Rabbi Sacks: [first words missing]…time, and I resist any temptation to do a Big Ben imitation, which comes with the BBC News at this point. Let me wish you in advance Chanukah Sameach, and to invite you to take part in what is for me another experiment in using this technology, doing something live and reasonably unscripted, the way we did the Leonard Cohen video. You'll let me know whether it works or not, and in the meantime you'll excuse all the infelicities, the hesitations, the repetitions, and the rest.
Guys, I'm a rabbi, that's what we do. Anyway, let me in advance wish you a Chanukah Sameach, and let's just learn a little together about this central mitzvah of Chanukah, Chag Ha'Urim, the Festival of Lights, the mitzvah of lighting candles on Chanukah for eight days, and lighting a menorah in memory of the one that once stood in the Temple.
Now, it is fascinating that there is not just one mitzvah in Judaism that involves lighting lights, there are in fact three.
Number one, Shabbat candles, number two, the Havdalah candle, and number three, the lights of Chanukah.
The question I want to ask is, are they completely disconnected, did they just happen to be three mitzvot that we perform by lighting lights? Or are they connected in some way? Are they integrated in some way, so that seeing them together we see something more than just three disconnected mitzvot?
So let us look at the particular meaning of each of these three lights, and let's begin with the Shabbat candles, the ones we light on Friday as Shabbat is about to enter.
Now, it's a very interesting question, how come Shabbat ever became connected with the idea of light? It's nowhere there in the Torah, nowhere there in Tanach. The fundamental principle of Shabbat is rest, not light. So what does lighting Shabbat candles have to do with Shabbat itself? Why did it become a symbol of Shalom Bayit, peace in the home, and why did it become a kind of marker of Jewish identity?
And the story here has two elements, one halachic and the other one aggadic. One to do with Jewish law and one to do with Jewish tradition.
Here is the first element, the legal bit. As I'm sure you know, the laws of Shabbat are not fully spelled out explicitly in the Torah. The Mishna calls them harim tluyim bese’ara, mountains suspended by a single hair, because their structural basis is so narrow, yet when they're worked out in the form of law, they're very complex and very large.
But there is, however, one very specific melacha, one form of work that we are not allowed to do, and the Torah states it explicitly, “You shall not light a flame, a light, in any of your habitations.” Now on the meaning of this, there was a fundamental dispute between - in Second Temple times - the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and in the Middle Ages, between Rabbinic Judaism on the one hand and the Karaites on the other. The Karaites, and before them the Sadducees, only believed in the written Torah, not the oral tradition.
Whereas, of course, the Pharisees and the Rabbinic tradition believed that there was a Torah Shabal Peh, an oral tradition along with the written one. So they understood that the command was a highly limited one. Don't light a light on Shabbat, but you can if you light it before Shabbat, have it burning through Shabbat.
Whereas the Sadducees and the Karaites held that there shouldn't be a light burning in your house at all. They held what's known in Halacha as Shvitat Keilim, that not only must we rest, but the things we devise for our warmth and for our light and so on have to rest as well. Now the result was, of course, that Sadducees and Karaites sat in darkness on Friday night.
Whereas those who believed in the oral tradition lit the Shabbat candles. So they became a symbol that you were a Pharisee or that you followed Rabbinic Judaism. And that's why they became a marker of Jewish identity.
That, in fact, is why we include the passage of the Mishna, Shabbat Chapter 2, Bameh Madlikim, in our prayers on Friday night, to say that we don't believe in Shvitat Keilim. Light the candle before Shabbat, but the light can burn during Shabbat. That's why it became a symbol of Jewish identity. Now it became also a symbol of Shalom Bayit for something else altogether.
And that is to do with the Rabbis trying to reconcile the two accounts of Creation, one in Genesis Chapter 1, the others in Genesis chapters 2 and 3. Genesis 1 describes the creation of the cosmos in a kind of poetic way, whereas Genesis 2 and 3 tell the story of the first humans, the man and the woman, Adam and Eve. And the Rabbis reconcile them in this way.
They said that Adam was created on day six, as the Torah says, but then so was Eve. So was the whole of that story of Genesis 2 and 3. So Adam was created Erev Shabbat, so was Eve. At Erev Shabbat they committed the first sin, eating from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and they were sentenced to exile from paradise. All on Friday.
The God of compassion gave them a stay of sentence for one day, and so they spent the first full day of their being in Eden, in paradise, on Shabbat. And that day the sun didn't set, it was full of light. And that is why the Shabbat candles symbolise Shalom Bayit, that little moment of peace and love between Adam and Eve that preceded their exile into the harsh realities of a dark and difficult world.
So that is Shabbat, a symbol of the Oral Torah on the one hand, and a symbol of paradise regained in the love between husband and wife, parent and child.
That is the first light, the light of Shabbat.
What about the second light, the light of Chanukah? Now Chanukah itself is a very interesting story.
You see, the thing about Chanukah is it is the only one of the classic Jewish festivals for which we have independent sources. There is nothing in Egyptian literature from the period of the pharaohs that tells about the Exodus. And even though the Megillah of Esther tells us that the events it relates are written in the Book of Chronicles of the Medes and the Persians, so far no element of the chronicles of the Medes and Persians has come to light which tells the story of Esther and Mordechai.
However, the events of Chanukah are related in all the historians of the ancient world because it was in fact a world-changing event. The fact that the Maccabees defeated the Seleucid Greeks actually changed the history of the world. It was the beginning of the decline of Greece and the beginning of the rise of Rome.
What is more, we have two historical accounts of those events. They are Maccabees 1 and Maccabees 2. Now the fascinating thing again is that neither of those books was included in Tanach, despite the fact that oddly enough Christians included them in the Christian Bible. It's still there in the Catholic Bible and it's still there in the Bible of the Eastern churches, Maccabees 1 and Maccabees 2, whereas the rabbis refused to incorporate them into Tanach and instead they made the whole of this historic event, the defeat of the most powerful army of the time, by a handful of Maccabees and their followers.
Despite that fact, as we know rabbinic tradition kind of marginalised the military victory and focused instead on one tiny detail, the fact that when they reconquered Jerusalem and entered the precincts of the Temple they found just one cruise of undefiled oil, its seal unbroken, and with that they were able to light the Menorah and the light burned off for one night but for eight.
Why was it that light became the symbol of Chanukah rather than the more obvious symbol of the military victory and the return of sovereignty to Jews and to Israel?
The short answer is that the military victory, remarkable though it was, lasted for at most 230 years. In the year 70, as you know, the Romans conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, and there was nothing left of the original military miracle.
But there was a spiritual miracle as well.
That is that Jews won a spiritual victory for Judaism as a faith and way of life, over Hellenism as a way of faith and life. Now Hellenism was a great culture, the culture of Athens, one of the most (well there's a little bit of unscripted stuff there, the phone just went off) anyway, to continue. The fact is that the spiritual miracle symbolised by the light lasted not for two centuries but for two millennia and is still lasting today.
So the light of Chanukah tells us that sometimes something quite small at the time, a little cruise of oil, can be seen in retrospect to mark what really matters, what's really important, that is the spiritual victory, not the military one.
That is the second light, the light of Chanukah.
Now you can see that these are two very different lights and they had two very different locations. Shabbat candles were supposed to light up the inside, that's where they're lit, but on the table where we're making Shabbat as a family, it's got nothing to do with the world outside, whereas the Chanukah lights were originally to be placed outside the front door. They were there to light up the public domain, they were there to publicise the miracle.
So Shabbat is inside, Chanukah is outside. Shabbat is private domain, Chanukah is public domain, and they each bring light in different ways to different places.
Shabbat tells us what it is to be a Jew in the context of family. Chanukah tells us what it is to be a Jew in the public square, to try and bring light not just to us but to the world.
Of course, it became dangerous in Babylon to light lights, Jewish lights, outside the home, because the Babylonians, Zoroastrians, worshipped light and they didn't take kindly to Jews appropriating their symbols so they brought them in doors.
But recently, in our lifetime, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe rekindled, as it were, that tradition of lighting menorahs in public places, which Chabad have now done throughout the world.
So that's the public light, the light of Chanukah.
What about Havdalah? What is the light we light at the end of Shabbat?
And here there's an immensely impressive aggadic tradition.
You remember the story we told about Adam and Eve spending one day in paradise and then being sent out into the world on Motzei Shabbat, at the end of the first Shabbat. And the Rabbis said that God, in order not to send them just out there into the darkness, taught Adam and Eve how to make a light.
And that is the light in virtue of which we light the Havdalah candle.
Now this is one of the most striking differences between Judaism and ancient Greece. The ancient Greeks believed the gods didn't want us to know their secrets, the secret of lighting fire. That's why Prometheus had to steal it from the gods and give it to human beings for which he was punished eternally.
Whereas we say no. God wants us to become his partners in making light in the world.
And He did so in the most beautiful way. Just as God began day one of creation by saying, “yehi or,” - let there be light, so on day eight, the beginning of the second week of Creation, the beginning of the first day of the second week of Creation, God showed human beings how to say, “yehi or,” let there be light, and to show them how it's done.
God wanted us to be His partners in making light.
Now we see the beauty of the Havdalah candle. The Havdalah candle is different from the Shabbat candle and the Chanukah candle.
Shabbat candle and Chanukah candle, each flame has to be distinct. In the case of the Havdalah candle, exactly the opposite. It's several wicks lit together so that they create one giant flame.
And note also that the Havdalah candle is lit on the boundary between the holy and the secular, between Shabbat and the ordinary days of the week, at the boundary between Kodesh and Chol.
And it is precisely there, where we leave the private domain and go into the public world in which we earn a living and we work. It's precisely there that God wanted us to join those two lights, the light of the inside of the home and the light of the outside, of bringing light to the world, and combine them so that they make one flame.
So just as we celebrate our faith at home, so we take light out into the world and it is the same light. That is therefore, I think, what makes those three lights different. They are a perfect triangle of light.
There's Shabbat in the home, there's Chanukah candles out there in the street, and there's Havdalah at the borderline between the world of home and the world of the street.
Chanukah light is the light of creation that lights up the world. Shabbat is the light of revelation, the I-Thou relationship between husband and wife which mirrors the I-Thou relation between us and God.
And Chanukah, sorry, that's the Havdalah candle is the light of creation. Shabbat is the light of revelation of each to the other. And Chanukah is the light of redemption when we create a world in which there is light, in which there's religious freedom, in which we are able to be Jews and walk tall without fear.
So, those are the three lights. I hope that makes a little bit of sense. There's Shabbat, the light of the seventh day, Havdalah, the light of the eighth day, and Chanukah, the light that recalls the seven-branched Menorah that stood in the Temple and the eight-branched menorah that we light in our homes come Chanukah time.
It's a perfect triangle bringing together Creation, Revelation, and Redemption.
Well, there it is. That's a small little insight into the role of light in Judaism.
And let me wish you a wonderful Chanukah. Go easy on the sufganiyot, but have a great Chanukah. Light the light.
Celebrate with your friends, your family, your children, your grandchildren in our case, and hopefully in yours. And may you have a Chanukah Sameach, a Chanukah of joy in which we really do bring light to the world, a world that badly needs it.
Chanukah Sameach to all of you.
