Chanukah / Parashas Mikeitz

There is a well known disagreement between Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel (Shabbos 21b) regarding how many lights are lit each night of Chanukah. Beis Shammai maintains that eight lights are lit on the first night and that one light fewer is lit each subsequent night, while Beis Hillel maintains that we begin with one light and add and additional light each day. One reason for this is that Beis Shammai follows the model of the offerings brought over the festival of Succos, where the number of cows brought as offerings was diminished each day (13 cows were offered the first day, 12 on the second day, etc.); Hillel follows the rule that “we go up holiness, and do not go down.”

Chazal teach us (Beitzah 16a) that Shammai and Hillel also had different approaches to Shabbos preparations. Whenever in the Shammai would find a good food, he would purchase it for Shabbos. If he later found a better item, he would buy the better item for Shabbos and eat the first one. Hillel, on the other hand, “all of whose actions were for the sake of Heaven” taught “baruch Hashem yom yom, bless Hashem every day,” and he purchased his Shabbos supplies only when he needed them.

Perhaps these two disagreements are related.

What relationship does Beis Shammai see between the lights of Chanukah and the offers of Succos?

Over the course of Succos, 70 cows were brought as offerings, one for each of the nations of the world. We are told to diminish the number each day as an omen for the ultimate demise of those nations (see Rashi to Bamdbar 29:18).

Chanukah is the last festival to have been established. Prophecy had ceased. Even as the Nation lived in its own land, it did so under the dominion of others. The sefarim explain that Chanukah was the Yom Tov that was to carry the Jews through the long and bitter Exile that was to come, the Exile we experience to this day.

Shammai lived his entire week working for Shabbos. He did not live the weekday as a weekday, but as a means toward an end: Shabbos, the day of me’ein Olam Habah, a bit of the World to Come. He views the celebration of Chanukah similarly – we live in Exile for the purpose of hastening its end. We start with eight light, and we diminish them, our function is to end the galus.

Hillel, on the other hand, asserted that we “bless Hashem every day.” While we anticipate and look forward to Shabbos, we must bless Hashem for the weekdays as well, and we must seek to make the most of them. Similarly, Chanukah marks what Hashem has given us now, even as we are in galus. Of course we pine for the end of this exile, but while we are hear we must add holiness every day.

Shabbos Chanukah generally corresponds to Parashas Mikeitz. In Parashas Vayeishev, the prelude to Chanukah –and continuing through this week’s parashah – we find that in every difficult circumstance, Yosef makes the most of what he has. Certainly he thought of his father and reuniting with him, but until that could happen, he lived baruch Hashem yom yom, focusing on sanctifying Hashem’s Name in his current circumstances.

May we all live each day to the fullest, thanking Hashem for whatever mission he has given us for that day, and may we soon merit the end of our galus.

Gut Shabbos and a freilichen, lichtigen Chanukah.