Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection

0:00 Today is Rosh Chodesh. Rosh Chodesh is the first day of the month in the Jewish calendar, in the Hebrew calendar. And the month that we just began today is the month of Kislev. Now Kislev is the Babylonian name for this month.
0:17 And our sages teach us that Kislev has many special things that we can be inspired with in this month, many things to be focused on during this month. So I'm not going to get into all the Kabbalistic meanings behind the month of Kislev, but just from a very, very simple understanding, on a superficial level, the sign of this month, the zodiac sign, is the Sagittarius, which is the rainbow.
0:50 Interestingly, the rainbow was brought to the world on this month because when Noah was in the ark and the rain stopped, the flood ended on the 27th of Kislev. It is the third month and the ninth month, depending on what you count from. If you count from the beginning of the months, which starts in Nisan, it's the ninth month. from the beginning of the year, which is Rosh Chodesh, it's the third month.
1:22 Interestingly also that this is one of the few months that has either 29 days or 30 days. It's not always a full month. Sometimes it's a shortened month. Sometimes it has 30 days and sometimes it has 29 days based on the previous month of Cheshvan and how many days Cheshvan has.
1:42 And based on what Cheshvan has is whether or not Rosh Chodesh is a one day or a two day, Rosh Chodesh. This year it's a two-day Rosh Chodesh because Cheshvan is a full month. It also never starts on Shabbat. The month of Kislev never begins on Shabbat.
1:58 There are four other days of the week that it begins. Also, the month of Kislev ends in the middle of Hanukkah. If you remember, every year on Hanukkah, there are two days of Hanukkah where we add in our prayers Yalavi Yavo. And Yalav Yehovah is specifically recited on Rosh Chodesh because we have two days of Rosh Chodesh in middle of Hanukkah.
2:23 Then the last day of Hanukkah is no longer Rosh Chodesh, which is already the second day of the month of Teves, which is the following month. Well, actually, the zodiac symbol is a bow, right? Sagittarius is a bow.
2:47 and the bow resembles the rainbow. Another thing is that the temple, the vessels of the temple were began their production right after Yom Kippur and were concluded on the 25th day of Kislev, which is the first day of Hanukkah. That was the day that the temple, the Mishkan, was completed. All of the vessels, everything that was needed for the tabernacle was all set on the 25th day, finalized on the 25th day of Kislev.
3:24 Now, it wasn't inaugurated and put into service the first day of Nisan. In one of our other classes, we mentioned that it was the 23rd day of Adar, of the month of Adar, when it was put into assembly, and then disassembled, and then the 24th day again, and the 25th day. Each day, a different part of the tabernacle was assembled with what was assembled the day prior, and then disassembled every day. until the 30th day of Adar.
3:55 And then on the first day, the full tabernacle was assembled and kept assembled till they traveled. And whenever they traveled, they disassembled. The idea was is that they needed those days of training of how to put together and take apart the entire tabernacle. Because don't forget that every one of the walls of, for example, the Holy of Holies or the inner sanctuary,
4:22 the walls needed to be put together in a very specific way. So you had a panel, and the panel would have an olive, and then the next panel would have an olive as well on the side that was connected. The two olives would be put together. And then you'd have the letter bet at the other side of that panel, and the next panel would have a bet as well.
4:43 And they always needed to be aligned. The exact panel was in the exact spot every single time. So they learned the process. They learned the system of how to put together, assemble, and disassemble the entire tabernacle.
4:55 But that's one of the reasons our sages say Chanukah. What is Chanukah? Chanukah means laying the foundations. It's Chinuch.
5:02 Chinuch means laying the foundations. The foundations for, it's like in education. What do parents do?
5:10 What's their job? Lay the foundations for this child. This child's life is dependent on the foundations that we lay for our children. So very interesting about Chinuch, you know, we wouldn't have psychologists and psychiatrists in business if parents did a good job.
5:30 The majority of Dr. Rosenstock's business comes from parents who do a miserable job with their children and their children are lacking self-esteem or they're lacking self-awareness or they're lacking anything that they're lacking generally comes from the foundations that the parents laid that were either inappropriate, or missing some of the fundamental nutritional, emotional elements that a healthy person needs. So yeah, it's very important that when we talk about Hanukkah, Hanukkah is laying the foundations of our light that we're instilling into our
6:11 existence, into our day-to-day living. Very interestingly, We have Pesach, which is at the beginning of the year, of the months of the year. Then we have Shavuot, then we have Sukkot. And then there's no more holidays.
6:26 Then you have three rabbinic holidays. We have Hanukkah, Tubeshvat, and Purim. To carry us along, to keep us going.
6:40 You see, in six months, we have Pesach, Shavuot, Sukkot. That's it. But then there's nothing for the next six months. And that is the rabbinic holidays that sort of carry us along, where all of the fundamental principles that we're supposed to take in on Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot, all of our Emunah, also, very interestingly, on Chanukah, and on Tu B'Shvat, and on Purim, they're always observed as regular weekdays to put it into our ordinary life.
7:09 You know, on Pesach, it's a day where it's like a Shabbos. We don't do any labor, we don't do any creative labor, from any toil, from any work, any creative labor. Hanukkah, Purim, Tu B'Shvat, these are times where we're instilling all of this holiness into our day-to-day life.
7:29 Yeah, you know, we're going to go to work that day. And that day, we're going to make it special. We're going to integrate the lessons that we learned, the uplifting experiences that we've had, and integrate them into our day-to-day lives. That is, it's, you know, a holiday is not just like I come, I show up, I put my American flag on Memorial Day, and, you know, I eat my turkey on Thanksgiving, And that's it.
7:52 I fulfilled my, that's not what it's about. It's about really ingraining into our consciousness, our emunah, our belief and knowledge in Hashem, our trust in Hashem, our devotion to the Torah, our devotion to the mitzvahs, the dedication that we have. Interesting, we mentioned last week, we mentioned about Hanukkah, that Hanukkah, we don't have the obligation to have a feast on Hanukkah. While on Purim, we do have an obligation for a feast.
8:24 Why? Because on Purim, they said we're going to kill the Jews. And we were speared physically from annihilation. So we celebrate with a physical component, with food, with nourishing our bodies.
8:42 But Hanukkah was not a physical threat to the Jewish people. It was a spiritual threat. They want to defile the Jewish people. If you look at the great, great, beautiful prayer that is added in our prayers over the days of Hanukkah, we say, what did they want to do to us?
9:01 When the wicked Syrian Greeks fought against the Jewish people, they wanted them to forget the Torah. And to make them sin. Spiritual deprivation. Spiritual annihilation.
9:26 They didn't want to murder us. They didn't want to kill us. You'll be our nice Jewish neighbors. But you're not going to have a bris.
9:34 You're not going to be able to have a holy marriage between a man and a woman. They wanted to defile all of the women before they got married to their husbands. They wanted them to be with the Greek emperors prior to being with their husband. They wanted to defile our holiness.
9:53 They wanted to limit our access to Torah. That's why we play the dreidel because when they came and they were inspecting whether or not they were learning Torah, they would hide the books and they would play the dreidel as if that's what they were busy doing. Look, the Torah tells us in last week's Torah portion that even when the Jewish people are, quote, annihilated, we won't be annihilated. We're going to come back and we'll be stronger than we were prior.
10:21 But when we lose six million Jews in such a, and six million I don't think is the correct number. I think it's much more than that. It's unfathomable, the loss. And to most of us, I believe we're just in shock.
10:35 I think we're still in shock. the word Holocaust stirs up such an emotion and it wreaks such havoc, I think is just an indication of the trauma that we're all still in. We all met Holocaust survivors. I had three grandparents who lived through the Holocaust.
10:57 My maternal grandparents met in Auschwitz. They got married in the DP camp. I mean, it's unfathomable the challenge that they experienced losing the majority of their families. There's no question.
11:13 It is terrible, terrible tragedy. And I don't think we've come to terms with it yet. The idea of Hanukkah, Hanukkah is a time to strengthen our Torah, is to strengthen our commitment, is to strengthen the way we say our prayers and the way we talk to God and the way we talk to one another and the way we internalize the idea of God's existence day to day in our lives. My grandfather would always comment how it's so odd that yeshivas give off on Hanukkah.
11:47 Their students go home for Shabbos, Hanukkah to spend Shabbos with their families. He says it should be just the opposite. On Hanukkah, they should be in yeshiva. Give them the Shabbos before Hanukkah.
11:57 Give them the Shabbos after Hanukkah. But on Hanukkah is the time to be in yeshiva, to learn and to grow. That's the power that we have on Hanukkah is such a tremendous opportunity to carry us. They can carry us for an entire year.
12:12 What we instill through the candles, through lighting the menorah. And looking at the lights of tomorrow, we're going to talk about this throughout the month. We're going to dedicate a lot of time bringing us into the frame of mind of Hanukkah, hopefully. So this concludes the segment talking a little bit about the month of Kislev.
12:30 Kislev is a very powerful month. It's a time of great light that comes into our souls. Our sages tell us that 30 days prior to the holiday, holiday. Why?
12:48 It says this about Moshe Rabbeinu. Moshe started teaching the Jewish people about Pesach 30 days before Pesach. Why? Because that's when all of the Shefa, the Nitzotzos, the sparks, the heavenly sparks come down already 30 days in advance.
13:02 And if we want, we can just start picking up those sparks. We can start picking up those spiritual vessels and pile them in. Get them filled up. Hashem should bless us.
13:15 This should be the best Hanukkah we've ever had. It shouldn't be like the same Hanukkah we had when we were five or six years old and lit the menorah. It should be one which is enriched with our connection to the Almighty and bringing our connection, our holiness, our consciousness of God to the greatest levels we can possibly attain. Amen.