Hanuukah: Grace, Unity and the Last Battle
The root of Hanukkah is the word, “grace.” Just as Judaism understands that grace, its light and love inform “dedication” (Hanukkah), so the numeric value of the Hebrew word for “grace” is fifty-eight, a number of urgent timeliness, ironies, surprises and promise.
Judaism teaches that there are six millennia of human history, each one corresponding to one of the six days of creation. We live in the last quarter of the sixth millennium that began in fall 1990. In that year, James Baker III began orchestrating the destruction of Israel and the Vatican “recognized” Israel. The events that will elicit and distinguish the seventh and crowning ‘day’ of history already have begun. On the geopolitical level this is readily observed. As Jews have returned and settled the land so long desolate, the major powers strain every muscle to uproot them.
“Surely the day of judgment is at hand…” and Mr. Baker fancies himself a greater judge than G-d. “Anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide” of jihad is loosed.
A major increase in the re-unification of the land and people of Israel, the essential wedding will hasten redemption and the healing light of the Messianic era: “a river, its streams will gladden the city of G-d, the most sacred of the dwellings of the Most High.” As the Vatican activates its ‘assets’ and renews its putsch for dominion over Mt. Zion these lines leap from the page. While the stream of healing light may be delayed, it cannot be interdicted. It’s always darkest before dawn: “G-d is in its midst; G-d will help it toward morning” (psalm 46: 5-6). 
While the German Pope and his emissaries come in the front door, James Baker III and associates try to come in the back, via another Madrid conference (the first, prelude to the Oslo accords and its havens for jihadists within Israel) from which Israel will be excluded. Baker urges that Israel surrender the Golan Heights to Syria, expel all Jews from Judea and Samaria, and allow millions of Arabs to flood it from the Jordan to the Sea.
“Nations are in turmoil, kingdoms totter. He has raised His voice, the earth dissolves” (psalm 46:7).
The destruction of Israel, bracketed by these twin-conferences includes the destruction of America whose birth, as a Constitutional Federal Republic (Federation), modeled on ancient Israel, was in 1790 the onset of full daily activity in the sixth millennium. Two hundred years later its fragmentation is pursued by those ruining Israel. In 1959, the Rockefeller Foundation published, “Mid-Century Challenge” stating “that we should welcome the task of helping to shape a new world order in all its dimensions: spiritual, economic, political, social.” In 1974, under the direction of David Rockefeller, then serving as Chair of the Council on Foreign Relations published “The Hard Road to World Order” arguing for “an end-run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece.” Can anyone say “Road Map”? Israel, the prototype of the sovereign nation and teacher of discrete nations as the socio-political framework of the peoples of the world is the main target of this task, for “spiritual” reasons too, as the “Mid-Century Challenge” stated. America, most closely modeled on Israel’s polity, social and ethical norms is the other main target; not by accident, both nations are the main targets of the “world community,” itself a negation of national sovereignty whose Security Council Kofi Anan termed “the management committee of a fledgling global security state.”
On a simpler level we could say of the ruin of America by its diplomatic-financial elites that those who bless Israel will be blessed, those who curse it will be cursed (Genesis 12:3, 27:29, 28:3-4; Numbers 23:9). We are and have been living through the pangs of the ‘day’ of Moshiach and of the day, “burning like an oven” that precedes him.
An historical irony should be noted also. The fifty-eighth century, the century of grace began in September 1939 the month that the Germans unleashed their neo-pagan crusade in Poland. Given the meta-historical dynamics, this century is inscribed with the potential for grace and geulah (“redemption”); as such, it activates all those negative forces that rise to prevent or damage it as Satan struck Jacob’s thigh as he returned to Shechem.
But Jacob shall be shaleim, shall be Israel who “will bud and blossom, and fill the face of the earth, like fruit.” The only question is how much agony there will be, how much tearing and breaking before the rectification is achieved and nations gather to the blessings of Hashem released through the complete integrity of Israel.
The alternatives are counterpoised: both shaleim and kera (“tear, rend or split”) have the same numerical value. Any “peace” that does not arise from the shlaimut (“wholeness”) of Israel is shalom that shares its numeric value (376) with Esau and the “torn, ragged, tattered” (karua – 376) condition he inflicts upon Jacob. Of western civilization it may be said, “the hands are the hands of Esau, and the voice is the voice of Esau.” Esau the great maker, the one who does and accomplishes while despising the covenant and Creator is the destroyer who has stolen the identity and substance of Jacob and still is not satiated with depredation.
In this century, from the darkest of the exile of Edom Israel made and saw its great light: independence and then, nineteen years later, victory in the month of Iyyar, the month of radiance when Solomon dedicated the Temple (1 Kings 6-8). Now it is almost forty years after that victory, incomplete though it was militarily and politically, that is, in spirit.
The relation of G-d to the Children of Israel settled on its land is like that “of a bridegroom rejoicing over His bride, “For like a wife who has been forsaken and melancholy has Hashem called you back” (Isaiah 54:5). “As I live,” says that living G-d to Israel, “the word of Hashem, you will clothe yourself with them all [the children of Israel) like jewelry, and adorn yourself like a bride” (Isaiah 49:18). Similarly the relation of the Jews to the Land is conceived as a marriage of joy and fertility. Rav Yitzhak Ginsburgh notes that the numeric value of the phrases “the Congregation of Israel” (kehal Yisrael) and “the Land of Israel” (Eretz Yisrael) equal 58 (“grace”) times 26, the value of the ineffable Name of G-d and the paradigm of balance or “Divine symmetry.” He explains further the numeric correlation of the term “daughter of Jerusalem,” a synonym for a Jewish settlement in Israel with the value of the world “son” (52) times that of Eve (19). In the numeric narrative of the Torah, “every settlement in the land of Israel is married to a male soul of Israel, a son of Eve.* “As I live, — the word of Hashem” as the Eternal One spoke to the land of Israel, “you shall clothe yourself with them [the Children of Israel] like jewelry and adorn yourself like a bride… and those who would devour you will be distanced” (Isaiah 49:18-19).
This message of unity, return, fruitfulness and unbreakable integrity is embodied in the Menorah, Israel’s emblem and the witness to the Creator and His creation: sic days, six millennia of struggle and then a lasting millennium of true peace literally grounded in shaleim. The cups, knobs and flowers, bowls, branches and base of the Menorah are fifty alluding to the Yovel, the Jubilee year that marks the return, every fiftieth year at most of every Jewish family’s landholding to it (Leviticus 25), the original inalienable inheritance and embodiment of Israel’s shlaimut.
This bond between the Menorah and the settlement of the land as the paradigm of love and fertility further connects Hanukkah to the essential Jewish principle of shlaimut and its near synonym, unity, oneness and perfection. This is another reason that Hanukkah, the festival of the Menorah is known as Chag haNetzachon, the holiday of victory. It is a further bonding of the Name of G-d with Israel for Netzach, one of His titles means both eternity and victory, just as another Hebrew word for victory means “salvation.” Both are connected to the holy victory achieved by re-dedication of the Temple which is to Israel as Israel is to the world: the place from which the Eternal One’s word will go forth, as stated in Isaiah and the first words of the third stanza of Maoz Tzur, the Hanukkah hymn.
Grace and loving kindness are the settlement of the Jews in Israel, their completion, their wedding of the land and G-d. This is the program, the spatial and metaphysical balance that G-d ordains for the world, “to implant the heavens and set a foundation for the earth” (Isaiah 51:16) when the children of Israel, with His Torah in their mouths embrace the land. And in the century of grace, as the era of Moshiach begins the forces of kera arouse themselves to negate their opposite, shaleim just as Dina was attacked and torn right after Jacob’s triumphant return to Shechem. They would impose their ragged kerua-peace upon the true foundation stone, the vessel of light.
The leitmotif of my writing for ten years is that when Israel is shaleim “the world will have yielded its produce,” as it states in the tehillim envisioned on the Menorah by Moshe and David (67). Rather than enraged, aggressive, turbulent and trembling, “the nations will be glad and sing for joy.” The war of Gog of Magog may be avoided and the carnage it will cause pass by.
The return and settlement of Israel with love to the entire land of Israel will establish the plenitude and balance, the grace of the world. And at its center, “the House of My Splendor” will come in tribute the flocks of Kedar. Love and simplicity, for “when you eat the labor of your hands it will be well with you” and the schemes of Edom and Ishmael; and, as the famous Hanukkah hymn concludes, v’kareiv keitz hayeshua: “hasten the end for salvation [victory]” for as this week’s Torah portion and our place in history tell us, we are at the end, miKeitz.
The Jewish people will ascend in light to their glorious and healing marriage with the land.
*Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh, Rectifying the State of Israel (Gal Einai 2003), 78-80, 178-9