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On a Shabbat afternoon in 1910, several Zionist leaders gathered together on a balcony in the Neveh Tzedek neighborhood of Yaffo. It included people like Yosef Chaim Brenner and Shai Agnon, who would go on to become the fathers of modern Hebrew literature. The group regularly convened to discuss the important issues of the day, and in this particular instance, they gathered at a home across from the house of Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, the Chief Rabbi of Yaffo.
At the time, Yaffo was the secular heart of the Yishuv HaChadash, the new Jewish settlement in the land of Israel, but it still had a chief rabbi. Despite Rav Kook’s traditional dress and old-world piety, he was greatly respected by members of this auspicious group for his openness, his vast Torah knowledge, and his creative spirit. As the sun began to set that Shabbat afternoon, signally Shabbat would soon be over, Shai Agnon suggested that they walk over to Rav Kook’s home in order to join him for seudah shlishit to hear him share some words of Torah. All of the group agreed to go except for Yosef Chaim Brenner, who refused. Despite his religious upbringing, Brenner had become ardently secular and was a harsh critic of orthodoxy for what he saw as its parochialism and timidness. However, in this instance, Brenner’s resistance was not based on his feelings about orthodoxy but his unique feelings about Rav Kook. He told the group, “I have already been inside before for a whole hour while the rabbi was teaching. He speaks about or, or, or, light, light, light, and I am unable to see the light!”
In many ways, Brenner was right. Rav Kook’s greatest gift was his ability to see light where others saw only darkness. In a modern secular world that appeared empty of God, Rav Kook was able to perceive the presence of divine lights, as long as one knew how to look for them. This idea was so critical to his mystical philosophy that the titles of nearly all his written works have the word orot, lights, in them. For example, Orot HaTeshuvah, Lights of Repentance, Orot HaTorah, Lights of Torah, and Orot HaKodesh, Lights of Holiness. In his most striking formulation, Rav Kook writes that b’kol yesh nitzutz shel or, “in everything there is a spark of light.” All people, all religions, all cultures and ideologies have Godliness within them.
If others, could not see that light, like Rav Kook did, it was in part because it was hidden. As the midrash states, God created light on the first day of creation but it was not like the light we see today because no sun served as its source. This light was not a physical light, but rather a divine light so powerful it illuminated the entire world.
After Adam and Chava’s sin, God, however, chose to hide it in order to prevent its abuse by the corrupt and wicked generations of humanity that were to come. However, the Zohar explains that the divine light of creation remains, only hidden (what we call the or haganuz). It can still to be found within the world around us if we are able to look hard enough, as Rav Kook tries to show us, and it is the presence of this light that sustains all creation.
As you can imagine, Chanukah was an important holiday for Rav Kook because it symbolized his religious vision made real. Though there is darkness, there is also light, and just as the custom is that each person must light Chanukah candles, so too Rav Kook taught each one of us must shine with our own unique light. He writes:
“Let everyone express in truth and faithfulness what his soul reveals to him. Let him bring forth his spiritual creativity from potential to actuality, without any deception. Out of such sparks, torches of light will be assembled, and they will illuminate the whole world out of their glory. Out of such fragments of inner truth, will the great truth (the great light) emerge.”
This is the theme of Chanukah, as we all know. Though it may appear dark outside that darkness will be transformated into light. In fact, one can see this clearly in the parshiyot we read during the holiday, for is not Joseph’s own life a perfect example of this? Joseph is perpetually thrown into places of darkness, but somehow keeps finding a way to illuminate them. He is put into the bor, the pit, by his brothers, sold into slavery, but still rises to a place of prominence in Potiphar’s household. Even after being put in jail under false accusations, an even darker place, he sees God’s hand in the dreams of Pharaoh’s baker and butler, and eventually is appointed second only to Pharaoh himself. Though Joseph has suffered, his trials and tribulations have enabled him to be in the unique position of preparing Egypt for years of famine and ensuring that they along with his family survive unscathed. When he finally reveals himself to his brothers, Joseph even tells them that all of the difficulties he has endured, it was all part of God’s plan. What appeared as darkness, has finally been illuminated by the light. What greater culmination of Rav Kook’s vision could there be than this?
But wait a moment. Is this really the case? Is Joseph’s story really one of darkness becoming light? If so, why is it that Joseph’s brothers don’t seem to believe him? If everything has worked out exactly as God has intended, why are they so worried Joseph will exact revenge upon them when their father Jacob dies. That doesn’t sound like Rav Kook’s vision at all. If the darkness has been dispelled from Joseph’s life, why would they suspect him of harboring ill will towards them?
While Joseph may have claimed that there was light in the darkness all along, the brothers don’t think he believes that. They think Joseph is just saying the kind of thing religious people say all the time. “Baruch Hashem. Thank God for all the good He has done. I know there was a lot of pain along the way but it all worked out for the best.” Call me cynical, but on this, I tend to agree with Joseph’s brothers. People say things like this but I don’t think they mean it, at least not absolutely. How could they, for as we know, there are times of darkness so dark no light can illuminate them. Being a synagogue rabbi inevitably teaches you this, because you regularly encounter people whose lives are haunted by darkness. Forever emblazoned in my own memory is the testimony of a Holocaust survivor from my shul in Cleveland, a man of blessed memory also named Joseph, who was sent to Auschwitz with his family. When they arrived there at the sorting lines, he watched Mengele gesture his hand and send his mother and his sister carrying her one-year-old baby girl in her arms to the gas chambers, while Mengele gestured the other way and sent him to the work camp. He would share with me that even decades later, he still constantly asked himself why God would take his family especially his innocent baby niece, while allowing him to survive.
You see, the truth is: if when you look, all you see is light or the potential for light, then sometimes you miss things. Important things. Rav Shagar, one of the most profound thinkers to emerge from the Religious Zionist community since Rav Kook’s passing, understood this. Though he had a deep appreciation for the teachings of Rav Kook and was greatly influenced by them, he did not share Rav Kook’s endlessly optimistic vision that light always exists in the darkness just waiting to illuminate it. Where Rav Kook never lived to see the Holocaust, Rav Shagar’s parents were survivors, and growing up, he felt their traumas as if they were his own. At the age of eighteen, he witnessed the great victory of the Six-Day War and experienced first-hand the messianic hopes it unleashed. But then just a few years later, he would serve as a soldier in the Yom Kippur War and experience unimaginable tragedy. At a battle in the Golan Heights, his tank was hit by enemy fire. The other members of his tank – his close friends – were killed, and he was left grievously wounded. After the war, he was encouraged to hold a seudat hodaya, a celebratory meal to give thanks to God for having survived. But, he says that he was simply not able to do this, for how could he give thanks while his friends died so terribly?
If Rav Kook believes darkness can always be turned into light, Rav Shagar disagrees. The Shoah and his experiences during the Yom Kippur War taught him otherwise.
He explains that “the Shoah is something that cannot be transformed, in any kind of conceptual sense, into something else… It is a black hole… that threatens to swallow everything.” In describing his own traumas during the war, he says there are only questions without answers. No religious language can eliminate the darkness left by his friends’ absence or explain why he alone deserved to live.
Now, despite Rav Shagar’s misgivings one should not make the error of assuming that his writings are anything other than a profound meditation on God and faith. While Rav Kook’s teachings depict faith as a light that dispels darkness, Rav Shagar also perceives faith as light albeit a light that is punctuated by darkness. What do I mean? When you light your Chanukah candles tonight, I want you to do the following. Look very closely at them. Try to focus on the point where the flame meets the wick. If you look closely enough, you will see is that they don’t. Rather, there is a small gap, or perhaps more accurately, a small black hole between the flame and the wick.
Rav Shagar notes that in his derashot, the Alter Rebbe, the first rebbe of Lubavitch, states there are two kinds of light one can see in a candle. There is the nehorah chiyorah, the clear bright light we associate with the flame. And then there is the nehora ochma, the dark light that exists in the gap, that empty space, that little black hole between the flame and the wick. According to the Alter Rebbe, nehora ochma is light but it is a light that can only be seen as darkness. It is a manifestation of what is referred to as the aspaklariah lo’meira, a window or mirror that cannot provide for us a clear image because it is opaque. One looks into it and all one can see is the absence of light.
For Rav Shagar, seeing the nehora ochma, the darkness, along with the light, is essential. Why? Because life always contains both. There is simply no escaping it. Being able to see the darkness is not to deny the light, but rather to see things as they are. For only then can we give thanks for life, even when it does not shine, at least not as bright as we may like. Seeing the darkness enables us to appreciate the light that much more. It gives us the ability to feel gratitude even when God is hidden, and in this world, as it exists right now, God is always hidden. Its why the kabbalists call it alma d’atkasya, the world of hiddenness. Being a shul rabbi taught me as much. When people you care about are suffering, there is always an urge to tell them, “Don’t worry, Everything will be ok.” But we do this most often not to comfort them, but to comfort ourselves.
What those who are suffering want more than anything is for us to be able to see the darkness in their lives, and not dismiss it. Because only then can we work with them to see the light, as faint as it may be, and understand just how truly precious it truly is.
On the last night of Chanukah when our chanikyuot will be fully lit, there is a part of me that always thinks of Rav Kook. With the last night of Chanukah, we will have lit 36 candles over the course of the holiday, which according to the midrash is the same amount of hours that Adam and Chava experienced the divine light from the first day of creation before they were exiled from the Garden of Eden and the light was hidden. In lighting our Chanukah candles, we are doing our part to reveal that hidden divine light. In the past, I would even gaze at the many candles in the chanukia until it appeared as if all they blended together into one light, for as Rav Kook taught, “Out of such sparks, will the great light emerge.” But as I have gotten older, on the last night of Chanukah, I also cannot help but think of Rav Shagar. I now also try my best to look at the candles as closely as I can. To see how the flames and the wick never quite touch, and that there forever remains a small black space between them. For perhaps, on Chanukah, it is just as important to be able to see the darkness as it is to see the light.