During Chanuka, it’s crucial to keep one thing straight: What is Po (here) and what is Shom (there). It’s not always clear, and it holds a real key to understanding what the Chag is teaching us.
The Z3 conference, which takes place Po (here) at the OFJCC, is a virtual event this year spread out over Chanuka. The speakers are therefore mostly Shom (there) even though that can mean almost anywhere but can also mean Israel. Each year, the conference examines the relationship between Israelis and Diaspora Jews in an age in which classical Zionism seems to have faded. One of the themes of the conference is that for several generations, Israelis looked down on Jews in the Diaspora. They felt that they were Po, in the center of things, while everyone else was Shom. Z3 likes to promote the idea that everyone, regardless of being here or there, is now an equal partner.
The symbol for that partnership is a clever play on the Dreidel. The sides of the Dreidel stand for the saying, Nes Gadol Haya Shom, a great miracle happened there, with the “there” being Israel. After centuries of such a Dreidel, the return of Jews to Israel demanded a Dreidel 2.0 -- it should say that a great miracle happened “here,” with a “Peh” (for Po) replacing the letter “Shin.”
The Z3 conference has a new Dreidel, 3.0, in which there are five sides, to accommodate a “Peh” AND a “Shin,” because that includes both the Jews who are “here,” which still means Israel, and those who are “there,” in the Diaspora.
I hope that’s clear. IF so, let’s make it more complicated. It is plain that until the 20th century, there was never a Dreidel with a “Peh” on it. And of course the miracles of Chanuka took place in the land of Israel. But the “Shin” on the Dreidel is not just a function of geography. The Talmud in Megilla relates to a verse in the curses at the end of Vayikra. The verse recalls that Hashem never forsook the Jewish people in any of its exiles. It lists among those exiles -- “B”Eretz Oyveihem,” in the land of their enemies -- the episode of the Chashmona’im and Chanuka. Why? The commentators say that under the rule of the Hellenizers, the Jews were as if they resided in a foreign land because they were dominated by a foreign culture. Or, in other words, “here” was “there.”
But we can go even further. Chanuka is a Chag that is fundamentally of the exile. First because it took place when the Jews were in exile in their own land, as the Gemora claims. But it is more exilic than that: Chanuka’s entire function is to accompany the Jews throughout the exile, a function that ends only with the final redemption.
Many Jews and non-Jews see the second Temple as somehow comparable to the first. This is a mistake. The second Temple looked better than the first; it was physically more impressive. But in every important aspect, it was a pale imitation. The constant miracles of the first Temple were absent -- some from the beginning and some disappearing after a short while.
This is not just a reflection of the second Temple’s general diminishment. Ultimately, the way to view the second Temple is as part of a merely provisional sojourn in the land of Israel. During the centuries in which there was a second Temple, the Jewish world even in Israel fasted on Tisha B’Av, conscious that it was living in Israel but still mourning the real Temple. Many Jews stayed in Babylon; the creation of what we today call Edot Hamizrach, the communities of the East around Baghdad and in Persia, begins among the vast numbers of Jews who did not return to Israel for the second Temple.
Those who did go back were not home, however. They never had a real sense that they were decisively Po. The return of the Jews after the Babylonian Exile was not a triumphant restoration of life as it was before. It was merely a chance to develop the tools before the inevitable return to exile. That is why the development of the Oral Law is so much a part of the second Temple era. The Oral Law will fortify the nation for survival in exile and help it bridge the exile until the final redemption.
Just as the development of the Oral Law was a tool, so too Chanuka was a tool. The perspectives gained during Chanuka are supposed to fortify us for the long encounter with Western culture.
Of those tools, the most important is a rootedness in something that is truly Shom, or “there.” This is another sense of “Shom.” Not a rootedness in the geographical land of Israel but rather a rootedness in what takes place beyond this world. The word “Shamayim,” the heavens, is a play on the word “Shom,” or there. That's one sense of Shom. But another realm of not-here relates to the concept of time. The Rambam relates the fundamental disagreement with Greek thinking in how to conceive of the beginning of Creation. Even today, the grand mystery of Western scientific thinking is origins. The Hellenizers did not and do not recognize a realm beyond or before this world, whereas for the Jew this is the key to the realm of the holy.
The eight days of Chanuka are called Shmone in Hebrew. This word also carries in its root a sense of Shom. We hint at this as well by concentrating on the motif of oil, which is called Shemen, and also carries this root.
But these references to “Shom” are more than something vaguely “there.” It is a realm with which we can interact. Indeed, it is a realm with which we are called on to interact. When we relate to what is holy, we are relating to that ultimate “Shom.” When we enter a child on the eighth day, as the Bassans did this week, into the covenant of Avraham Avinu, we are showing that we can act in the lofty and holy realm of eight. By relating to this realm we forge a connection to it. The Kohanim act in this realm regularly, which is why they participated so heavily in the miracles of Chanuka, both in the war and in the Temple.
This is the real partnership between the realm of here and the realm of there -- between the mundane world and the holy. At Chanuka, we celebrate the re-establishment of that partnership. Chanuka allows us to resist a focus only on the here-and-now. It resisted that foreign focus when we were in Israel, and it teaches us to resist it through the long exile, whether it presents its challenge here or there.
Shabbat Shalom & Chanuka Sameach!
