We continue with lessons from our hero and role model Hizkiyah HaMelech. In Yeshaya Chapter 10 verse 27, Hashem tells Hizkiyah,
וְהָיָה בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא יָסוּר סֻבֳּלוֹ מֵעַל שִׁכְמֶךָ וְעֻלּוֹ מֵעַל צַוָּארֶךָ וְחֻבַּל עֹל מִפְּנֵי שָׁמֶן
It will be on that day, his load will be removed from your shoulder, and his yoke from upon your neck. And the yoke will be broken because of the oil.
The Gemara Sanhedrin 94B says that this means the yoke of Sanheriv will be broken because of the oil of Hizkiyah. This refers to the oil that was lit in the shuls and Batei Midrash.
Hizkiyah put his money into oil, and had a whole “electricity system” of lights, paying for the all the Batei Midrashim to be open and functioning. The impact of this was to the extent that they checked from one end of Israel to the other, and even the smallest of children were experts in the most intricate of laws
That’s where Hizkiyah put his money- he put it in Jewish education, and that is what broke the yoke of Sanheriv.
As we mentioned yesterday, God miraculously killed 180,000 troops of Sanheriv. Because Hizkiyah HaMelech put the stress on spirituality, it was spirituality that was burned out of them. The Midrash Raba says, “Their clothing was still there and their sprit was burnt out.” Hizkiyah HaMelech’s power was that of spirituality, of the Torah. Therefore, Hashem burnt out their spirit without a war.
Chacham Abraham Antebi was the Chief Rabbi of Aleppo ago about 200 years ago. In his sefer Hochma U'Mussar, hr describes the memorable deeds of R’ Yedidya Dayan. He says, “I will relate what I saw as a young man, that Hashem stirred the spirit of a man from the House of David [referring to the Dayan lineage, which is traced back to King David] whose name is Yedidya Dayan. He gathered his strength to arise before midnight and he would take with him the shamosh of the synagogue and he would bang on the people’s doors to wake them to come and learn. G-d was with him and people did not turn him down, I could say that most of our community was there nightly.”
“They would gather into various groups, one of which consisted of young yeshiva boys studying Gemara and Tosafot. I was one of those boys. Some studied Shulhan Aruch, another group studied the holy Zohar and yet another group studied the mussar classics.
“Hacham Yedidya would prepare the oil on Friday afternoon for the [many] candelabra in the synagogue and the entire room would be full of light. Close to all the people would come Friday night to recite the entire Tehillim from beginning to end, word for word. Then they would recite the entire Shir HaShirim. He would do this on ereb rosh hodesh as well.
The people would come to synagogue because it was so resplendent with lights.
“When Hacham Yedidya went around gathering the people he would chant the verse we discussed above, that describes the success of King Hizkiyahu in overpowering the mighty Sanheriv through the merit of his Torah learning, ‘The yoke was broken because of the oil’ (Yeshaya 10:27).
“This practice of Hacham Yedidya to light up the night was quite
expensive and HASHEM helped him in that the community assisted him with the financial burden. I heard from my master, my holy father, that Hacham Yedidya, who was stirred to do this mitzvah, without a doubt possesed a spark of the ancient king Hizkiyahu, who followed the same practice.
He was a great, great grandchild from the lineage of David HaMelech.
He continues with th r follow g statement,
“I can testify that as long as this good custom was part of our community, there was always light in the dwellings of the Jewish people, with no sadness or worries or harm. On that generation, we can apply the verse, ‘One who observes mitzvot shall know no evil.’ They were protected from the Mitzvah of Talmud Torah. He goes on to say that no one died young, tragedies were avoided and he attributed it all to this concept that we learn from Hizkiyah HaMelech, that when you put your focus on spirituality, and rely on Hashem, you see miracles and protection and only good.
These customs continue in the Jewish people to this very day. As we just heard, we can even see that somebody can have the the spark of a great man of old inside him. The Arizal says that when a person does something that duplicates the deeds of a great man of yesteryear, a spark of that great man comes and aids him. That is what happened with this man Yedidya Dayan, who continued in the ways of the great Hizkiyah HaMelech.