A Chanukah thought from my youth: I. The Puzzle The Midrash Rabbah on Bereishit comments on the word ' חשך ' (darkness): זה גלות יון, שהחשיכה עיניהם של ישראל בגזרותיהן, שהיתה אומרת להם, כתבו על קרן השור שאין לכם חלק באלהי ישראל "This is the Greek exile, which darkened the eyes of Israel with their decrees, commanding them: 'Write on the horn of the ox that you have no portion in the God of Israel.'" What does this cryptic decree mean? What is the קרן השור (horn of the ox), and what does it mean to have no חלק (portion) in the God of Israel? II. Chanukah and the Oral Law To understand this, we must first recognize what Chanukah represents in Jewish tradition. Chanukah is unique among Jewish holidays—it is the first holiday established not by divine commandment in the written Torah, but by rabbinic decree. It is the cornerstone of Torah she'ba'al peh , the Oral Law, and the authority of the Sages to interpret, expand, and apply Torah to new circumstanc...

I. The Miracle We Know The Chanukah story is familiar: After the Maccabees reclaimed the Temple, they found only one sealed flask of pure olive oil - enough to burn for a single day. Miraculously, this oil burned for eight days , until new pure oil could be prepared. We commemorate this miracle by lighting candles for eight nights. But as with most familiar stories, the surface conceals deeper questions. II. Three Difficulties The Beit Yosef's Question The Beit Yosef raises a famous difficulty: If there was enough oil for one day naturally, then the miracle only lasted seven days - the additional seven days beyond the first. Why, then, do we celebrate eight days of Chanukah rather than seven? Many answers have been offered over the centuries. Perhaps, we can miraculously find oil for one more novel solution. The Brisker Rav's Question The Brisker Rav asks a different question entirely. The Menorah requires specifically shemen zayit - olive oil. But miracle oil, oil that...

  I. The Opening Verse אֵ֤ל  ה וַיָּ֢אֶ֫ר לָ֥נוּ אִסְרוּ־חַ֥ג בַּעֲבֹתִ֑ים עַד־קַ֝רְנ֗וֹת הַמִּזְבֵּֽחַ׃ Psalm 118:27, a cornerstone of the Hallel we recite throughout Chanukah, declares: 'אל ה' ויאר לנו, אסרו חג בעבותים עד קרנות המזבח'— "God is the Lord and He has illuminated us; bind the festival offering with cords until the horns of the altar." Rashi suggests this "illumination" alludes to the miracles of the Exodus or David's personal salvation. Ibn Ezra reads it as a halachic principle: sacrifices must await the first light of day. Perhaps we may suggest a different reading , one that emerges from the very heart of the Chanukah miracle. II. The Puzzle of Aharon's Consolation לָמָּה נִסְמְכָה פָרָשַׁת הַמְּנוֹרָה לְפָרָשַׁת הַנְּשִׂיאִים? לְפִי שֶׁכְּשָׁרָאָה אַהֲרֹן חֲנֻכַּת הַנְּשִׂיאִים חָלְשָׁה אָז דַּעְתּוֹ, שֶׁלֹּא הָיָה עִמָּהֶם בַּחֲנֻכָּה לֹא הוּא וְלֹא שִׁבְטוֹ, אָמַר לוֹ הַקָּבָּ"ה חַיֶּיךָ שֶׁלְּךָ גְדוֹלָה מִשֶּׁלָּהֶם, ...

The Talmud in Zevachim 88b presents a teaching by Rabbi Inyoni bar Sason connecting the eight priestly garments to specific sins for which they atone. Most of these connections follow clear symbolic logic: the mitznefet (turban) sits high on the head and atones for haughtiness; the me'il (robe) produces sound through its bells and atones for lashon hara (slander); the michnasayim (pants) cover the genitals and atone for sexual impropriety. Each garment's physical properties or symbolic position creates an organic connection to its corresponding sin. But the very first connection breaks this pattern entirely. The ketonet (tunic) atones for bloodshed , proven from the verse: "They slaughtered a goat and dipped the tunic in blood" (Genesis 37:31). This raises four distinct problems: It's merely word association, not logical - "tunic" appears with "blood," but there's no organic symbolic connection like the other garments have....

In the previous two sections we explored the meaning behind the metaphor of the be'er and how it differs from a ma'ayan. We saw how these different modes are represented by the pach (flask) and the keren (horn), and how they apply to kehunah and malchut. We showed how this plays out through the arc of history and the nature of divine knowledge itself. The prophetic era was ma'ayan —direct revelation without intellectual effort. The withdrawal of prophecy created the be'er mode—accessing the same divine wisdom through toil and self-sacrifice. The Zevachim sugya documents this transition. The final prophets, who were also the first of the Men of the Great Assembly, experienced and guided the transition from prophecy and revelation to a new mode of accessing divine knowledge through intellectual struggle and dedication. But the transformation didn't end there. It continued to deepen through the Second Temple period, reaching a crisis point and developmental mileston...

The Puzzles of Zevachim 62a The Talmud in Zevachim (61b-62a) presents a discussion that appears, at first glance, to concern purely technical matters of Temple architecture and ritual practice. Yet beneath the surface lies a puzzle about knowledge itself—about how divine wisdom is accessed, transmitted, and established when the sources of direct revelation have been withdrawn. The discussion begins with the dimensions of the altar. The Mishnah (Middot 3:1) records that in the Second Temple, the altar was expanded from its original dimensions of 28 by 28 cubits to 32 by 32 cubits, adding four cubits to the south and four to the west, shaped like a gamma. An obvious question arises: why was this expansion necessary? Rav Yosef answers that the existing size proved insufficient. But the Gemara immediately challenges this: the population at the beginning of the Second Temple period was far smaller than during the First Temple, which would mean far fewer sacrifices. How could a smaller popu...