Part III. The Miracle of Emunah
Flame of Emunah
And so we understand now what the menorah’s light is telling us. When you light the flame of Chanukah what is it saying? It's saying one word that is the secret of our success: It’s emunah. The Chanukah light is the light of emunah.
Now, emunah is understood by the world as ‘believing’, but that's not the real meaning of the word. To believe, you have to know, is a secondary meaning of the word. The original and primary meaning of emunah means ‘steadfast’; to continue without any change.
When it states that Moshe Rabbeinu had to raise his hands up – during the war against Amalek his hands were weary so they put two stones under his arms to keep them up. ׁ ̆∆מָּֽׁ ַ̆ה ‡ֹּב „ַﬠ הָנּמו¡‡ יוָ„ָי יƒה¿יַו – And his hands were emunah until sundown (Shmos 17:12).
His hands were believing? Hands can’t believe. הָנּמו¡‡ יוָ„ָי יƒה¿יַו means his hands were steadfast. He didn’t take down his hands. They didn't move from their place. That's the meaning. It has nothing to do with believing. His hands didn’t weaken; they didn’t falter.
Stubborn Loyalty
That’s a whole new understanding of what emunah means. A person who once heard and he understood why you have to be a good Jew, it's not enough. Yes, he believes. He's convinced. But a person can yield his loyalty. All kinds of things turn up in life that might make him hesitate or weaken.
Emunah means that once you know the truth then you have to be stubborn in your loyalty to hold onto that truth. Not to be frightened off or to be tempted, to be bribed. New fads, new ideas and ideals, new ways, ‘better’ ways, mean nothing to the man of emunah. He’s going to remain loyal to the principles of the Torah no matter what.
Even if you don’t know much, but the middah of loyalty says you won’t budge. Let’s say you’re an ‘ignoramus’. You never went to college. You never read a book. All you know is nothing but Shas. You know no science at all. You never studied geology, you never studied biology, you don’t know anything. And here somebody comes and tells you, “Look, there are fossils and the fossils are so many millions of years old and they’re arranged one on top of the other in such a sequence that it proves conclusively that one animal developed into another animal and evolution is a proven fact and you people are going against the most open evidence. Even the Department of Education of New York State says so!”
Ignorant Loyalists
Now, you’re not schooled in these things. You don’t know how to answer. What are you expected to do? You’re expected to say, “They can bring all the evidence in the world. When I was at Har Sinai, I gave my promise to my beloved One. I said ‘na’aseh v’nishma’ and nothing in the world will ever cause me to budge from my promise. I gave my word. I promised with all the fire of which I am capable and I’m going to stick to that through thick and thin. If you’ll skin me alive, that’s what I’m going to hold onto till the end of my life.”
That’s what it means to be a Jew. To be a Jew doesn’t mean that you’re a scientist and you can answer. We can answer by the way. We can make monkeys out of the people who think they came from monkeys. We can expose it as one of the most vicious hoaxes that ever appeared in history. There is material without end to show how false, how malicious, how schemingly planned the hoax of evolution and geology is arranged. The whole thing!
I’d love to speak about this – not tonight – to ridicule them, to show what fakers they are, what criminal frauds they are. I’ll quote from their own books that the admission of their weakness is so widespread in every field of biology, in every field of geology, one contradicts the other and they admit their weaknesses and it’s nothing but wishful thinking. Ridiculous lies!
But suppose you don’t know anything. Suppose you don’t know what to say. It makes no difference! You have to say, “Emunah.” Emunah means not ‘belief’. Emunah means loyalty. That’s the meaning of the word.
Standing Strong
We are always ne’eman no matter what. Come against us with your culture. Come against us with new attitudes. Come with all of your blandishments. We’re not interested. We already gave our word and we are loyal to Him forever.
And even if you come with your armies, no matter; we already gave our word. That’s what the Chashmonaim said. When they saw that the Syrians-Greeks with their powerful army and their wealthy government were undertaking a gezeiras hashmad against us, Matisyahu told the people, “Forget about that! There is no such thing as extinguishing the fire that burns in our hearts.”
And he rekindled in the hearts of the people that light of steadfastness, ne’emanus, not to yield. We are always ne’eman no matter what! You’ll chase us into caves? So be it. You’ll light fires at the cave entrances and smoke us out? We still won’t yield. And therefore when Mattisyahu raised his sword it was a sword of emunah. That's the foundation of the entire story of Chanukah, the middah of loyalty.
Guarding the Loyal
And that’s why they eventually won their battles. They won battles on the battlefield not because of special fighting tactics. No; they won battles because of the fires they lit in their hearts. ה ר≈ˆֹנ יםƒנּמו¡‡' – Hashem guards the loyal ones (Tehillim 31:24). Because they have the middah of ne’emanus, Hashem has a special protection for them.
Loyalty is a middah that Hakadosh Baruch Hu prizes. ı∆ר∆‡ י≈נ¿מ∆‡∆נ¿ּב יַינ≈ﬠ – His eyes are watching over His loyal ones (ibid. 101:6). And when it's done by the entire nation – by a majority at least – when everybody is loyal to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, so you can have a nes Chanukah.
Now this is a very important lesson for us. We baruch Hashem don’t have that today – we’re not running away into the mountains to do mitzvos – but we need that same emunah. We have to be very careful. On all sides we have ideas and minhagim of the people around us. Modern Orthodox are changing. They're dropping some frum practices, adopting some gentile ideas. Little by little the modern Orthodox are changing. I say modern Orthodox – today even the good ones, the best, the frummest, are weakening before Western culture, before the attitudes and ideals of the outside world.
So Chanukah comes and tells us that we have to be ultra-frum; ultra-frum means we won't change. We refuse to change because our stubborn loyalty won’t allow us to yield at all.
Rekindling Old Flames
I must tell you, if you're a family that speaks Yiddish, keep on speaking Yiddish. Don't change. Don't change. If you don't speak Yiddish, at least everything else. There’s no other way. Don't listen to the modern Orthodox at all. On all sides the yetzer hara comes and tries to persuade you to make a little change here, a little change there. “Nothing doing! I'm going to continue stubbornly in the way that my grandfather did and my great-grandfather did.”
On Pesach I'll have a seder in my house. No hotels. No hotels! A Jewish home is kodesh kadashim. The home is holy because there's a seder in the house. Even the best hotel is a joke compared to the seder in the house.
Everything else too should be done only according to the old customs of the Am Yisroel because our customs are the sign of our loyalty. Like it says ךƒבָ‡ רַסּמו יƒנ¿ּב עַמ¿ׁ ̆; that's the Torah of Hashem. ך∆ּמƒ‡ ַ̇רֹוּ ̇ ׁ ֹּ̆טƒּ ̇ לַ‡; that's the minhagim of the Am Yisroel. That's called Toras imecha. We keep Jewish customs forever and ever.
Tradition, Tradition!
Not only minhagim; that’s easier already. You have to set yourself free from the darkness of the world around you. You have to let loose from the media. There’s no in-between. You have to do whatever you can to be loyal, to not yield at all to the ideas outside. Only Torah ideas. Only Torah ideals. Otherwise, you have the goy living in your head. And you can’t be a successful person if you have a goy in your head – it doesn’t matter, a Greek goy, an American goy, an Israeli goy; whatever it is, it’s not a loyal head.
In dress too. Why should you yield? I saw a Jew, a Williamsburger Jew on Kings Highway. He has to do business here. He has a kapote. He has peyos. He's walking like he's in his shtetl at home. He's doing business with all kinds of people. He goes in stores and he’s trying to sell them merchandise. He's not embarrassed. The world belongs to him. You see this man doesn't have any chashash, any fear at all of inferiority. That's a ne’eman. That man is loyal.
American Loyalty
Now you might think “well, it's not Americanized”. People will say you're not real Americans, keeping away from American ways. I'll tell you something. In Pennsylvania there's a certain district populated by the Amish. Now the Amish dress differently, not like Americans. They wear black hats. Women wear big dresses. They use wagons more than they use cars. They have their own ways. Amish have their own ways. They're Christians but they have their own ways, very different. Very different from Americans. Did anybody ever accuse the Amish of being un-American? No.
The Amish are so different. It's remarkable how different they are. They stick to themselves. They don't mingle with other people. Nobody accuses them. So why should they accuse us? We also have a right, lehavdil, to have our own ways.
And therefore you could be a good loyal American. There's no pegimah in your loyalty if you act like a frum Jew and look like a frum Jew. And if there would be, if chas v’shalom there would be, it wouldn’t matter to us because we’re loyal to Hashem. That's why frum Jews are called shelomei emunei Yisroel, complete in their loyalty.
Loyal Forever
That’s what the Chanukah light says: Be loyal! Love your G-d. You promised once. We promised and therefore we’re going to keep our promise through thick and thin. That’s what it says at the end of Shir HaShirim, ̇∆‡ ֹ̇וּבַכּלו¿כּיו ‡ֹל יםƒּבַר םƒיַמ הָבֲהַ‡ָה – many waters will never be able to quench that love, ָהּפו¿ט¿ׁ ̆ƒי ‡ֹל ֹ̇רוָה¿נּו – and rivers will not sweep it away (Shir Hashirim 8:7). That’s what we say to the outside world: “Try all you want but you won’t be able to put out that fire that we kindled on Chanukah.”
Some will drop off, yes. Many have fallen by the wayside. They yielded to various kinds of temptation. It’s the truth; some have weakened in their loyalty. A tragedy, a tragedy. There always will be some stragglers, but through thick and thin the Jewish nation will cling to the promise they made at Sinai until the end of time.
And that's going to be the clarion call of the geulah. Like it says in Yeshaya,יםƒרָﬠ¿ׁ ּ̆חו¿ ̇ƒּפ – Open up the gates. Who will come in? ר≈מֹׁ ̆ ̃יƒּ„ַˆ יֹו‚ ‡ֹבָי¿ו יםƒנֻמ¡‡ – The righteous nation who guarded their loyalty (26:2). The time will come when the gates of Eretz Yisroel will open up and the Jewish nation will come again back to their homeland. Why? Because they're יםƒנֻמ¡‡ ר≈מֹׁ ̆, they guarded their loyalty.
Those Jews who yielded, who fell by the wayside, no. They fell in love with American civilization or with British civilization and they gave their children to the colleges instead of the yeshivos, no that’s not loyalty. And even the frummeh who weaken and yield and vacillate, no, that’s not emunim. But those Jews who learned the lesson of the Chanukah flame, the flame of loyalty, and remained faithful to their principles, to Hashem; they're the ones who will come back again and be with Him forever.
