As Hanukkah comes to a close, there’s no better time to have a final reflection on the holiday this year from a spiritual perspective.
Below you’ll find 7 definitions of Hanukkah terms, as well as links to longer articles where you can get a much deeper perspective on the holiday, sourced in the ancient wisdom of Kabbalah.
Q. We see the changing seasons, day and night, and the changes in life in nature. Is this an objective understanding of time or a totally subjective feeling?
A. There is no objective understanding of any kind. If I perceive something as a spectator, it cannot be objective in any way. Even if someone tells me what he sees, but I am the one who hears what he says, I perceive and feel it in my own way.
There cannot be any form of objectivity. If a person perceives only his own feelings and knows nothing of what is going on other than that, there cannot be any form of objectivity.
This is especially true when it comes to the perception of time, place, and motion, which exist inside a person. A spectator with different senses would feel a totally different world. We know that our senses perceive only a small part of reality.
Life puts a person in a framework he did not choose. We don’t know what destiny is prepared for us, who we shall meet today, what will happen to us on our way to work or back home, what to expect for our children and relatives.
We have no knowledge of what will happen to us; if we live a day without too much suffering, we are lucky: “Thank G-d! The day went well!”
Who are we compared to the universe with its endless stars and planets? Tiny bugs crawling on the surface of the Earth, whose whole lives are devoted to the struggle for survival.
And yet, we ask what the purpose of our lives is and are concerned about the purpose of our existence, the possibility of determining our future, managing the destiny of our families, people, countries, and the entire world. Everything depends on our ability to question ourselves about the ultimate goal of our development. We depend on the level from which we ask this questions and the accuracy of our search for the answer to it.
The goal of the spiritual work is to acquire the attributes of the upper world. We call it upper but it is actually the only world there is. We, however, are external to it, as if senseless, unconscious, like in a dream.
How can we awaken from this dream in which the ego closes us in like a cocoon?
On the spiritual path first we need to achieve the correction of the creation, that is the congruence of our personal qualities with the qualities of the Creator, and only then can we begin to achieve the goal of creation, to receive from the Creator unlimited pleasure, unbounded by the limits of egoism.
Before the correction, we possess only the desire for selfish gratification. As we progress in correcting ourselves, we start to favor the desire to give everything away over the desire to receive pleasure for ourselves.
However, at this stage we are still incapable of receiving pleasure from the Creator.
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