Chanukah ‘Gelt’

JWR Outlook



Jewish World Review / Dec. 7, 1999 / 28 Kislev, 5760

Chanukah ‘Gelt’


By Rabbi Daniel Lapin




http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- For the better part of last week, downtown Seattle looked more like Zagreb than the leading high-tech city in the world, as hooligans from all over the country came to protest organized world trade. Last week’s violent rally in London was even more direct, as organizers called it an “Anti-Capitalism Rally.” Even the approaching presidential campaign has been laced with a focus on whether business and it’s support is a sign of strength to a candidate or ultimate weakness to the society-at-large.

Americans are struggling with how to deal with affluence. For decades we have accepted the notion, successful businessmen are immoral, deceptive and not generous enough. It is no wonder why Business Week recently ran a cover story titledEconophone “Religion in the Boardroom.” Learning how to cope with success will ultimately be the defining aspect more important than the stock market, social security, national debt, etc. - of whether the prosperity we are enjoying, will be passed on to future generations.

This dilemma dates back more than two millennia, to the story of Chanuka, as the Greeks and Jews argued about whether Man and G-d were enemies or partners. The Greeks regarded the human form as perfect and glorified it through athletics and sculpture. In the Jewish view of Nature, G-d's world needs human effort to achieve perfection. Hence, circumcision, commanded by G-d, truly perfects the body. Chanukah celebrates man's achievements in the world. Man's strongest incentive to erect a civilization is the need felt by each individual to earn a livelihood. Chanukah reaffirms our commitment to commerce by an uncharacteristic insistence on relating the holiday to money. Coins are the traditional Chanukah gift, which would be insulting in its impersonality at any other time. The word coin itself is derived etymologically from the first syllable of Chanukah, that same syllable that means education and commerce. The Talmud actually compares a poor man to a dead person. If you have no money, then your ability to partner with G-d and perfect the world is severely limited, much like one who is dead.

Trakdata The Talmud links two more images to Chanukah: the oil used for the menorah and the number 8. One of the restrictions that the Greeks imposed upon the Jews was a prohibition against circumcision. Both oil and eight are metaphors for human enterprise. In a world without man, oil is a useless, smelly mess. Only man utilizes his Divine ingenuity to set oil aflame, achieving light, heat and energy. In an elegant twist, it turns out that oil and the number 8 both enjoy the identical Hebrew root, shemen, indicating oil's unique usefulness to Man. G-d ceases his efforts, as it were, upon reaching the number seven.

For instance, He created the seven days of the week, seven colors in the rainbow, and seven continents. Man makes his contribution by adding one, as if Man completes his efforts upon reaching eight. Although there are seven notes on the musical scale, we call it an octave because our human drive for completion demands that the first note be repeated; the number eight hints strongly at Man's transcendent need to contribute to the ongoing drama of G-d's creation. And similarly, since circumcision is a human contribution to the process begun by G-d, it naturally takes place on the eighth day.

Furthermore, for the Sabbath and for all other holidays, the code of Jewish law usually prescribes ritual times in terms of sunrise and sunset. However in the case of Chanukah, it specifies lighting the menorah in terms of people's income earning schedules; the time they leave their place of business. Chanukah immunizes Jews against the infectious notion that money is tainted with evil and somehow vaguely un-G-dly. Knowing that the rainbow symbolized Divine wisdom, Jewish immigrants have always sought the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow, a pot of gold that could and should be won without renouncing a relationship with G-d. While the Jewish affinity for money has been libelously distorted as in Dickens' depiction of Fagin or the colloquial verb "to jew", wealth is traditionally regarded as one of life's desirables. Few Biblical heroes and almost no Talmudic sages were revered for being poor. The Talmud observes that it is a great blessing to live in an adequately comfortable home and to enjoy the wherewithal to be able to clothe one's wife and family appropriately.

Shakespeare's image of Shylock has been assailed as an anti-Semitic paradigm. If he is, it is only because the commitment to money must be secondary to the commitment to faith, rather than because the pursuit of prosperity is wrong. It is that very pursuit of prosperity that drives men to grow food, build roads and otherwise "subdue nature." The lesson of Chanukah is that a truly G-dly person is a man who can be successful in both arenas: faith and commerce. A successful person who is also of deep faith is a man is a man who is partnering with G-d. As opposed to being made uncomfortable by businessmen and business interests, it is vital for people of faith to gravitate towards commerce and balance it with G-d’s will.

A lake is a beautiful example of G-d’s creation. But that same body of water enhanced with a bridge a simple foot-bridge or multi-ton suspension bridge allows people to cross over it. That is the true mark of G-dliness taking the physical, the worldly, the material and elevate it to allow people to journey into the spiritual and holy. Building that bridge, as an engineer or financier, is the work of a G-dly man. For eight days every year Jews celebrate the uniquely human ability to mold and develop the world through commerce by utilizing, rather than negating, the G-dly powers within us.

Chanukah is far less about a military victory than it is about the triumph of the idea that money possesses spiritual implications and was placed in the world by G-d in order to motivate men. Like all of our other powerful urges, it is capable of being frightfully abused. Chanukah stands astride that sad tendency, reminding us that the Divine spark of intellectual creativity that is alone responsible for our prosperity is also our link to G-d.

A nation of faith will be a nation with fortune, but a nation with only fortune sinks into decadence.



JWR contributor and radio talk show host, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, is the president of the national organization, Toward Tradition, projecting a comprehensive socio-political vision of moral and economic unity based on the Word of He who is the source of all Unity. Lapin's book America's Real War is a 1999 best seller. Send your comments by clicking here.


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©1999, Rabbi Daniel Lapin