Mikeitz and Chanukah: Yosef’s Geulah, the Light of Torah, and Overcoming Spiritual Darkness

Transcript

This Torah class is brought to you by TorahAnytime.com. Parshas Miketz and Chanukah. The connection is not just a pidrush, you know, remazim, to find remez for the parshas hashavua, to the Yom Tov, to the actual things that are happening during the parshas hashavua. But it's actually clear in the Rishonim that Parshas Miketz, Parshas Miketz, as well as the end of what happened in Parshas Vayeshev, is exactly the history of Chanukah, the history of what happened in Galus by Bayis Sheini and after, as well as when Mashiach comes and we will be nigal, we'll be redeemed, is all remez. It's all in the history of Parshas Miketz. This, rabosai, is actually two sipurim. One sipur is in last week's parsha, Parshas Vayeshev, in the beginning, where it says clearly, the sipur on the first pasuk in Parshas Vayeshev, it says that from the time that Yaakov Avinu returns, which is Vayeshev Yaakov b'eretz megurei aviv, the beginning of Parshas Vayeshev, he comes back, it's after Lavan, that's the history. Keiraisav, what happened to Yaakov is going to be the exact history, what's going to happen in Bayis Sheini. Churbanoi v'galusoi v'ge'ulas l'keitz hayamim. You know, we find in this week's parsha that Yosef becomes melech. He becomes the king. After so much suffering, after so much yisurim, we can call it galus. He was in Mitzrayim and in the house of Potiphar, and then in the jail, and all of a sudden, all of a sudden, he becomes the melech. You know, there's something called Melech HaMashiach Yosef, Mashiach ben Yosef. That's this parsha. That's what the Seforno means, that whatever happened to Yaakov, to Yosef, in these parshiyos from Vayeishev and the ketz, that is Bayis Sheini, the churban, the galus, and the future final redemption, the final geulah, which of course we understand Yosef becoming the melech, and that's the Mashiach ben Yosef. I want to show you that was just a general, a general outlook on the entire parsha of Vayeishev, Miketz, but I'll give you in pratiyus, in detail, in detail, how the story of Yosef in last week's parsha. And the fact that he becomes melech in this week's parsha is, of course, like we said last week, is about Chanukah. We spoke a little bit last week that the Medrash ties the fact that he was thrown into the pit through Reuven and the nes of Chanukah. The Medrash ties it together, an open, clear Medrash. It's a Medrash pliah, it's a Medrash Shir HaShirim. The Medrash says, Hadudaim nasnu reiach, al pischeinu kol megadim. That's a pasuk in Shir HaShirim. Hadudaim nasnu reiach, zeh Reuven shehitzil es Yosef. We know there was a story of dudaim with Reuven. So hadudaim, the flowers, they give smell. Who is that referring to? Reuven, who saved Yosef. Al pischeinu, the door, kol megadim. We have sweets, we have delicious delicacies, megadim. Zeh ner Chanukah. That's ner Chanukah, says the Medrash. So the Medrash ties together. The Medrash unites the story of Reuven saving Yosef with Chanukah, and we spoke a little bit last week about it, and we're going to speak a little bit more this week as well. But in this week, we also have that Yosef is freed from the bor, the final redemption. The bor was the beginning.

That was the start. Then he went down to Mitzrayim after being sold to Yishmael and Midyan, and in the house of Potiphar, the suffering. It wasn't easy, it wasn't easy in the house of Potiphar. The dangers of nisayon is tremendous over there. And yet, what? He stood strong, and still what happened? He was caught on something that he didn't do, and he was thrown again into slavery, to jail. And all of a sudden now, finally Yosef comes out shining, the melech. And this is the final, the final. This is it. Yosef now is not to be put back into galus, not to be put back into the pit. That's the final redemption. But I want to show you in pratyus, in specific, how Mashiach ben Yosef is tied to Yosef in this week's parsha. I'd rather begin not with the first part of the pasuk of miketz, which I'll get back to in a few moments, but just the way he was saved. How was Yosef saved? How was he taken out? How was he redeemed? So it says that they called Yosef, Vayiritzuhu min habor. He was ripped. He was taken quick, quick, like ripped away from the bor and brought to Paro. Says the Seforno, why does it have to be vayiritzuhu? He was taken out. He could be let out of jail. Why does it have to be that he is taken out of jail? Vayiritzuhu, with, like as if he's ripped away quickly, in haste, says the Sipurno Yesod, beautiful pshat. Yeshuas Hashem, when Hashem gives salvation, it's kherev ayin; it comes quick, quick, quick. And what does quick mean? Quick meaning that when the time comes, it happens quickly. We all know about that, right? U'v'itah achishenah. The Mashiach is supposed to come, when the final geulah is supposed to come, are you wait it, but even then, as much as I awaited, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, it shows up. But there's another point of quick. If you look, the Sipurno continues with the theme of quick and redemption, and he says that when Mashiach comes, he says it clearly, when Mashiach comes, it will be the same way as Yosef was taken from the pit. These are not pshatim from sources far out. This is the Sipurno on the pesukim, open in the Rishonim. When Mashiach comes, it's going to look like, it's going to mirror the same way Yosef was taken from the pit. Just as Yosef was taken from the pit in haste, so too when Mashiach comes, says Sipurno, it will be the same. Pis'om yavo ha'adon asher atem mevakshim. He brings the pasuk. Pisom. Suddenly, suddenly it will happen. So Yosef's history of how he becomes melech is actually a remez for the future when Moshiach comes also. It'll be, Vayirtzuhu pisom, suddenly, quickly, keheref ayin, keheref ayin. This, rabosai, is clear in the Seforno. This is not something which I'm adding or I'm giving my own explanation. The Rishonim tell us clearly that the parsha of Vayeishev and Miketz is the blueprint, the blueprint of the galus and the final geulah. If you look in Midrashim, Yavan had a special hatred to Moshiach ben Yosef. This is clear in the Midrashim. One of the things that they couldn't swallow was the Moshiach ben Yosef. What's in the Moshiach ben Yosef that irks them so much? So we've spoken in the past that Yosef, haMoshiach ben Yosef, is about ohr shel Moshiach, the light of Moshiach, which is the or haganuz, like the rekeach.

The Rishonim tell us clearly, it's the Or Haganuz that's hidden in the Torah. And that's why when Moshiach comes, there'll be no questions in Torah. Everything will be clear, the ohr, the light. When there's clarity, there's no questions, there's no pilpulim, bilbulim, as well as no machlokes. It'll know clearly. That's why teiku. You know, whenever we have the word teiku in the Gemara, whenever we have a question and we don't know the answer, we say teiku. What does teiku mean? Tishbi yitaretz kushyos v'abayos. Any question and any pondering, anything that we don't know clear in Torah, Moshiach, Tishbi will come and clarify it for us. And the Rishonim, again, not me, I'm not adding anything. I'm not, you know, in these topics it's very important not to add and not to give your own interpretations. It's just to state what the Rishonim teach us. It's just to state what the Rishonim tell us clearly, and that is that Moshiach, there'll be a ribui of Torah, malah ha'aretz daas Hashem. It doesn't only mean that Hashem exists, but the Torah, which is the daas of Hashem, which is the knowledge of Hashem, will also become malah ha'aretz. The world will see it with a clarity. Yavan is choshech. It says clearly, v'choshech al פני תהום. There was darkness. Yavan is darkness. Choshech zeh Yavan. It says in Parshas Bereishis. That Yavan—I'm sorry, the choshech is al pnei sehom. Choshech, ze Yavan. Shechshichu eineihem shel Yisrael. They made dark the eyes. The Ribono Shel Olam, when it was dark, made what? The ohr. He made light. Which light did He make? He made the ohr haganuz. He made that light that was so light that He had to hide it, and that it will return, as Chazal tell us clearly, when Moshiach comes. The Zohar and the Rishonim tell us, where is it till Moshiach comes? It's in the Torah. It's hidden in the Torah. It's hidden in the Torah. So Moshiach ben Yosef, which is oirei shel Moshiach, like we all sing in the song, Ze oirei shel Moshiach. What is ohr? The light of Moshiach. What do you think, he's going to come like a doctor that has a light on his forehead, that has a beam of light on his forehead? No. Oirei shel Moshiach is the Torah that he'll bring, the clearness in Torah that he'll bring, the ohr haganuz that he will return that's now hidden in the Torah. Yavan doesn't like that type of Torah. Yavan likes the Torah that they feel is legitimate. They're not looking for the depth of Torah, the pilpul of Torah, the Torah shebaal peh. They like the text of the Torah. So that's why Yavan is called choshech, because they like the Torah without the ohr haganuz in the Torah. Shechshichu eineihem shel Yisrael. And this is the pisayim yavo el heichalo, as we soon will explain. Suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, the Moshiach is going to come, just like by Yosef, vayiritzu min habor. What's the lashon? Keheref ayin, the blink of an eye. It's an interesting expression. You know, just if I may add a little bit on my own here now, this is not in the Rishonim, but it's an interesting point. When you blink, for a second your eyes are closed. It's dark. All of a sudden it's light. Dark, light. A blink is a good way of giving an analogy to quick, because people blink quickly. That's true. But it could also be an analogy: dark to light, dark to light. Closed, you don't see for a second. You don't even notice it. It's interesting. When you blink, you don't even realize that your eyes are closed for a second. Open, all of a sudden your eyes open up. The analogy is not just about the quickness of the keheref ayin here, but it could also be keheref ayin.

Not only the quick, that's what I'm saying. It's not only about the quick, but the keheref ayin could be about one second, closed eyes, and all of a sudden the eyes are open. Pay attention to what I'm saying. I'm going to show you now how choshech, the darkness, and Yavan, which represents the darkness, and geulah, which represents the light from that darkness, is about open and closed. The eye is closed, the eye is open. You know, one of the themes of galus, which the Rishonim tell us, is that we don't see, that we can't see what's there. Hichshichu eineihem shel Yisrael. Okay? You know, choshech, there's two types of choshech. There's choshech outside, and then there's choshech which the person is me'uvar, he's blind, he's iver. Outside is light. So someone tells the blind person, is it light or dark? So he has to be careful. He can't say it's dark outside, because outside it's not dark. For him it's dark. It's his eyes which are shut, sealed and closed. It doesn't say shehichshichu. It doesn't say they will machshich the world. Hichshichu eineihem, the eyes of Klal Yisrael. You know, there's a very interesting Torah Temimah. The Torah Temimah said controversial things to the point that people questioned, should we learn the Torah Temimah? And one of the controversial things that he said was that the makaf choshech in Mitzrayim wasn't outside, but it was actually on the eyes themselves. Cataracts. He says, because it's brought down that the choshech had mamashut, it had physical—there was a tangency to the choshech. The Medrash Chazal tells us there was tangency to the choshech. So he explains that the tangible is because it was on the eye. It was a tangible skin that grew on the eye of the Mitzriim, like a cataract. So it's makas choshech, but not outside. It's makas choshech of the eye, of the cornea. There's two types of makas choshech. There's choshech outside, light and dark, and then there's choshech that a person could be in the greatest light, but his eyes are cataract. The cornea is blind. It's choshech. Hechshichu eineihem, rabosai. If you pay close attention, as we soon will explain, it's not just that it was dark. It was dark; the eyes became dark, which means that Klal Yisrael's eyes became blind. Galus. Is darkness not external darkness, even though sometimes it could be, but it could be hichshichu eineihem. You know, 60, 70 years ago, there was Holocaust. That was dark outside. The whole world was dark. You know, it's an unbelievable thing if you look at the history of the Holocaust. I mean, there was lo yom v'lo layla. There was no day, there was no night. It was just, the world was in chaos, like the Mabul. Chazal tell us by the Mabul, shehame'oros laku. There was no day, there was no night. That's darkness on the outside. We're still in galus, rabosai. There's fears, there's sakanos that we have from, that we have to be afraid of, that might come up at any given moment. But for the most part, not dark for us outside. We have our homes, we have our jobs. So where is the galus? Where is the galus today? And the answer is hichshichu eineihem. The galus maybe is not the choshech external.

Internal, but it might be the choshech on the person internal. How many people are suffering internally, unhappy, lost, problems. So choshech sometimes could be an external. Choshech galus could sometimes be what? Internal. It could be the person. Yechshichu eineihem. Yavan was cultured. Yavan was very cultured. The Jew, if he was a misyaven, would have luxuries. The misyavnim, those that followed the Yevanim, they had a wonderful life. It wasn't Holocaust for them. But the blindness, the blindness, the internal choshech, the Jew suffered tremendously in Yavan because externally it was so appetizing. Because externally there was so much olam hazeh offered to the person if he would just follow. And you want to know something? You want Bible? You could have had Bible classes too. You're Jewish? Come. Bible, we're with you on the Bible. Let's go. We'll make you courses in colleges for Bible. Wonderful. Not stopping you from Torah, but I'm stopping you from which Torah? The Torah shebaal peh, the oral hagalus, the inner. Torah that a Jew has to learn. The choshech was an inner choshech. It was an inner choshech, rabosai, inner. It was the flame from within that the Jew has. Notice the Ner Chanukah is about hadlakas ner. You know, when we talk about the neshama, we say, Ner Hashem nishmas adam. The ner of Hashem is the neshama. The neshama of Klal Yisrael, they were trying to extinguish. The external Purim, the Bach tells us, they tried to exterminate us externally. Chanukah, they tried to exterminate us not externally, but internally. The fire, the fire from within. The Bach even quotes an interesting Rokeach. It's actually from the Rokeach, that the Yevanim went special after the menorah. It says, V'timu kol hashamanim. What about the rest of the Beis Hamikdash? So the Rokeach and other Rishonim seem to learn that their goal was not to be metameh the Beis Hamikdash. How did the Beis Hamikdash become tamei? U'bo'u bo pritzim v'chileluha. The fact that the pritzim, the fact that those who broke into the Beis Hamikdash came there, that itself is how they were metameh. That itself is how they desecrated and defiled the kedushah of the Beis Hamikdash. But their goal was not to go there and touch to defile. But one thing they did have intent to defile and destroy, says the Bach in the name of the Rokeach. The menorah and its lighting. The menorah is what they were looking. That's what they were after, the menorah. It's interesting, you know, in the history books, there is this coin that they have showing how they dragged the menorah to Greece, to taking away of the menorah. The Roman, I'm saying, the Arch of Titus. It's interesting, the menorah seemed to symbolize—it's an interesting thing, we don't find any other Klei HaMikdash—the menorah symbolized the soul of the Beis HaMikdash. This is what the Beis HaMikdash stood on. This is the, what do I call it, this was the siman, the sign of triumph, and that the Jews fell and were exiled through the menorah. I mean, they took everything. Why is the menorah the symbol? It's the symbol of triumph for the Greek, for the Roman, and the symbol of triumph of defeat for Klal Yisrael. And this is actually a rekech. I'm not saying not the history part, but the yesod of it.

The Rekeach says, and the Bach is—I mean, he doesn't quote the word Rekeach, but I found that it's actually in the Rekeach before the Bach—that the menorah was to them the goal, to destroy the menorah and its hadlakah, to defile it, because it says the Rekeach, with this they knew that Klal Yisrael is avudim. They knew that if they destroy the menorah, they have Klal Yisrael. They got rid of Klal Yisrael. And I asked myself why. Why is it that the menorah is the symbol, is the one keli and the one avodah that means that if we got this, we destroyed Klal Yisrael? So I think the pshat is pretty pashut. It resembles the Or HaTorah. If you look at the Rishonim, it's clear that the menorah is the semel, it's the sign, it's the token of Or HaTorah. Klal Yisrael without its internal Or HaTorah cannot survive. We've survived Galusin, we've survived Beis HaMikdash churban, but we cannot survive if the Torah and its kedushah and its limud is taken away from us. There's just no way. This is what keeps us going in the Galus. In fact, if we can still sit down and learn Torah b'kedushah u'v'taharah, the goyim knew this. The goyim who tried to disintegrate Klal Yisrael, they knew that the way to get to them— is to take away and defile the ohr haTorah. That the learning shouldn't be al yedei kohanecha hakedoshim, through kedusha, through taharah, because the ohr haganuz is the inner soul of Klal Yisroel. You can beat the external of Klal Yisroel. You're not going to win. You're not going to destroy the Yid. You take away his internal being, which is the Torah and the ohr haTorah, the ner Hashem nishmas adam, you won him. You've got him. I believe, rabboisai, that this is actually part of the explanation to the beginning of Parshas Miketz. If you notice, it says, Vayehi miketz. Chazal tell us, miketz, ketz sam lachoshech. From here we deduce that the Ribono Shel Olam has a time, has a budget of time, so to speak. Ketz. This is the time frame. Sam lachoshech. And the Medrash continues. The Medrash says, because the yetzer hara is choshech, and the yetzer hara also has its time. And when Moshiach comes, also ketz sam lachoshech. We'll have the same concept. It's the first Medrash in this week's parsha, ketz sam lachoshech, that the Ribono Shel Olam—you know, when we talk about the ketz, the ketz when Moshiach comes, it's taken from the word miketz of this week's parsha, where Chazal tell us, ketz sam lachoshech. There's a time. There's a deadline. That was the right word. There's a deadline when the yeshuah is supposed to come. So I have a question. I have a question, rabosai. If you talk about choshech, keitzad lachoshech, you would use the word choshech to connotate the darkness of the yisurim, yisurim themselves, pain could have darkness. What is that darkness? It's depression. The pain could be referred to as darkness, choshech. But if you look at the Medrash, the Medrash is not talking about the pain. The Medrash discusses the choshech, the yetzer hara. You know, maybe it would be a good idea if we learned the Medrash inside, and you'd see exactly what I want. Can you bring me a Medrash Rabbah, Bereishis?

As we've discussed, Vayeishev mikeitz is the blueprint of galus and geulah, and future geulah, as the Seforno says clearly. And the parsha here uses the word mikeitz, and Chazal teach us that mikeitz is because that there's a deadline. The word keitz is a deadline, that for every galus there's a keitz, there's a deadline. I read you the lashon of the Medrash: Vayehi mikeitz shnosayim yamim. Keitz sam lachoshech. Keitz sam lachoshech, a deadline for the darkness, zman nosen la'olam, says Chazal. The Ribono Shel Olam gave a time. Kamah shanim yaaseh ba'afeilah? How long will there be darkness? U'mai taam keitz sam lachoshech? Why? Why is there a deadline? Says the Medrash, shekol zman sheyetzer hara ba'olam, oifel v'tzalmaves ba'olam. Death of darkness is in this world. Ne'ekar yetzer hara. When the yetzer hara is uprooted, then the darkness will go away. Then the Medrash says, davar acher, keitz sam lachoshech. The same thing happened to Yosef, that Yosef also, there was a deadline for his being in the beis ha'asurim. When the keitz came... Vayachaloi Pari, Pari dreamt. So we see from here that the ketz sam lachoshech, miketz, this week's parsha is not only about Yosef. It's a davar acher that it's about Yosef. The second pshat in the Medrash is that it's about Yosef. The first pshat in the Medrash, who's it about? Us, in galus, future. Ketz, there'll be a deadline when the geulah will come. And what is this ketz sam lachoshech? Because as long as the choshech is here, it's yetzer hara. It's about the yetzer hara, this choshech. So you see clearly that the Medrash is not learning that the choshech is the bitterness and the darkness of the yisurim, of the pain, but actually the actual galus itself is choshech. It's yetzer hara. What does that mean? So I'll tell you what I believe pashut, and I think it's a tremendous lesson that we could take from this, and this could be a lesson in Chanukah, and explains a lot of things about Chanukah as well, and that is that the choshech we're referring to is, like I spoke to you in the beginning of the shiur, it's the darkness where the man himself is in darkness. The person himself is blind, and that blindness, rabosai, is a cataract called the yetzer hara. The yetzer hara is a tremendous cataract. The yetzer hara takes the cornea and blinds it. It puts afeilah, it puts dark clouds around the eyes. That you can't see. Chazal are defining that the choshech of the galus is not the pain and torture, because at times it's not all that bad. So where is the choshech of the galus? It's not the pain, but it's the blindness, the choshech. It's the yetzer hara shekol zman sheyetzer hara ba'olam, ovel v'tzalmaves ba'olam. The deadline, the miketz, the ketz, the choshech. It's not choshech, rabosai. Pain, darkness, but blindness darkness, which the chachamim define as maaseh yetzer hara. This is also Yosef. It's true Yosef was in the beis ha'asurim and it hurt him. It's true there was darkness, pain, in the beis ha'asurim. But there probably was even worse ivaron, blindness, and I'll explain to you now what I mean. It says in the pasuk, U'Pharoh cholem. Pharaoh is dreaming. You know, when somebody has a dream, you don't say u'Pharoh cholem, you say u'Pharoh chalam. When you're talking about—

Not after the fact, about the fact. And the right word is u'Pharoh cholam. Pari dreamt. Pari is dreaming in the verb. What does that mean, he is dreaming? The dikduk is off. If you want to say a story happened in the past, you say the person dreamt, not is dreaming, unless he's dreaming right now. Pari's not alive now to be dreaming. In Yiddish we have a zvertel, u'Pharoh cholem, he was a dreamer. Maybe that's what it means. When a person is in constant denial, so you call him a dreamer. So u'Pharoh is not cholam that he had a dream. He's a cholem; he's living in dream world. He's living in fantasy world. That's not the pashut pshat. Darchei HaKadosh says the pashut pshat is because actually Pari had this dream not just that time, that moment where Yosef, miketz shnasayim, som, the end of the two years. But actually, u'Pharoh cholem, constantly he had this dream. For two years already he's been having this dream, but it never affected him, says the Darchei. Now Yosef has to come out of the pit, it affects him. U'Pharoh, ketz sam lachoshech, kivan shehigia ketz cholem Paro chalom. So the Medrash seems to say that he just got the dream now. Darchei is saying, no, he dreamt the same dream for two straight years. But all of a sudden now it bothered him. So the mefarshim ask on the Aruch HaChaim, Chassidish literature especially speaks about this, then why does he need to have the dream for two years? So according to the way it's mashma in the Medrash, now Yosef is supposed to leave, so now Pari has the dream. So the coincidence is thus that since he had to leave, therefore Pari has the dream. Makes sense. But if it's not that he's leaving two years already, he had to leave now, Yosef, why does Pari have the dream for two straight years? So there's a sefer from a very, very big tzaddik, a Chassidic rebbe called Reb Pinchas Koritz, considered from the great Chassidic masters in Chumash and drush, and he says a meiridike, meiridike pshat. He says actually the table was set for Yosef to leave two years ago. Pari had this dream two years already. But what happened? Yosef wasn't ready. Yosef wasn't ready. Why? And he says a meiridike pshat. Yosef made a mistake. U'schartani. He tells the sar hamashkim, Remember me, remember me. He said it twice, and for those two words, two years. He had to sit in jail for two years. So I always thought to myself that the mistake was just two words. Two words. Two words of lack of bitachon. Instead of coming and being mishtadel with tefillah to the Ribono Shel Olam. He went to a person, he went to the sar mashkim, and he asked him for help. Why are you trusting the sar mashkim? Why don't you go straight to the Ribono Shel Olam? You know Hashem is with you everywhere. Hashem imo, it says clearly, Hashem was with him. You know how many times it says that he was an ish matzliach? Rabbi Yankiv Kamenetsky points out 18 times Yosef opens his mouth in the Chumash, and every time, you know what comes out of Yosef's mouth? Hashem. Biladai, Elokim yaaneh shlom Paro. Elokim yachncha b'ni. Shem Shamayim shogur b'fiv, Rashi says, that the adon, the master of Yosef, Potifarah, Potifarah sees that the Shem Shamayim was shogur b'fiv, says Rabbi Yaakov, look, every time Yosef opens his mouth and talks in the Torah, Elokim, you'll find the word Hashem in there. Just as the Chartani, there were two words that he went wrong. And I always like to say, you see from here, but two words, the damage. Two years. He had to have two years of beis asurim to fix two words. You know, I would...

Expect the Chafetz Chaim to write a pshat like this. Look at the consequence of two words. First he said two extra words. That's how I always learned it. But this year, when I saw Reb Pinchas Karatz's vort, I understood he was saying something deeper. It wasn't the two words. I'm explaining what I think he means. I think Reb Pinchas Karatz is trying to say it's not about the two words, but he needed the two years to fix, to work on himself, to be oker the lack of bitachon that he had by saying Uschartani. He said Uschartani. Now he had to work on himself to uproot that. It took two years. Had it taken one year for him to do it, he would have been let out after one year. That's what Reb Pinchas Karatz is saying, a beautiful pshat. The Aruch HaShulchan, the table was set for him to leave early, but he just wasn't ready. The moment Yosef was ready, the moment that he fixed the zachartani from within, the shoresh, the root of where that chisaron bitachon came from, now it bothers Paro. The Ribono Shel Olam appears around us, the geulah. We have to seize on it by fixing what's causing the galus. The geulah is ready around us. You know, they always talk about Mechashef kitzin, when Moshiach is supposed to come, and he doesn't show up. What does that mean? They were wrong, the people who gave us this information, and the answer is they weren't wrong. Everything was set and prepared. We missed the opportunity to uproot what brought the galus, that we could now use the time, the ketz sam lachoshech, to bring the Mashiach. Now Yosef is ready, after two years says Reb Pinchas Koritzer, because he fixed, he uprooted. He uprooted the reason why he said there was a chartani. It was a chisaron bitachon. Now let me explain to you. For another person, the Beis Halevi says this wouldn't be a chisaron bitachon. He's supposed to do hishtadlus. His famous question, the Medrash says, Ashrei hagever asher yiftach baShem, it's Yosef. Or, Hagever asher yiftach baShem is Yosef. So make up your mind, is it baruch? Is the Baal bitachon Yosef, Baruch hagever asher yiftach baShem, or is it orur? And the answer is, for someone who is on the level of Yosef, that he's such a baal bitachon, because he was Baruch hagever asher yiftach baShem, so for him, for him, how could you even do the slightest drop of hishtadlus, which for another person would even be maybe a mitzvah? The Ramban talks at great length in Toras Adam that certain tzaddikim are on a level that they don't have to have any hishtadlus whatsoever. And he talks about the inyan of going to doctors. He says we, regular people, are mechuyav to go to a doctor, and if we don't go to a doctor, we're over on V'nishmartem lenafshoseichem. Tzadikim, who are on a very high level of bitachon, they don't need to go to a doctor. The opposite. There's such a level of bitachon that they shouldn't even go to a doctor, because it shows that they're not solely in the hands of Hashem. They're actually putting their health in the expertise and help of others. Better not to even go. The Steipler, zecher tzaddik livracha, I remember when I was younger, younger bochur, the Steipler was sick. He then, he was niftar. He was very makpid not to go and get medical intervention. For this Ramban, he was on such a level. He went into a coma, so the doctor came and put an intravenous into his arm, because they figured he's not by himself at the moment, so it's gedai to put it in. He woke up from the coma, it was like a semi-coma, and he saw the intravenous in his arm and he pulled it out. And he got upset. Why'd you put it in? I didn't want it. Tzadikim are able to be on such a level, and the Beis Halevi seems to say that that was Yosef. Yosef was on such a level that he shouldn't have done any hishtadlus whatsoever. So Yosef had to fix that. Now what is the chisaron?

One of the hishtadlus that Yosef had was a lack of emunah, chas v'shalom, chas v'shalom. Yosef was full of emunah. So where does that, I would call it the slip, where did the slip come from? That he slipped and he said, Luz chartani. And the answer is, it's a blind spot. There's a blind spot. Sometimes we don't see that we're making a mistake. We think everything is the way we're supposed to be doing, but we make a slip, a mistake, a blind spot. Keitz sam lachoshech. The way I explained to you doesn't mean the choshech of the pain. It doesn't mean the choshech of the pain of the yisurim, of the galus. But it actually means the blind spots that the yetzer hara puts in front of us that doesn't give us the ability to fix what will bring the yeshuah. We sometimes have choshech. We don't know how to proceed. We don't know what it is that we're doing wrong or what we should be doing to be doing right to fix that will bring the deadline of the keitz sam lachoshech, because the choshech is the yetzer hara that blinds the person. Yosef, in a minute, minute split second, had a blind spot. Maybe he even felt that he should do the hishtadlus. He felt it was halacha v'chuyev. And the blind spot was that he should have known that he was not mechuyiv, or he had the geus to think that he was mechuyiv. It's so complicated when somebody has to deal with bitachon. On one hand, bitachon is to be mishtadel, and on the other hand, bitachon is to trust. The fine line between the two is so sharp, razor sharp. It's a hair difference that sometimes it's confusing what's called normal hishtadlus and what's called too much hishtadlus. It's possible that that hairline of a difference is the blind spot that the yetzer hara knew would make Yosef make the mistake and slip. And when he fixes that choshech, and he's oiker that choshech, and he sees clearly what the right thing to do and how to proceed and how to be misaken, Vayehi miketz shnasayim yamim, u'Pharaoh cholem. The table was set a long time ago, but now quickly everything starts to move in the proper direction. You know, there's a very nice sefer. The Rishonim speak about it, that when Hagar with Yishmael, they were dying of thirst in the midbar, it says Hashem opened up her eyes, v'hinei be'er bamidbar. There's a well of water. So the sefarim say, Hashem opened her eyes. The well was there always. The yeshuah is standing right in front of us. The problem is the einayim, the eyes don't always see what's right in front of us. The yeshuah could be right there, right there, right there. But what happens is the eyes are blind; they don't see. Till vayiftach Hashem es eineha, Hashem opened up her eyes. The supporter uses the lashon, Hakel b'cheskas sumim. We're all sumim. We're all blind men till Hashem opens up our eyes. A person could walk his whole life thinking he has perfect vision. 20/20, huh? 20/20 vision. Ah, and he has the latest contact lenses; they give him less better than 20/20, all right. And he's blind like a bat, blind like a... And the bat at least has radar to know how to go. He doesn't even have the radar. Can you imagine flying a plane without radar? That's how we look in life. Why? Because the choshech of the yetzer hara, he blinds us. He ... us like a cop. Oh, does he ... us. Does he work on from within to be mevalbel, to be machshich, to make us lost in the clouds, afelah. You know what...

It was when it's, you ever wake in the morning and it's me'unan. What do you call that? What? Fog. Fog of life, yeah? Medrash uses this lashon. That's mamish the lashon of the Medrash, abayesei. Shekol zman sheyeitzer hara b'olam, oifel, v'tzalmaves, d'chsiv, Even oifel v'tzalmaves. Oifel. You know what oifel? Fog! The brain is all fogged up. Why? Because the yetzer hara fogs you up, and in galus, it's a very foggy day there. Almost never a clear day. The clear day, then you would know how to get out of the fog. You would know how to drive through it and get to the destination. Keitzam machoshech, Yosef Rabbeinu resembles the idea of keitzam machoshech, and that Yosef all of a sudden, with his bitachon, with his bitachon, with his bitachon, yeah. You know what herafayin means? Sudden. We don't want the word sudden. We want herafayin. Herafayin means the eye is closed, and all of a sudden the eye is open. Open. Suddenly the eye could open. It can be closed for a second, but it's closed. A second's closing of an eye, a second of a chartani, it was closing his eyes for a second. For one second he closed his eyes, but he was going on a very serious highway. If you close your eyes for one second on a serious highway. It would be a very big problem. A lot of bad things could happen, and all of a sudden your eyes are open. That's keitzad machoichech. Keitzad machoichech. Yosef is in the pit, and he fixes, because he's omeid. He recognizes where the choshech, where the yetzer hara, where the mistake was, and he was able to fix it. And that mistake is, we think that what's going to help us in the galus? Mishtadel. Mishtadel is not going to help you, rabosai. What's going to help is to be mesaken, to fix what went wrong, why there was a problem in the first place, and if we undo it—for example, the Beis Hamikdash was destroyed because of sinas chinam. If we fix the sinas chinam, then I want to prove this to you. But I first want to show you Yosef a little bit more, how Yosef learned, how Yosef understood to fix the Zechartani, to the point that he went to the other extreme, that he was the baal bitachon that the Chazal attribute him with. Baruch hagever asher yivtach baShem. And I want to show this to you. If you take a look, when Yosef is told that Pari wants him, it says in the pasuk, Vayaritzu min habor, and we spoke, why did he have to be ripped out of the bor? So we told you one pshat, yeshuas Hashem kheref ayin, in the Seforno. In the Acharonim on Chumash, there's nice halachic Torah about it, because it happened to have been—it was Rosh Hashanah. The day that Yosef was taken out of the bor was Rosh Hashanah. Are you allowed to leave the tchum? You're not leave tchum. Shaving, right? So by Yetzu min habor, they had to rip him out of the bor, and they had to force him to take a haircut. Why? Yontif, Yontif. Pari wants me. Who cares Pari wants me? Yontif. That's what the mefarshim, Tzafnas Paneach, the Rokeach, others—it's famous. It could be even the Chida speaks about it a little bit. Vayotziu min habor, it seems that it was forced. It wasn't with free will. Why? Rosh Hashanah. Rosh Hashanah. Many say this. I would like to say, al pi aggadah, not al pi halacha, al pi aggadah, according to the pshat we've been speaking till now, why it had to be he was forced. And the answer is, when somebody gets a besurah that the king wants him, you know right away, you don't have to convince him more than just tell him, right? He's already running on his own. Before you're able to take him, he already called a taxi to get there. Why? This is my opportunity. You hear? This is it. This is it. Here's my chance. Yosef learned, I don't manhig the matzav.

is manhigoti from the matzav. I'm not going to do extra hishtadlus. I let it happen. You're taking me out of the bargain. I want to show you how far this goes. Vayigalach, vayechalef simlotav. Rashi says, why did he take a haircut? Mipnei kvod hamalchus. Rashi stresses he did it because of the kavod, the respect of the kingdom. Rashi needs to tell me why he cut his hair. He cut his hair. He could have had wild hair. Who knows, who knows, who knows how long he took a haircut for? Why do we need a special—Rashi has to point out, mipnei kvod hamalchus? And it's pretty obvious from the pasuk. I mean, if he's supposed to come to Paro, he takes a haircut. The pasuk says he took a haircut. I know why he took a haircut. He didn't want to look like a wild man in front of the king. I mean, you don't need a Rashi for that. I want to say, pshat, rabosai, you know why he took a haircut? Not to be nosei chein b'einei Paro. The point was not, I'll take a haircut, look good, he'll give me the job. I have to look good on the interview. No, no, no, no. Because of kavod hamalchus. No hishtadlus whatsoever. Yosef is not going to be mishtadel. He made this mistake in the pit by telling, Go on my behalf. Now he lets Hashem—Lo shehu manhig es hamatzav, ela shehu munhag, munhag mehamatzav. He lets the situation take him, because Hashem is running the show, as they speak in English, as they say, and therefore he waits for Hashem. To tell him what the next step is. Here, tell a guy the king wants you and you're stuck in jail, and you have kishron, you know, he knows, he knows how to be poter chalom. So another guy thinks, he looks in the mirror, Tommy, the tie looks good, yeah, the tie, the hair is, yeah, listen, this is my chance. I gotta be, I gotta make a good impression. He realized impressions, shmimpressions, it ain't gonna work. Impressions could be depressions. Not necessarily gonna work. If Hashem wants, melamed shegzeirah emes, vacharitzus sheker. Yosef learned in his life, and Yosef was the lesson, as the Ramban says, shegzeirah emes. The Ramban speaks about how come Yosef went to see the brothers. He didn't know he was in trouble with them. He didn't know that they hated him and they wanted to... So why did he go? And why did Yaakov send him? Yaakov doesn't understand the situation when he was in dream world, he was blind. So the Ramban says, melamed, this teaches us shegzeirah emes. If what Hashem says should be will be, vacharitzus, all the smart hishtadlus that a person does, all the plans that he makes, it doesn't help. Vacharitzus is sheker. Yosef is trying to teach us with his life, the reason why Yosef is in the Torah as one of the avos is to teach us, like we spoke weeks ago, taharah, purity, Yosef HaTzadik, and bitachon. Think about the tremendous darkness that Yosef had from the moment he was thrown into the pit. How much depression he or she could have had. Where? What? It's most bizarre. Can you imagine you take a kid, little kid, and tell him, you know what? We're going to send you to Uganda. We're going to give you another place in Africa, Somalia—not Somalia—Kachakapunga Papunga, where they sit there, where the chiefs have spears through the back of their necks here, and the women wear plates in their ears. Yeah, you think, where? What? Who? That's where they were sending Yosef HaTzadik here to Mitzrayim. He has no idea what the future is going to bring in years and years, and yet his avodah was bitachon, to have full faith in the Ribono Shel Olam. So here he learned this, and how does he learn it? That when he's taken from the pit, he had to be taken from the pit. He's not running on his own. Vayiritzuhu min habor. Now we stop this. Vayigalach. Like k'vod hamalchus. He doesn't do it for himself. He does it because there's halacha of k'vod hamalchus. And I want to show you even more. You look at the Eben Ezra, he says, Vayigalach, hamigaleach. Vayigalach, hamigaleach.

That the one who gave him the haircut gave him the haircut, which means not he himself took a haircut, but the megaleach, someone barbered him, someone gave him a haircut. So they say because Rosh Hashanah, they say the same famous pshat. Since it's Rosh Hashanah, he didn't want to take it himself, but the guy, shvusim amir l'akum. They took so much pilpul halacha on this. I would say very simple. You know why he didn't pshat in the pasuk according to the Ibn Ezra is? He didn't take his own haircut. No hishtadlus whatsoever. Rashi learns he took the haircut for kavod malchus. The Ibn Ezra says, you know why he took the haircut? Because they forced him. He wasn't going to take a haircut either. Then the megaleach. Someone tells you that the king wants to see you, yeah? You take your haircut, you sit in front of the mirror, yeah, you shave this way and that way, perfect. Yosef learned not to do any hishtadlus whatsoever, and that's what the Ibn Ezra means, ha-megaleach. He was taken by somebody to give him a haircut. He himself wasn't taking the haircut. Point being, Yosef learns no hishtadlus. I was thinking of another thing also. When he tells Parai, and he leads Parai, you should have somebody who's going to be in charge, and he never mentions once that it's him. Most people, when they try to, like, you know, tell the boss about a new job that should open up, they throw a few hints in there. You know, someone like me would be good for the job, right? He's saying nothing. He's talking, Parai should do this, and all of a sudden Parai's, Oh, who's smarter than you? Let it be you. This is not him. No. Why are you telling him that? What, the pasuk? He's giving good advice. It has nothing to do with him, and I'll show you even further. You notice the next part of the pasuk says that Pari tells him, Re'eh, nasaticha al kol eretz Mitzrayim, right? What does Re'eh, nasaticha al kol... Look, I put you... What, he put him there. So that's what he told him. He gave him the job. So what's Re'eh, nasaticha? You read the pasuk: Re'eh, nasaticha... What does that mean? What does it mean? Look, okay, he gave him the job. It's a baal mussar saying, mighty. Yosef showed no reaction whatsoever. Yosef was humble, as if he didn't get the job. Another person gets such a job, he goes, Oh, thank... Oh, great. Didn't say one word. So Pari's telling him, Re'eh, nasaticha. You know what just happened? He just became the president of Mitzrayim. Yosef had no reaction. Why? Because Yosef did not think, Oh, opportunity. I have an opportunity here now. No. What is it? Hashem, this is what You want, okay? You're leading me somewhere, okay? I don't see the end yet. I'm not sure yet where this is leading me to. Another person would have been thrilled already by now. Whoa, I went from the beis asurim to be the president. Another person, it has to be told, look, look, look. Pari wants a reaction from him. Do you know what just happened? Yosef sort of... that would be a big deal. Because Yosef is waiting to see in it the leadership, the hanhaga, that Hashem is leading him in which direction. Because Yosef is not—Yosef, Yosef is bil'adai. Es haElokim, asher otcha Elokim hera l'Pharaoh. It's all about the Ribono Shel Olam. Now let's go back to Chanukah. Yeah. Chanukah is also keitz sam lachoshech. It's interesting why. You know, we have the hadlakas ner Chanukah, hadlakas ner Chanukah. You know, the war continued quite some time after Chanukah. The war did not end. This was not the beginning of complete, complete yeshuah. The yeshuah still had to come. This might have been the beginning. This might have been the breaking point. That's true. The point being, keitz sam lachoshech.

It is at this point that Klal Yisroel understood what's going to turn around the galus for them. It is what now they see, that we're the tikkun. We're the tikkun. The reason for the galus, the Bach tells us, because they were misrashel ba'avodah. The Bach says that they were getting lazy in the avodah. So when the Chashmonaim came and were moser nefesh, which is the epitome of the opposite of misrashlus, so the Ribono Shel Olam gave them a nes of Chanukah and so on and so forth. So actually, we're not celebrating the final yeshuah. What are we celebrating? We're celebrating the ketz sam lachoshech, that the darkness went away, and now we see light on how to proceed further and get ourselves out of this galus. The Chashmonaim was a theme of how to be mitaken, how to stand up to the galus. They got the solution. Till now, the Yevanim, hichshichu eineihem. They blinded us. We had no hope. We didn't know where this was leading us. The Chashmonaim stood up and they said, Menorah, with clarity, ketz sam lachoshech. So this is the miracle. The miracle isn't the yeshuah, the final yeshuah. The miracle is the ketz sam lachoshech, the light in the darkness. And that's why we're madlik the neiros. And the Baal HaChanukah asks a question: How come Purim, we didn't get the yeshuah through a milchamah, through a war, while by Chanukah, we got it through a war? We had to fight and through the fight. As a matter of fact, it's one of the terutzim to the Beis Yosef's question: Why is it that we have eight days if the miracle was only seven days? So he answers, one of the terutzim is that it's for the milchamah. Day one is for the milchamah. As a matter of fact, it's brought down in many Acharonim that the nes of Chanukah, meaning the menorah, was to legitimize the nes of the nitzachon of the milchamah. Which means that the milchamah, people would say, Ah, you guys had strong, you had missiles, you had the chochmas, American technology. They always have a way how to explain how Israel is not really a miracle, okay? Nes Chanukah was a miracle. That's not with American technology. There wasn't a special—maybe they'll say there were special fuselages, what do you call it, nuclear powers, so it was able to go for eight days, you know? Okay, that's today. But in those days they couldn't come up with that excuse. So that's clear that there was a miracle. So that legitimizes the miracle of the milchamah. As a matter of fact, the Chasam Sofer says that they fought the war. What does it say? Va'achar kach ba'u bonecha lidvir beisecha, ufinu es heichalecha, v'tiharu. Va'achar kach—what's va'achar kach? Because as a sign of the nitzachon of the war, to show that we won the war, they went in to light the menorah. This was the, you know, like some people put up a— A statue, a flag. Klal Yisroel put up their flag. They went into the Beis Hamikdash, and they put up a menorah to show that we won. What did we win? We won in the ketz sam lachoshech. In the darkness, there became clarity. It became very clear. You look at the Megillas Antiochus, it says clearly, clearly. The Megillas Antiochus says clearly that there was discussion between Yochanan and the children and every— we're lost. And Yochanan said, No, we're not lost. We can do it. We can be strong and we can win. And after that speech, they said, You know what? We follow you. That's me, k'moicha, b'keilim Hashem, we follow, right? What is that? That was the clarity, the crack in the choshech. They gave up. Everybody gave up. What are we going to do? So Yochanan taught them, like the Bach explains, mesiras nefesh, mesiras nefesh. The Rebbe Chanan, I told you, asked this question: How come by Chanukah it was a milchamah, while by Purim there was no milchamah? So Rebbe Chanan has a yesod that when there's kefirah in religion, you have to go to war physically. And he said about himself that he would be ready to go to war.

War against the communists. If it meant soldier, he's ready to be a soldier. It's a famous sicha that Reb Elchonon said. Purim, they want to kill us physically; we leave that up to them to protect us. Lulei divrei Reb Elchonon, b'neshikata afarato. I'm not coming to argue with him, but maybe a different angle. You know why Chanukah needed a war? Chanukah needed a war because the war was the tikkun. That itself was how we fixed the problem. The problem was we were mitrashel. We became laid back, lazy. We missed the zeal, the mesirus nefesh that was needed to do the avodah. So how were we metaken? How did we fix that? We fixed that by going to war. Purim was not about that. I even believe Purim was about a chisaron of bitachon. You know, they became close to the king. They wanted a six-month party. Why? Because they wanted to feel secure in Persia. The parshan tells clearly they wanted to be secure in Persia with the king. So therefore the tikkun was what? Not to be mishtadel, but to have bitachon in Hashem. That's what I believe the real pshat would be. Why Chanukah? Chanukah was about, clearly, the Bach. The Bach and Shulchan Aruch are clearly, they were mitrashel, and they needed mesirus nefesh. So the tikkun was to go be moser nefesh. The keytzam lachoshech is that they realized what was needed to undo the galus. Usually the yetzer hara blinds us on what's needed. To drag us out of the choshech, to drag us out of the galus. Here they realize what it is. Purim was the opposite. Purim was about the lack of bitachon. They didn't have faith. They believed that if they get close to the king—so what did the Rabbeinu Shalom show them? You want to get close to the king? Okay, look what the king is going to do to you. And then they had to have bitachon in HaKadosh Baruch Hu, okay, fast and pray. You see, this is the tikkun. And where is it? It's the clarity, and it takes a gadol, it takes a tzaddik, either like Mordechai or like Yochanan Kohen Gadol, or by Chanukah, Mordechai and Purim, to give clarity, direction of how to get out of the tzarah, how to get out of the problem. So here, Yochanan was teaching them how to get, and that's the keitz of machoshech. It could be for years and years they still had to fight, but they were heading in the right direction because they were in that situation. As a matter of fact, there's an interesting Chasam Sofer that he says that it's possible that they didn't even light the menorah. It liku neiros b'chatzros kodshecha. It wasn't even the menorah that they lit. They lit candles, which resembled the menorah, because in the Chatzros Kodesh you don't light the menorah. Nobody lights the menorah in the Chatzros Kodesh. You don't light in the chatzeiros. As a matter of fact, there's even another pshat that he brings down, that it wasn't b'chatzros kodshecha in the Beis HaMikdash. Every home, every home lit menorah on top of the ceiling, on top of the roof. Liku neiros b'chatzros kodshecha, in all the chatzeiros, chatzeros, there's many. That's why we have a halacha, a hadlakas ner Chanukah, that we light it in the chatzer. One of the halachos of ner Chanukah is we should light it b'chotzer. Right, bayis. Why is there a din in bayis and chatzer? Because the original menorah, according to some opinions, it wasn't that they came to the Beis HaMikdash, because the Beis HaMikdash was tamei. They lit menorah where? On the houses, the houses, in the chatzeros, the yards of Yerushalayim. Why? Because this was to remind that we won the war and we see the clarity, the Or HaTorah and the Or of the menorah. This is the vedliku neiros bechatzros kotchecha, you hear? This was a crack in the choshech. It was a crack in the darkness. And this crack we celebrate. Keitz, sam lachoshech. Keitz, sam lachoshech. Chanukah. And the war, it was difficult afterwards. Galus, rabosai, galus is difficult. Galus is very difficult. But when does galus become doable, as they say in English? When does galus become a vehicle to geulah? When it's without the choshech, when we work against the yetzer hara that's blinding us to figure out what it is that's going to bring the geulah. And that's pisom, and I will end with this, pisom yavo.

Hey, why pisay? What is pisay? You know what the word pisay means? Suddenly. When someone is mishtadel, he can't say it came suddenly, right? You can't, because you say it came suddenly, you start to do something, so you know it's coming. When a person completely didn't do anything, and he didn't expect it, because he wasn't working towards it, and it just shows up anyway, the hishtadlut in galus is never going to help us. We always think, yeah, it just drives us backwards instead of frontwards. Pitom yafo, with bitachon, like by Yosef, by Yitzumin habor, out of nowhere. Imagine one morning they open the thing, and he's ready to get the food that they're sending him down. They probably were sending him down the packaged foods, you know, like in the jail, and he's ready, and all of a sudden they grab him. You're going to the... What? What are you talking about? That's pitom, when he stopped doing all the hishtadlut. It's not about you. You can't do anything. I believe also that that's pshat, Giborim b'yad chalashim, rabim b'yad me'atim. Why did it have to be giborim b'yad chalashim? Why does the war have to be that way? Rabim b'yad me'atim. Why does it have to be that way? You know, if the Eibishter wants, he could do a very interesting thing. You know what he could do? Many times in the history of Tanach, we find that the Ribono Shel Olam comes with a malach to the other enemy, and he frightens the living daylights out of them, and they run away. You know that. We have so many stories where they get messages, and they ghosts, and they disappear. Here it was not. Here it was a fight, but in the fight it was giborim biyad chalashim, and rabim biyad me'at. You know why? The chalash has no hope whatsoever. He goes to war thinking, I don't even know how I could win. There's no way I could win. Rabim biyad me'at. And you win anyway. No hishtadlus whatsoever. That's the keitz ha-machoshich. The lesson of, you're not mishtadel, but you're boteach baKadosh Baruch Hu, that brings about the keitz, keitz, keitz, keitz ha-machoshich. I would just like to add one more last nekudah, one more last nekudah, okay? A beautiful pshat I was thinking about, beautiful. You know, the Or HaTorah, the clarity of the chachamim, we think is a wisdom, we think it's a clarity. They see the situation, and the truth is the Or HaGanuz is misofo olam ad sofo olam. It's so deep, and there's so much in the Torah and in the Or HaTorah, and the chachamim who tap into the Or HaTorah, there's so much knowledge, there's so much there. You know, there's a Beis Yosef's kasha: how can we light? If it was only seven-day miracle, we make eight days out of it. So the Beis Yosef gives two terutzim. The miracle, they cut it up. Two simple terutzim, okay. Actually, this kasha is not the Beis Yosef's kasha. The Tosafos and other Rishonim ask him before, but the Beis Yosef, he was the one who made it famous, and we spoke a few weeks ago maybe because Beis Yosef l'hava. The idea of Yosef being against Yavan is Beis Yosef l'hava, maybe Beis Yosef, right? Okay. Medrash. You know, today we have hundreds of terutzim to this question, hundreds and hundreds, and there's sefarim that are printed, and every day another teretz is said by a different rebbe in a different Rosh Yeshiva. I mean, could you imagine a person writes a book, the Rashba has this question, and forget the Rashba's teretz, I'll give you a hundred of my own terutzim. You take the book and throw it in the garbage. Who needs your terutzim? You should have a hundred ways to explain the Rashba, not a hundred ways to say your own terutzim. What kind of a— imagine a whole sefer like this. You know, the Rebbi, the Marsha has a question. Forget the Marsha, I'll give you a hundred. Who's interested in that? The Rishonim have a kasha on the teretz, right? Someone once came to Rav Gifter, zecher tzaddik livracha, that he wrote a sefer to answer a hundred and three of Rav Akiva Eiger's kashas. Three questions, he says, I had no answer for, but for a hundred—

Hundred of the three questions, for a hundred of the hundred and three, I had a teretz. And I wrote a sefer, a teretz on Kiveiger's questions. So Rav Gifta turns to him and says to him, Vos iz dayn mame's nomen? What is your mother's name? He says, Because you must be a real choleh. I have to daven for you. If you think you can answer Kiveiger's kashes, a hundred of... Kiveiger remains tzarich iyun, and you think you have a hundred terutzim to a hundred... You're a choleh. Give me your mother's name. I gotta pray for you. You're a very sick man, you know. Then he turned around to him and he said, But you know, I can hear that you're happy, because the fact that you said three, you didn't have an answer for, at least you understood three of Reb Kiveiger's questions. At least that. So it's something, to understand three questions, that you understand that you don't have an answer for. You understood at least three of them. Same thing here too. The yeshiva has a question, and each person has a hundred terutzim: al pi nigleh, al pi nistar, al pi... pilpul. Why do we have all this? So I'll tell you what I think the pshat is, rabosai. I thought about it over Shabbos, be'ezras Hashem, this is what I came up with. You know, the Yevanim respected the letter of Torah, but they didn't respect the Torah shebaal peh. They didn't respect the words of the chachamim, the drashos. They didn't respect all that. That wasn't, for them, a thing. Zeidim b'yad oiskei Torasecha. What is a zeidim? You know what the word zeidim means? You say it every Yechadik. What is zeidim? Does anybody know the word zeidim? So the truth is, zeidim has a simple pasuk that people taught. Letz, yahir. Letz, yahir means he's a letz, he makes ridicule, and yahir means he's a gaiva, he holds of himself high. So yavan, letz, yahir. So I found an interesting Rambam, and I want you to know that I've shown this Rambam to very chashuv people, and every time I show it, they get so happy. It's a Rambam far out where so many, most people don't, you know, either learn, and if they learn it, they wouldn't catch it. It's like a one-word, two-word Rambam out of nowhere. The Rambam is in Hilchos Parah Adumah. There's a whole question between the Tzedukim, those that learn the text, and the Chachamim, if someone who has heref shemesh means he went to the mikvah, but he didn't have the heref shemesh, he didn't have the night coming, sunset, could he make the efer parah? So the Tzedukim say yeah, and then the Chachamim say no. That's brought down in the Gemara. So the halacha is, we're metameh the kohen. We make the kohen bedavka tamei to undo what the Tzedukim say. So the Rambam, when he brings this halacha in perek aleph, halacha yud-daled, of Parah Adumah, he says, to be mafkia me'osan hazeidim—he uses the word zeidim, it's interesting, this zeidim, yeah—she'osim kefi ha'oleh al rucham. They do only what they feel, what they want. Why does he talk about it in Parah Adumah? What does he mean? I'll tell you. Parah Adumah is chok. The goyim talk about parah adumah. The goyim say, We don't know what this parah adumah... it doesn't make sense to them. Hereshemish, not hereshemish. They look at the chacham, You guys are crazy. You know what zedim are? Zedim are that they think we're smarter than you. They do olam arucha. They only do what they feel. They only do what they think makes sense. They were very cultured, Yavan. Yavan was extremely cultured. They looked at the talmidei chacham, the chachamim, as, what do they call that from a million years ago? They call it archaic. You guys look like you're foolish, old foolish rabbis. You know what the chachamim do? The chachamim take a pasuk and they make a drasha. You know what the drasha is? Vav, extra vav, not an extra vav. If it's the ein inyan kan, ein inyan l'sham. You know the games, so to speak, in the yud-gimmel, you know, the yud-gimmel middos shehaTorah nidreshes bahem. The Yevanim, look, you guys are crazy. You guys are archaic and backwards. Grow up. Get into the modern world. Zedim, says the Rambam, they do lefi olam arucham. It has to make sense to them, that's all. And if it doesn't make sense, they don't like it. The chachamim are different.

Why do the Chachamim have the Torah? So zeidim would make fun. That's pshat zed, and yohir. They would hold themselves higher, that they're much smarter than the Chachamim. So zeidim, b'ha'aras yeseirah. It's not like Haman who hated the Jew, or where the times where they hate the Torah. They don't hate the Torah. They hate the, so to speak, the primitive, you primitive Chachamim, enlightenment, hoyl al rucham, says the Rambam, which means what they think makes sense. So the Chachamim were the oiski Torah shecha. The zeidim were those that made fun. Let's yohir. He's gaivah; he holds himself more intelligent. So what do we do? The Chachamim made a takanah of Ner Chanukah. They seem to have made a simple mistake, a mathematical mistake. The nes was seven days, and here they make it eight days. Any guy who was an enlightened intellectual, a lif, look at the old rabbis, they couldn't count. They couldn't count. They took it—it's supposed to be a seven-day miracle, yeah? Seven days. They made it eight days. You know what we show? There could be hundreds of reasons behind the Chachamim, hundreds and hundreds of reasons, hundreds of reasons, Torah sheba'al peh. Because in the Or HaGanuz is ein sof, and every year it becomes more clear and more terutzim and more explanations and more understanding into the depth of how the Chachamim made, so to speak, a simple mistake. Because that's what Chanukah is about. Chanukah is to uphold the Torah sheba'al peh. The wisdom of the chachamim over the stupidity and the self-centeredness of the enlightenment of the Yevani, that he holds he's brighter and smarter and he knows better and he... Keitz, sam lachoshech. The choshech is when we don't see that there's so much in the Torah, there's so much. It's also choshech. A person ללמוד תורה, you know why? He doesn't understand. The Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh writes, so it says clearly in Devarim, he says that if a person would only write, V'rachta al kol hatov, you're supposed to bless Hashem by birchurim, it says, al kol hatov, on all the good that He gives you. Says the Ohr HaChaim, tov is Torah. We all know the word tov, ein tov ela Torah. So you should bless Hashem for the Torah. Why? Because the Torah is unbelievable, sweet and wonderful. And then he says, had only someone tasted the ohr haTorah, the sweetness of the Torah, he would run in the streets like a drunk. He would run in the streets like a drunk who runs after his next bottle of whiskey, the next fix of a drink. That's how much he would love it. So why don't we have this? Because we didn't see it. We don't see it. We don't see it, choshech. People do not see. They do not see the ohr haTorah. They do not see because it's choshech, choshech. The darkness doesn't let them see. Chanukah is about keitz sam lachoshech, so the ohr haTorah shines forth. That's why the Chanukah, the ohr haTorah shines. This is... A good lesson for Chanukah: open your eyes, open your eyes, open your eyes. Clear, clear, clarity to see the beauty of Torah, and to see the beauty of mitzvahs, and to see the beauty of what it means to be a Jew. The clarity. And that's why it's such an exciting holiday, simcha, there's so much simcha, because Pikudei Hashem yesharim mesamchei lev. The Torah is extremely enjoyable, says the Medrash Mishlei. When? When it's mitzvos Hashem barah, clear, me'iras einayim. The Medrash in Midrash Mishlei, tes-vav. When is Pikudei Hashem yesharim mesamchei lev? When does the Torah make you happy? When it's mitzvos Hashem barah, clear, me'iras einayim. The eye, oh clarity, it's clear, it's crystal, it's see, or you see the light of it. Let's see the light of the Torah and the mitzvahs, and we'll have a freiliche Chanukah, because that represents the אור התורה, and we should be zoche to the geulah. Pisach yavo el hacholeh, Adonai shartem avakash. You've just experienced another Torah class, brought to you by TorahAnytime.com.