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This Jewish Inspiration Podcast is dedicated to learning, understanding and enhancing our relationship with Hashem by working on improving our G-d given soul traits and aspiring to reflect His holy name each and every day. The goal is for each listener to hear something inspirational with each episode that will enhance their life.
00:01 - Intro (Announcement)
You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe, Director of TORCH, the Torah Outreach Resource Center of Houston. This is the Jewish Inspiration Podcast.
00:12 - Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (Host)
Okay, my dear friends, welcome back, welcome back to the Jewish Inspiration Podcast. We are going to study now three very, very powerful tools to make Hanukkah really special. See next week. On Tuesday night, we begin lighting. Three very, very powerful tools to make Hanukkah really special. See next week. On Tuesday night, we begin lighting. Is it Tuesday night? Tuesday night we begin the first light of the menorah. I believe it's Tuesday night. So we're going to start lighting the menorah. And what's going to happen? You see, we think that we are going to just show up one day and light the menorah and feel a connection to that mitzvah, and we discussed this previously that it doesn't work like that. If you want to feel the moment, you have to prepare for the moment, and we spoke about this last year. But now we're going to give the three practical tools to get ourselves ready for the menorah. Now, wednesday night is the first candle. Thank you, thank you, lauren. So Wednesday night next week we'll be lighting the menorah. What do we do? We just pull the menorah out of a box, dust it off, get the fresh candles or oil, get the wicks ready, get everything ready, and then we light the menorah and that's it. No, that's not the way we're going to connect with this very, very awesome and powerful holiday. See, the essence of this holiday is to dispel the darkness. To dispel the darkness.
01:44
My wife went to a class last night one of the local rabbis and he said something very, very incredible. He says Jews don't celebrate victory, jews celebrate survival. We didn't win a war per se. We won that. We were able to survive another day. We're not big warriors. Jews are not really known until the IDF. At least, we weren't known for our might. We weren't known for our ability to blow up pagers no, that was just a joke, right but we weren't known for our ability to bomb things. Weaponry wasn't, isn't really the skill of the Jew. So you think about Matityahu and his children overtaking a very, very powerful Greek army. And now what's the lesson for us today? Okay, so they say they tried to kill us. We won. Okay, so let's party. But it's more than that.
02:52
Our goal, our objective as Jews, is to bring light to the world and share that light with the entire world. The world today has copied us. They put their lights out. You go in Meyerland in Houston, here, and you'll see that people have their lights and their holiday lights and Santa Claus is all lit up with these lights. It really is entertaining. It's sometimes even very beautiful, but that's not what our holiday is.
03:22
We have a menorah, a simple menorah, and we light a fire, and that fire dispels the darkness. We, each of us, have an inner light that we're trying to bring to the surface. The way we do that is sharing that light with the world, bringing light, and we have to do this, we have to be when we don't light that menorah after the eight days of Hanukkah. We have to be a walking menorah, we have to be a light to the world. It's an example of eight days being a light to the world, being a light to the world till we understand one second. That's my job. My job as a Jew is to be a constant light to the world, to the nations Look and they say ah, this Hisham, hashem, nikra, alecha. Ah, I see that the name of Hashem is residing on this person. That's our aspiration that we should become a living menorah. So here our sages share with us an incredible idea that we should become a living menorah. So here our sages share with us an incredible idea.
04:27
It says Rish is the first step that you need Tzarech. She'yeh o'inyon muvan u'bor u'lay. A person has to understand. A person has to have it clear. Be'hayinu she'zoruch lilma desi'inyon velasik besforam u'mevarim ma'i p'nim yus ha'mo. What is the internal essence? The internal essence of Hanukkah, not just a superficial search online. You can ask Gemini or AI, openai, you can ask Grok or one of the chat GPT, and you can ask them tell me a little bit about hanukkah and they'll give you a beautiful little essay summarizing the battle, the victory, the flask of oil, the miracle great. But there's so much more to this holiday that needs to be unpacked. How do we do that? We need to do good, in-depth research and we have to learn. We have to learn what the Talmud says. In the next couple of days, I'll be sharing two episodes that we did discussing in our Thinking Talmudist podcast about the source for Hanukkah.
05:45
Hanukkah is not a myth. Hanukkah is a real event that happened and continues to happen every year. But we have to learn more about it, not its external features only, but its internal features. The external, we know. We light the menorah, we put it by the door or by the window. We light one on the first day, one candle on the first day and each successive day for eight days, we add one. We know the external, we know the performative, but what's about the internal element of the mitzvah? To learn about it, to gain an understanding of it. And then what step number two? To learn about it, to gain an understanding of it. And then what Step number two?
06:29
Sorokh sholol lihistapik belimu re'inyom bevat. Don't let it just be study, intellectual stimuli, but rather elo lisakem le'atzmo be'bihirus le'fit f'soso mahi n'kuda se'inyom. To try to summarize what it is that you learned succinctly and apply it to yourself. Don't only learn it Now. Have it crystal clear. When it becomes clear to you, then you'll be able to internalize it, so we can understand the concept. But now we have to make it personal so we can internalize it, and then to make it ours. We talked about this many, many times.
07:30
Does everybody in the world believe in God? There's no atheist in a foxhole. Everybody, deep down, knows that there's a God, a creator of heaven and earth. But you know what's more difficult than just having this idea that there is a God? Having clear knowledge, consciousness of that godliness, consciousness that I know every single minute of every day that God is my sole provider, god is the one who gives me everything I have, all of my success, all of my failure, is just God throwing darts at me and seeing how I'm going to respond. When you got the job, it was God, and when you got fired from the job, it was also God. He's testing you to see your spiritual abilities. Not for God to see, for you to see and to give you a journey of personal growth.
08:37
To get the holiday to be one that is via data, I know and I connect with it in a deep well, it should be knowledge of the holiday, to really really internalize these ideas, to put it into action. You understand it, it becomes part of your consciousness. Now you can put it into action. You understand it, it becomes part of your consciousness. Now you can put it into action, to put them deep into your heart, to live them, live them through and through. And then step number three After it's clear, it's crystal clear. After it's clear, it's crystal clear actual preparation for the holiday. You see, on Pesach, we do this. You know one of the great parts of Pesach, you know, with the holiday of Pesach.
09:35
Just a quick reminder the Jewish people left Egypt, but they left Egypt without bread. They took the matzah, they were planning to bake bread, but they only had a few minutes to prepare the bread. It couldn't rise. They didn't have time, they just pulled it out of the oven, as is Thin little matzah bread. Thin little matzah bread. That's what we eat on Pesach. We don't eat any bread.
09:59
Sages tell us oh, it's much more than that. What is the yeast that's inside the bread? Arrogance. You see, that same bread, that loaf of bread that you buy. You can squeeze it down to a small little little piece of matzah. That's what it could really be. But you know what we put in there? We put some yeast and now it gets inflated, inflated, inflated. You know what arrogance is? Really, a little little guy that inflated himself to something that he thinks he's so big.
10:35
The matzah represents humility. The Jewish people were taken out of Egypt. We realized that we cannot do anything without God. Let me ask you when we eat that matzah. Many people are busy eating that matzah and they're like this is actually terrific, or they're giving their whole commentary on whether there's a crunch or it's a good crunch if it has a good flavor, not a good flavor. They're missing the point. What's the point? The point of the whole eating the matzah is realizing that we cannot live without the Almighty. And if we're arrogant, we're pushing God away. We're saying me, I'm bigger, god is smaller. What does God say in his Torah? The two of us can't reside in the same room. If you're so inflated, you're kicking God out. If you're not deflated but you're humble, you realize that everything is a gift from Hashem. Oh, now we can live together. Now there's room for both of us. And this is so fundamentally important that anything that we want to acquire in our Judaism, we have to contemplate, we have to focus, we have to dedicate time to internalizing what is the deep secret here.
11:59
So what's the first step in practical preparation? Listen to this. You want to know the first thing. So what am the first step in practical preparation? Listen to this. You want to know the first thing. So what am I going to do? Okay, hanukkah's next week. How in the world am I going to make this practical? You know the first part of any mitzvah that you want to make practical Bila u'bakasha Prayer and asking the Almighty.
12:21
You ask Hashem to help you. Bila u'bakasha Prayer and asking the Almighty she is a keulizeh. You ask Hashem to help you. Hashem, I want to connect with Hanukkah. I want it to be a true light, an inner light that you have instilled within me, you imbued within me. I want to bring that out to the world. I want to be your messenger. Bring that out to the world. I want to be your messenger to bring light to the world. Hashem, help me that Hanukkah should be a time of uplifting spirit, to feel it, get emotional about it, get excited about it, even before the holiday, to pray Hashem. In one week I'm going to be standing in front of you lighting the menorah. Help it be a time that I bring out my light to the world as well. Hashem, help me.
13:22
A very practical tool Asking Hashem With a dogma, an example Avodas, hadlokas and eras. Lighting of the candles. That service of Hashem, shehi ha-hakara, bi-yichud, hashem yisbarach. What is it? It's a recognition of Hashem's oneness. What is it? It's a recognition of Hashem's oneness. Why are we lighting a candle? Why are we lighting the flame of the menorah? Why? Because God told us to. God told us through his sages this is a custom that was a mitzvah. That was instituted not in the Torah. It's hidden secrets are in the Torah, the hints to it are in the Torah. But actually instituted. It's one of the seven laws that the rabbis instituted, one of seven only.
14:30
Feel as if, when you're praying tomorrow, today, and you're asking Hashem, hashem, please, hashem, give me the ability to connect with this mitzvah in a proper way, so that I not just light the menorah, turn around and give out the gifts to the children, that I'm really able to bring out my inner potential, my inner light. So right now, I'm already in the preparation mode of this great mitzvah, of lighting the menorah, mode of this great mitzvah of lighting the menorah and like this we prepare our soul for the holiday that is about to come upon us. And with this power of preparation like this, we will benefit from this preparation that on the holiday we will benefit from this preparation, that on the holiday we will have this revelation of holiness to us Because we have already prepared for it Before the holiday, we've already introduced ourselves. It means we're not just showing up there lighting the menorah on the 25th day of Kislev and boom, okay, we're going to feel a connection. No, it's not going to happen like that. We have to prepare ourselves. It's just like they say that in the military, you're only as good as your preparation. Right, you're only as good as what you've prepared for, and if you didn't prepare, you might not be good at all. This is our challenge. If we don't prepare for the holiday, we might be sleepwalking. Yeah, we're doing the same thing, lighting the same menorah like we did when we were children, but it doesn't have any more meaning. We haven't been able to elevate and make it greater by preparing for it, by using utilizing these days before Hanukkah to prepare.
16:32
What we're doing is we're already investing in our preparation, in our recon for this incredible holiday and with this, he will be prepared to accept the light and then the flame will shine forth on its own and you will feel that his soul has transformed into something so much loftier and then, for an extended period of time, feel a tremendous elevation of that soul. So I think, in conclusion to what we just learned, it is very important for us to do our homework and prepare. Prepare. We're not just going to show up one day and it's all going to be waiting for us. The only way it'll be meaningful is if we prepare first, try, we put forward our greatest effort, and meaningful is if we prepare first we try, we put forward our greatest efforts and we pray, say Hashem, please help me. I want to be closer to you, I want to utilize this mitzvah, I want to grow through this experience of lighting the menorah and, god willing, next week we'll talk more about why we even need to feel.
18:09
Why do we need to feel? Let's just do it. We do it robotically and finished. What's the problem? Why can't I just light the menorah, like I always did? Very special, I love the way it looks. I love the setup in my front window with the menorah, my menorah, my children's menorah.
18:25
It's good enough, because we all know that there's nobody who loves a million dollars, that doesn't want two, and if someone who has two, they want four, and someone who has four wants eight. We always want more when it comes to material things, but why wouldn't we want more with spiritual pursuits? There's no such thing that someone says you know what that's it? You ever wonder?
19:00
You think of Elon Musk, jeff Bezos, you think of these people who are unbelievably wealthy. I don't want to call it successful. I won't call it successful that's not necessarily the definition of success but they're wealthy, financially wealthy. I think I'm the wealthiest man in the world, but they're financially wealthy. You think they would one day just say okay, I have enough, finished, I'm good.
19:34
Why do they keep on working? Why do they keep on working? Because the soul never stops wanting. Why do they keep on working? Because the soul never stops wanting. But it depends on what we focus that soul, whether that wanting is for spiritual connection or whether it's for physical, materialistic connection. And the minute we start feeding our soul spiritual connection, that I want more and I want more. Don't stop here. I want more. Hashem should bless us all. We should merit that this Hanukkah be a festival of light, where our light, our inner light, shines out to the world, where we merit that every light help us shine more and, god willing, we will very soon witness the lighting of the menorah in the temple, god willing, and that light will be restored, god willing, speedily in our days. Amen. Have a terrific evening.
20:48 - Intro (Announcement)
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