaf falling from a tree and being carried by the wind. Every thing and every detail has a purpose and helps fulfill the purpose for which the world was created. How much more so when we are talking about things that are truly important, things of the greatest importance to Judaism, Torah and mitzvos. So today I want to talk about the holiday—or, really, the holidays—that come together. Nothing is by chance. So it is no coincidence that right now, on the one hand, we have just come from 19 Kislev, the Rosh Hashanah of Chassidus: the holiday on which “He redeemed my soul in peace,” and the light and life of our souls were given to us. It is the day the Rebbe Rashab called the Rosh Hashanah of Chassidus, when the Alter Rebbe was released from prison. And from there we come very, very quickly to Chanukah. Two holidays that are very close to each other. So, as we said, there must also be some essential, inner connection between everything Chanukah tells us and represents, and 19 Kislev. Especially when we look at the history, there really is a historical connection between the two holidays as well. Let’s start with 19 Kislev. The Alter Rebbe was released from prison on that Tuesday, 19 Kislev 5559. Afterward, he went to a house in the area of Petersburg, where he was, and it took some time before he could return home. The Alter Rebbe lived in Liozna, and the journey from Petersburg to Liozna took several days. As the story is told, he only actually returned home on Chanukah. So that means the holiday, the Yom Tov of 19 Kislev, began on 19 Kislev, but in fact

02:25 it ended on Chanukah. There is something even more notable in the history of the Alter Rebbe’s liberation. It is known from the annals of Chassidus that two years later, they took the Rebbe into custody again, because the case had not been fully resolved. On 19 Kislev the Rebbe was released from prison, but there was still a need to establish the case, and there were further questions and objections. In the end, two years later, the Alter Rebbe had to return, and there they continued to question him and examine the teachings of Chassidus. The questions were so deep that he said the second imprisonment—although by then they knew who he was, treated him with respect, and looked after him better, so there was not as much physical suffering—brought more spiritual pain than the first. That was because of all the difficult, weighty questions and objections, and the way they spoke disparagingly of the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings, and so on. And when was he liberated from the second imprisonment? It was on Chanukah, on the fifth night. Sometimes it says the third night; it was on one of the nights of Chanukah that the Rebbe was released from prison. So there is, in fact, a very deep, inner connection between the two events. The question is: what is that connection? One thing that stands out at first glance is that both events involve miracles and wonders that happened in the world. The miracle of Chanukah, as the Gemara tells us in Tractate Shabbos, and as told in the Midrashim and Megillas Antiochus—great miracles happened then. In the text of Ve’al Hanissim, we recount the great miracles: “for the miracles, for the deliverance, and for the salvations,” and so on. All the great and wondrous things Hashem did for us in the days of Chanukah. And the Alter Rebbe, too, in a letter he wrote to his friends Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev and Rabbi Baruch of Mezhibuzh, who was also a grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, immediately after his imprisonment—what did he write to them? That Hashem had done great and wondrous things in the land. There had been great miracles and wonders here, so much so that all the nations and the officials themselves were amazed

04:48 and said that Hashem’s hand had been at work here. Both were great miracles, and in both cases the miracles also took place through the ways of nature. We know there are many kinds of miracles. There are great miracles that break the laws of nature completely, and there are miracles that are clothed in the ways of nature. The miracle of Chanukah was a miracle clothed in nature. They had to fight. True, a miracle happened: the few faced the many and prevailed, the weak defeated the mighty, and so on. But it was a miracle clothed in nature. The same is true of the miracle of the lights. They had to search until they found the oil, and then the miracle happened: it burned for eight days instead of one. But fundamentally, it was a miracle that also had what we call the garments of nature. Nature, too, worked together with the miracle. And 19 Kislev was similar. Although, as the Alter Rebbe himself writes, there were miracles here—his entire rescue was completely miraculous, when everything seemed to favor those who opposed the Alter Rebbe, and very subtle, very deep matters had to be explained in order to persuade them of the correctness of the path of Chassidus—the miracle happened nonetheless. So there was a miracle here, but it was clothed in nature. The Rebbe had to be imprisoned and endure all the suffering of imprisonment. He had to argue his case and go through the entire trial, through which he succeeded in being acquitted. But there is something deeper here. If we look closely, both events are also connected with the time of exile: miracles and wonders that happen during exile. In general, it says that the holidays and all the miracles took place in the time of the Beis Hamikdash. After that, there were no more holidays. Yet Chanukah remains forever. Chanukah came after the miracle of Purim, and as is known, the Midrash says that the miracle of Purim is the last of all the miracles. That is where the miracles in Tanach end,

07:08 concluding with Megillas Esther. That is the end of the history of the Prophets and the Writings, of the Written Torah, and the last of all its miracles is the miracle of Purim. Chanukah happened roughly two hundred years after Purim. Nevertheless, Chanukah entered the history of the Jewish people and became an established festival and holiday in every sense. What Chanukah represents is holidays celebrated specifically in an era when the holidays had already come to an end—specifically in times of exile. Although the Beis Hamikdash still stood during Chanukah, as is known, the Jewish people were not in a state of freedom. They were already under Greek rule. And yet Hashem performed the miracle: holidays, miracles and wonders that occurred in a time of exile. The same is true of 19 Kislev. It happened in recent generations, deep, deep within the darkness of exile. And it was precisely then that the great miracle occurred. This is the holiday on which we celebrate the Rosh Hashanah of Chassidus, the spreading of the Baal Shem Tov’s wellsprings and the victory of his teachings. That is, in essence, the holiday of 19 Kislev. But what really connects the two holidays? So far, all this tells us is that they are holidays connected with exile and with miracles clothed in nature. But if we look at their essence, is there an essential connection between 19 Kislev and Chanukah? That is what we will discuss now, and we will bring it into our own lives as well. What does it represent for us today, and what is its message? So the key word we will discuss today is oil. Chanukah is the festival of oil. The miracle of Chanukah revolves around oil. We all know that the Gemara asks, “What is Chanukah?” What happened on Chanukah? Rashi says: “For which miracle did they establish it?” The Gemara is not simply asking for the story of Chanukah, because we see that the Gemara does not actually tell the story of Chanukah. It gives just one line, a passage

09:20 One point from the whole story. This is really what the commentators explain about the Gemara in Tractate Shabbos: when it asks, “What is Chanukah?” it is not asking what happened on Chanukah, because its answer does not tell the whole story either. It does not go into detail. Many things happened on Chanukah. The question is—as Rashi says—“For which miracle did they establish it?” We see that Chanukah is celebrated in an interesting way: with oil and lights. So the question is, why did they make that the main thing? After all, there was a war against the Greeks, a fierce war, and there was a victory. Then something particular happened: everything was impure, they needed to find oil, and Hashem helped them. They managed to find a small jug of oil, a small flask of oil, and the miracle was that it burned for eight days. Yet that is precisely what they made central. That is what the Gemara in Tractate Shabbos is trying to explain. So here, too, we want to understand the essence of it: what does oil symbolize? And here we come to the deeper meaning. Oil actually symbolizes the very point represented by the holiday of 19 Kislev, the Rosh Hashanah of Chassidus. Oil symbolizes Torah, and within Torah itself, specifically its inner dimension. The sefarim say that Torah is compared to various kinds of food and drink. Throughout Tanach, we find verses that call Torah bread: “Come, partake of My bread.” Torah is compared to water: “Ho, everyone who thirsts, go to the water.” Torah is sometimes compared to milk, to honey. There are various verses and teachings of our Sages that compare Torah to different kinds of food and drink. As the Alter Rebbe explains in Tanya, food—Torah is nourishment for the soul. Torah is a form of nourishment. When a person eats food, bread, it becomes part of him, his own flesh and blood. Torah, when a

11:37 person studies Torah, examines it and tries to understand it until he grasps the subject and what he is learning in depth, unites with him just as food unites with the body. The soul, too, needs nourishment. The soul’s nourishment is “Come, partake of My bread.” That is what bread represents, and the same is true of drink. Every kind of food and every kind of drink symbolizes a different level in Torah, as explained in the works of Chassidus—what each food and each drink represents. So Chassidus explains—and now we come to oil—that oil is a special liquid symbolizing the secrets of Torah. There are actually two drinks, two liquids, that symbolize the inner dimension of Torah, the secrets of Torah, Kabbalah: wine and oil. Wine is called “the wine of Torah”; it refers to the secrets of Torah. The same is true of oil. Why wine and oil? Both symbolize the secrets of Torah, its inner dimension. That makes sense, because both wine and oil are hidden. “When wine enters, secrets come out.” How is wine produced? You take grapes. Grapes have juice in them, but while they are still grapes, there is no wine—there is juice. And even the juice does not yet have all the qualities of wine. There is an entire process: you take the grapes—sorry, you press the grapes and extract the wine from them. That wine then becomes a cup of blessing. It becomes wine that brings joy, wine used for Kiddush. It takes an entire process for what was hidden inside, covered by the skin and the fruit, to become such a special wine, “wine that gladdens G-d and people”—wine that was also used with the offerings, as we know. The same is true of oil. Oil, too, is inside the olive; it, too, is covered and concealed.

13:48 It is hidden. The process of producing oil, of pressing the olives until they become oil, is even more involved than producing wine. We can see this. With grapes, the juice is there; you just press a little and it flows out. Olives do not work that way. When olives are picked from the tree, they do not have juice. They are generally fairly hard and dry. There is a whole process of pressing, of work and heat, until the oil begins to drip out, drop by drop, and becomes oil. So the Zohar, the inner dimension of Torah, and the works of Chassidus explain that both wine and oil symbolize the secrets and inner dimension of Torah. And within that, oil represents something even deeper. Precisely because oil is more hidden and harder to extract, it symbolizes something more profound. This is called “the secrets within the secrets.” The Zohar, in Parshas Behaaloscha, explains that there are two levels: there is a secret, and there is the secret of the secret—razin and razin derazin. The secret of the secret. In other words, these are the deeper, more wondrous secrets, and that, specifically, is what oil represents. So when we speak about Chanukah in connection with 19 Kislev, the Rosh Hashanah of Chassidus, the allusion becomes much clearer. We are talking about the oil of Torah—the oil, the secret, the inner dimension of Torah. The war was not only over the halachic part of Torah. The Greeks’ war was really against the inner dimension of Torah. We know that the Greeks were people of wisdom and science, and precisely because they were people of wisdom and science, they favored Torah study. What troubled them, what they hated and fought against, was its inner dimension, the G-dly element in Torah. Studying Torah—that the Greeks could agree with. They themselves were intellectuals, people of wisdom and science. All of Greek culture, all of Greek wisdom at that

16:08 time, was at its height. And yet, or rather, for that very reason, they looked for wisdom in Judaism, for Torah as a form of knowledge and intellect. That was wonderful. But why seek a secret in Torah? Why seek G-dliness, the Giver of the Torah? That they could not tolerate. “To make them forget Your Torah and turn them away from the statutes of Your will.” They wanted Torah not to be Hashem’s Torah, but an intellectual discipline like any other: another branch of knowledge. There is science, and here is another science, a wonderful science—the science of Torah, “your wisdom and understanding in the eyes of the nations”—but nothing more than wisdom. G-dliness, the inner dimension, is the oil, the secret. It is what lies within. And the same was true of the Alter Rebbe. What, in fact, was the accusation against him about? As is well known, the Alter Rebbe said that this was not merely a political struggle; there was a spiritual accusation against the dissemination of the inner dimension of Torah. The Alter Rebbe devoted his entire life to spreading the teachings of his teachers, the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid of Mezritch. He succeeded in inspiring thousands upon thousands to take an interest in the secrets of Torah. Until then, the great majority of the sages and of the Jewish people had occupied themselves only with studying halachah and the Oral Torah, not the secrets of Torah. The secret was still a secret, and even those who studied the secrets dealt with them in a very abstract way. The Alter Rebbe took the teachings of his teachers, the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid of Mezritch, and succeeded in writing Tanya. Tanya was printed, as is well known, on 19 Kislev, two years before his imprisonment and Geulah. This brought about a remarkable, broad dissemination. Suddenly, people began to see that the inner dimension of Torah was not something intimidating. It was not something so holy and lofty that it had no relevance to us. Anyone could study it. And that is how the spread and dissemination of Chassidus began—the teachings of the secrets of Torah, the oil within Torah. And here we will understand the connection between Chanukah and 19 Kislev, specifically through the analogy

18:22 of the oil. What does the analogy of oil express in connection with these holidays? This is what our Sages tell us. The Rebbe Rashab spoke about it and explained it. The Gemara in Menachos says: When the olive is crushed, it yields its oil. For an olive to yield oil, it has to be crushed, it has to be broken. “Crushed for the luminary.” Much more than grapes, an olive has to be broken and pressed; it takes a whole process of work before you can get drops of oil out of it. Only when it is crushed does it yield oil. The same is true of the Jewish people: precisely when they are crushed. That is what happened on Chanukah. The trials, the wars, everything the Jewish people went through in the Chanukah period—not only did it not break them, it brought out their essence. It brought out the oil. It revealed the beauty, the depth, the inner dimension, the most G-dly part of every single Jew. That is what the Maccabees, the Chashmonaim, did. Through their mesirus nefesh, they managed to break through the olive—the outer layer, the shell—and reveal the oil, the inner dimension of the soul. And from this, the inner dimension of Torah was revealed as well: the Torah that reveals G-dliness to us, not just the outer dimension, not just the intellectual understanding, but the G-dliness, the inner dimension, the secret within Torah. That is why we celebrate Chanukah as the festival of oil. And that is what also happened in later generations with the Alter Rebbe. The Rebbe Rashab said: When we look at the story of the Alter Rebbe’s life, we see something remarkable. It was precisely after he was released from prison that he began spreading Chassidus on an extraordinarily broad scale, out of all proportion to what had come before. Even before his imprisonment, the Alter Rebbe had already been a Rebbe for twenty-six years. Many years had passed since the passing of the Maggid of Mezritch. At first, in the early years, he was not yet willing to accept the

20:39 leadership, but he had already begun spreading Chassidus everywhere. He would travel from city to city, bringing the depth, the richness, the inner dimension of Torah wherever he went. That is how he later became a leader throughout Russia and the surrounding region, and began spreading the teachings of Chassidus very widely. Nevertheless, we see—and you can see it in the books—that before his imprisonment, the teachings, explanations, divrei Torah, and maamarim the Alter Rebbe delivered were short. Short and fiery, short and deep, short and wonderful—but short, and there were not many of them. It was precisely after his release from prison that the dissemination suddenly expanded to an extraordinary degree, in great abundance, with explanations and elaboration. You can actually see it in the number of books from after 19 Kislev compared with before 19 Kislev. There is no comparison at all. Before 19 Kislev, before the Festival of Redemption, there may be two or three books. Afterward, there are dozens of books containing teachings he gave over those years. So this tells us exactly what our Sages say: When the olive is crushed, it yields its oil. When did the Alter Rebbe bring forth the oil—the inner dimension, the full breadth and depth of the inner dimension of Torah? Precisely after the crushing, precisely after he went through the whole process of imprisonment and the redemption of 19 Kislev. The same is true, as we said, of Chanukah. So, to sum up what we have discussed so far—now we are going to discuss an even more important point, but first let us summarize. What is the connection between these two occasions, 19 Kislev, the Rosh Hashanah of Chassidus, and Chanukah? Both are holidays connected with the time of exile, with the darkness of exile. Both involve a miracle clothed in nature. Both are connected with oil, with the inner dimension, with revealing the holiness and G-dliness within Torah. And both came about through crushing.

22:53 The suffering is what brought out and revealed the depth and inner dimension of Torah, the oil within Torah. And here we come to a very, very important message that we learn from oil, something very important for us to learn in our daily lives. When we think about oil, we see something remarkable. On the one hand, oil is the liquid that floats above all other liquids. Oil does not mix with any liquid. Put oil into any liquid, and it will always be on top, floating, separate from the liquid. On the other hand, we see that oil has precisely this quality: it penetrates everything, permeates everything. That is what our Sages say, and that is what we see in practice. Wherever oil touches, it leaves a trace, a greasy mark. Wherever it is, it penetrates. We even find this principle in halachah. If there is fat within a piece of meat, no matter how large the piece is—it could even be a whole animal—the halachah says that if a whole kid goat was roasted with a tiny bit of forbidden fat on it, the entire kid is forbidden, because the fat permeates everything. So here we see something remarkable about oil. On the one hand, it is separate from everything; on the other hand, it penetrates everything. And this tells us something very, very profound. When we speak about the inner dimension of Torah, the secrets of Torah, the G-dliness in Torah, on the one hand we are speaking about the loftiest, deepest thing. We spoke of razin derazin, the secrets within the secrets, the mystical dimension of Torah. Wonderful things. The teachings of the Baal Shem Tov that the Alter Rebbe revealed. Teachings of the greatest depth, the deepest secrets of Torah. And yet we see that it is precisely these teachings, precisely this depth, precisely the oil within Torah—the deepest, most G-dly, most

25:21 elevated and most wondrous part—that has a special power to permeate and penetrate every detail of life. It makes every aspect of a person’s life completely different. A Jew who is fortunate enough to experience the G-dliness in Torah, its inner dimension—who is fortunate enough to study the mystical dimension of Torah, to enjoy it, to understand even a little, even a drop of the oil within Torah—finds that it changes his life. It changes every detail of his life. It may be the simplest, most basic, most minor things, but in everything you feel that something is different: thought, speech, and action in daily life. The oil within Torah penetrates a person’s life, every part of it, even ordinary weekday life. Everything becomes more uplifted, more elevated, more G-dly, more sublime. There is a letter from the Rebbe, a very interesting letter, in which the Rebbe explains the power of Chassidus, the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov. He says: If we were to describe Chassidus with one word, the key word would be “one.” Unity. Connecting everything with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, so that His oneness permeates every detail of creation, every detail of a person’s conduct. G-dly light has no limits. When a Jew, through studying the inner dimension of Torah, through the oil within Torah, is fortunate enough to feel even a little of the connection with the Giver of the Torah, with the G-dly light within Torah, it changes the reality of everything, even the simplest things in daily life. He sees a G-dly message in them, a G-dly purpose. He sees Divine Providence at every step, even when he is eating, doing business, going about his daily life. Everything becomes permeated with the G-dly light within Torah. Oil permeates everything, and that is the message of Chanukah. That is the message of the connection between the two holidays, 19 Kislev, the Rosh Hashanah of Chassidus, and Chanukah. What do we

27:57 What do we see on Chanukah? The oil, the menorah, the menorah of the Beis Hamikdash. The menorah of the Beis Hamikdash stood in the Heichal, in the holiest place. But what did the Sages establish? That the Chanukah candles must be lit at the entrance to one’s home, outside—in the public domain, which is cold and dark—and specifically at night, after sunset. So we light the candles, illuminate the darkness, and turn the public domain into a place of light and holiness. We illuminate the darkness so that “a mitzvah is a candle and Torah is light” will shine there. And that is the power of oil. Precisely because oil is so lofty and elevated, it has the ability to turn the deepest darkness into light. In our days, in our time, this is the most fitting moment. The period we are living in is one in which there is much darkness in the world, and the public domain is exposed in all sorts of ways. This is the time for each and every one of us to take the message of the oil. The inner dimension of Torah, the teachings of Chassidus, reveals the inner dimension of the soul. It reveals the oil, the flask of oil within our souls, sealed with the seal of the Kohen Gadol, which no impurity in the world can touch. And with this power, we can turn darkness into light, turn the public domain into a private domain for the One and Only of the world, and bring the light of Hakadosh Boruch Hu into the world, until all the nations of the world proclaim and say, “There is nothing besides Him.” That is Chanukah. May Hakadosh Boruch Hu help that, just as it was in those days, so it will be in our time, and may Hakadosh Boruch Hu perform miracles—the great miracles we are all waiting for, the great miracles we speak of when we say: “And for the miracles: In Your abundant mercy, You stood by them in their time of distress. You fought their fight, judged their cause, avenged their vengeance. You delivered the mighty into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the impure into the hands of the pure, the wicked into the hands of the righteous, and the wanton into the hands of those who study Your Torah”—and the true and complete Geulah

30:16 through our righteous Moshiach. A bright and joyous Chanukah to everyone, and throughout the year.