Rav Yaakov Yosef Rotenberg on the lessons of Chanukah

 

By Reuvain Borchardt

 

PHOTO CREDIT: JACOB ELBOGEN PHOTOGRAPHY

 

“From the very first words we say after Al Hanissim, ‘Biymei Matisyahu ben Yochanan Kohen Gadol Chashmonai u’vanav,’ we learn an important lesson in how a Yid should view the world.

 “We all know that the Yevanim were the superpower of that time—in chochmah, philosophy, ideology, and military might. If you asked a non-Jew at that time or even now, they’d call it the Greek Era.

“But Chazal tell us otherwise: Biymei Matisyahu… It was the era of Matisyahu ben Yochanan Kohen Gadol, the Chashmonai and his sons.

“The Chashmona’im were only 120 people. Greece was the superpower. But Chazal are teaching us: ‘Lo b’chayil, v’lo b’koach, lo lagibborim hako’ach’—the world isn’t how it appears to the secular person. It’s the tekufah of Matisyahu ben Yochanan; they were moser nefesh laHashem u’l’Toraso.

“And this,” says Rav Yaakov Yosef Rotenberg, “is something Klal Yisrael has known in every generation.”

 

 

I’m sitting with Rav Rotenberg in the study of his home on Henry Street. The small room is crammed with sefarim. The walls and windowsills are filled with photos of family members past and present. The desk is littered with papers—pages from sefarim he is working on, typed interviews for an up-coming book about his late rebbetzin, and correspondences from his shul’s Sefer Torah-fundraising drive.

 

We’re speaking about the upcoming Yom Tov of Chanukah and what its lessons mean for us in our times.

 

The news headlines are filled with the latest about Israel and Gaza even as even as a ceasefire is in effect, while fighting rages on in other countries with massive civilian casualties, and the West couldn’t seem to care less. And if it’s not about Israel, it’s about some debate or other over antisemitism.

 

“There are over 8 billion people in the world, and maybe we have 15 million non-assimilated Jews,” the rav says. “About half of them live scattered around the world, and the other half are in a country so tiny that on the map the name is written in the Mediterranean because you can’t even fit it on the strip of land. But all the world wants to talk about is the Yidden.

 

“It’s because the world revolves around the Yidden—‘bishvil Yisrael she’nikre’u reishis.’ As small and as downtrodden and persecuted as we have been throughout the generations, it’s always been all about us. The mighty Greeks, or in other generations, the Persians, the Romans, the British, the Germans, and even America today, had far less of an effect on the world than do the few Yidden.”

 

And it’s not only we who know it, the rav says. The rest of the world knows it as well. And if they aren’t fully aware of it, they know it at least subconsciously.

 

“And that’s why they hate us, because we’re the ‘am kadosh laHashem Elokecha’; we’re the ‘v’hihisem Li segulah mi’kol ha’amim’; we’re ‘Atah bechar-tanu mi’kol ha’amim.’ We’re the ones the world re-volves around.”

 

There’s another lesson to be learned from Chanukah—one that’s equally important in these troubled times.

 

“Chanukah, more than any other Yom Tov, represents overcoming all odds to achieve the impossible. It was rabim b’yad me’atim. A few of us were fighting a war against a mighty army. Chanukah shows a Yid that there’s nothing too impossible for us to reach. It’s like what Rav Zalman Mi’Vilna says on ‘Lo baShamayim hi leimor mi ya’aleh lanu hasha-maymah’: Chazal tell us that if it would have been bashamayim, you would have had to go to shamay-im. That means that the Eibershter is telling us that we could reach the shamayim.”

 

This lesson of the ability of the Yid to achieve the impossible isn’t important simply to inspire us to reach ever higher; it’s even more potent than that. When we try to reach higher than seems possible, we can make miracles happen, Rav Rotenberg says.

 

To demonstrate this, he offers his own pshat on a question discussed by many mefarshim: Why is it that in Biymei Matisyahu it says nothing about the neis hashemen? All it says is ‘v’hidliku neiros b’chatzros kodshecha’—that we lit the Menorah—but not a word about the one day’s oil lasting for eight.

 

“It’s because the ko’ach we have that we’re able to reach the impossible is because we strive for the impossible,” the rav says. “The Chashmona’im weren’t focusing on the obstacles. The Yevanim had been mechallel all the keilim. The Yidden took seven sticks of metal and welded them together. It was this crude, haphazardly constructed Menorah that they lit. They didn’t overly concern themselves with the fact that they didn’t have the usual Menorah or that they only had enough oil for one day. They just lit. They said, We’re going to do it, we’re going to make this work. That’s the ko’ach a Yid has, and that brings nissim. Once they established ‘v’hidliku neiros b’chatzros kodshe-cha,’ the neis happened memeilah.

 

“The neis itself was secondary and only arose out of our act of striving for the impossible.”

 

Rav Rotenberg is the rav of Shaarei Shlomo, a mechaber sefarim, and a dynamic speaker frequently featured on Torah Anytime and Kol Halashon. The shul is named for his illustrious father, Rav Shlome Rotenberg, who was rav of the Agudah of Williamsburg, a renowned mechanech, and the writer and author of the monumental work on Jewish history Toldos Am Olam. Rav

Yaakov Yosef grew up in Williamsburg. After learning in Torah Vodaas, Bais HaTalmud, and Brisk, he came to Lakewood 46 years ago and has been here ever since.

It’s here that he and Rebbetzin Shulamis Rotenberg (née Mitnick) raised their 10 children in a home steeped in Torah, chessed, ahavas Yisrael, and appreciation for our proud past.

Rebbetzin Rotenberg was the be-loved teacher of two generations of students at Bais Kaila and Bais Yaakov high schools. She continued to teach despite a myriad of physical difficulties during her last 18 years, and even after becoming wheelchair-bound six years ago from a procedure gone wrong.

The rebbetzin was niftar last 9 Adar at just 62 years old, a shocking loss for her family and the thousands whose lives she positively impacted.

The loss of the rebbetzin is still palpable in the Rotenberg home. Her wheelchair, table, and personal possessions remain untouched, but for the neshamah candle burning constantly there since her passing. Yet it’s still a happy home, where they accept ratzon Hashem and push forward. Many of the rav’s children live near him, and they and the grandchildren keep it a lively place.

While the rebbetzin’s illnesses and need for care had for many years forced the rav, who has authored several sefarim, to limit his writing, in recent months he has been able to take it up again. He’s now printing a sefer on Yoreh Dei’ah as well as arranging interviews for a forthcoming book about the rebbetzin, and he’s helping fundraise for a Sefer Torah in her memory.

The Sefer Torah will, of course, reside in Shaarei Shlomo.

The shul, according its rav, is a home for “anyone looking for two things: a seriousness in avodas Hashem and a varemkeit and geshmak in how it’s done.”

The tefillos are in Nusach Sefard and on the lengthier side; Shabbos Shacharis can take a half hour longer than in other shuls.

“Singing and geshmake tefillos are a core part of the davening,” the rav says. “This is particularly needed today; that’s how people feel spiritual elevation. We also stress seriousness of avodas Hashem with a focus of not being schlepped into the constant changes and different views of how Yiddishkeit should look, which we get from winds that shouldn’t be here. Our focus is on sticking to the way it has always been.

“We try to caution against getting lost in the whirlwind of gashmiyus’dige interests that have become part and parcel of life today, even, sadly, for some in our community. We don’t give a chashivus to the luxuries many people have become accustomed to.”

The rav’s drashos in shul emphasize this issue: “We stick to what we’ve been taught to be through the generations.”

Another major focus of the drashos is the simchah a Yid should have and how lucky we are to be part of the am segulah.

Once a person has that happiness in being a Yid, the rav explains, “that changes his whole Yiddishkeit. He doesn’t do things out of pressure, but out of joy and love.”

 

Rav Rotenberg views technology as perhaps the greatest nisayon facing our generation today—and not simply because of the improper material that’s so easily accessible.

He says that technology has led to a life of behalah—everything’s a rush, no calmness, no menuchas hanefesh.

“You can’t think, you can’t learn, you can’t read, you can’t daven like a mensch because of this tremendous behalah,” he bemoans.

“And worst of all, it affects our children. They want their father to give them time, but the father is scrolling through his phone, checking his texts, his email. Mothers used to talk to their children and interact with them when they wheeled them in the stroller or watched them in the park; now many mothers are ignoring their kids during this time and looking at their phones or talking on them.

“Our children aren’t getting the undivided attention they so desperately need because we are all so mebulbal.”

In Shaarei Shlomo on Shemini Atzeres, the rav himself auctions off the aliyos—not for money, but for days—the days in which the buyers agree to improve themselves in a particular aspect, with a different issue chosen each year. One year, the bidding was for the number of days post-Sukkos the buyer agreed not to look at any technological device during the time he’s learning or schmoozing with his child (except if the caller is a parent or someone else whom he is cha-yav bi’chvodo). The highest bids went until Chanukah and beyond.

The fight against technology might seem like an impossible one to win. But the rav smiles and says, “As we have seen, a lesson of Chanukah is that Klal Yisrael can accomplish what seems to be impossible.”

Chanukah is during wintertime, when it’s dark and cold and the days are short and natural production is at its lowest as produce and vegetation are minimal.

“And that,” the rav exclaims, “is exactly when we have Chanukah. We know it’s nisht kein chiluk—it could be the hardest and the worst and af al pi chen, ‘me’at min ha’or docheh harbeh min hachoshech.’ So we light the Chanukah candles, which blaze through darkness.”

 

 In recent months, the world has seen what was previously thought impossible. After two years of war and some hostages released from Gaza a few at a time, suddenly, all the remaining hostages were released at once. Meanwhile, Hezbollah was decimated, largely from a single pager attack, and the Iranian nuclear threat was neutered in a few days of strikes by Israel and America.

“This is lo ye’uman ki yesupar,” the rav says. “Chazal tell us that before Mashiach there will be nissim giluim, similar to what we experienced at Yetzias Mitzrayim. There is no way of understanding b’derech hateva how an assassin who had an easy shot at Trump missed by a centimeter because Trump turned his head. And Trump has been so unbelievably good to us.”

“But,” he cautions, “Trump can turn on a dime if the Eibershter wants. And an angry Trump can be a bigger danger to Yidden than some old cognitively declined man who doesn’t know when it’s day or night could ever be.

“We have to look at politics it in a Torah’dige way: ‘Al tivtechu bi’ndivim b’ven adam she’ein lo seshuah’ and ‘lev melachim b’yad Hashem.’”

 

My time is about up, but I ask Rav Rotenberg if he has a final message to share.

He thinks for a moment. And then the rav, a de-voted father and grandfather in partnership with his legendary rebbetzin, a loving mother and renowned mechaneches, smiles and says, “We have to put more emphasis on cherishing what our real legacy will be when our time comes. That’s our children, our family, and that we did ratzon Hashem. That means devoting more time entirely toward our kids, giving away from our own interests in order to give to them.

“Make your child feel that you’re their parent, that that’s your most important job in the world, and that nothing in the world is dearer to you than they are.”