Today we will share another Bitachon thought on Hanukah.
The pasuk in Kohelet (10,2) says,
לֵ֤ב חָכָם֙ לִֽימִינ֔וֹ וְלֵ֥ב כְּסִ֖יל לִשְׂמֹאלֽוֹ
the heart of the wise man is to his right, and the heart of the fool is to his left.
Obviously, this is not an anatomical explanation. All people's hearts are on the left side.
]On a little bit of a comedy note, Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky was once at his cardiologist, and the Dr was feeling around with his stethoscope for his heartbeat, but when he wasn't able to find it, Rav Yaakov quipped in jest, “You’re looking on the wrong side. My heart is on the right side like it says in Kohelet, “לֵ֤ב חָכָם֙ לִֽימִינ֔וֹ
The wise man's heart is to his right.”[
But in all seriousness, what does this pasuk mean? Simply, Rashi says, a righty does things more adeptly with his right hand, and his left hand is the weaker hand- it’s not as effective.
לֵ֤ב חָכָם֙ לִֽימִינ֔וֹ
The wise man's heart is on his right. That means he's a righty with his heart. He uses his heart a lot. He's not using his emotions, he's using his heart, his feelings, and he's doing things in the proper way. But Rav Sadok offers a deeper explanation. He says that when someone lights a Menorah in his doorway, the Mezuza is on the right, and the Ner Hanukah is placed on the the left. Why on the left? He says it’s because the left symbolizes this pasuk-
לֵ֤ב חָכָם֙ לִֽימִינ֔וֹ וְלֵ֥ב כְּסִ֖יל לִשְׂמֹאלֽוֹ
The wise man's hearts on his right, and the heart of the fool is on the left.
On the night of Hanukah, even the fool is lit up. God lights up the left side, the side of the fool, and He brings him light. How does that work?
Hanukah is all about enlightening the dark.
There are two areas of darkness, spiritual darkness and physical darkness. Physical darkened means darkness that comes through a difficult situation where you need God to save you.
We're talking about a spiritual darkness- the fool is living in the world without understand things, seeing everything wrong. But Hashem lights him up. What is that light?
As we know, our religion has two Torahs, the written law and the oral law. Torah Sh’bichtav, the written law, is not man’s work. God wrote it . It was given from God, and it’s symbolized by the Mezuzah on the right side. The Mezuzah is a written parchment from God. The menorah symbolizes Torah Sh’B’Al Peh/ Oral Torah. We we light the Menorah, that’s our toil. God gave us the Torah Sh’B’Al Peh to give us the ability to survive in galut, and the more difficult galut is, the stronger the Torah Sh’B’Al Peh becomes and lights it up.
That's what happened during the time of Hanukah. It was a time when there was a surge of Torah Sh’B’Al Peh, which is specific to the kohanim. It says Moshe symbolizes the written law and Aharon HaKohen symbolize the oral law. So the darker it is, the more Torah Sh’B’Al Peh God gives. It's not a coincidence that there are more Yeshivot, more Kollelim, more sefarim written today than ever before in history. Yet we're at a low time in history as well, as far as the world's concerned. The reason that is, is that the more the world drops, the more God gives us Torah Sh’B’Al Peh to give us the ability to survive.
So therefore, on Hanukah God gives us the Torah that's necessary to light it up even for the Ksil/the fool.
And again, that connects the month of Kislev, which, as we said, has the hint of the word Ksil/fool in it. It's the month for the fool, where God is going to take that fool that walks in the darkness and light up his day.
Have a wonderful day and a Hanukah Sameach.