SHABBOS Chanukah is usually Parashas Mikeitz. These two seemingly have little to do with each other. But according to Pirkei d’Rebi Eliezer, there is a hint to the Ner Shel Chanukah is this verse:
“Bring the men into the house and [give orders] to slaughter an animal and to prepare, for the men will eat with me at lunch.” (Bereishis 43:16)
The Hebrew words for “to slaughter and to prepare” are: utvoach tevach v’hachayn. The last five letters of this phrase are: Ches, Vav, Heh, Chof, and Nun, the same letters of “Chanukah,” just out of order. The gematria of the first two words is 6+9+2+ 8+9+2+8, which equals 44, the number of candles we light over the eight days of Chanukah (including the shemashim).
You could read the entire phrase therefore as, “forty-four candles on Chanukah,” but then you’d have to explain what the hint to Chanukah is doing there in a verse about slaughtering and preparing food for Yosef and his brothers. You would have to explain why a hint to Chanukah is in Parashas Mikeitz at all, since it is not a Torah holiday and wouldn’t occur for another 1,500 years!
And while you’re at it, you might as well ask if Yosef purposely built a clue about a future holiday in his words, or whether the Torah did, telling us something about Chanukah we might not have known from the scant details we know about the holiday of light. Since we do not believe in coincidence it has to be Hashgochah Pratis, but to what end?
There are different ways to look at life, one of them being just the actualization of potential from moment to moment. All potential was created on the first day of Creation, and history has just been the realization of each in its proper time and its proper way. A baby may not seem very accomplished when it is born, but it already has in its the potential to do great things for many decades to come.
History is the same story. Everything that has ever come to exist, naturally or miraculously, existed in potential since the beginning of history, waiting for its day in the sun…literally. The only real difference between Pesach and Chanukah is that Pesach occurred before the Torah was completed and is mentioned, and Chanukah came along after the Torah was closed and could not be included. At least Purim is part of Tanach.
And there are things that can be found all over the world, but different cultures have their own names for them. They might also have different uses for the exact same thing that we use bu for a different purpose because of their different lifestyles or cultural traditions.
What this means in terms of history is that Chanukah may be a holiday for us that was established in the thirty-sixth century, but it celebrates something that has always been in Creation. It’s just that earlier societies called it something else, or used it differently based upon the nature of their culture and times.
Thus, the verse, by juxtaposing the mitzvah of shechitah and removing the Gid HaNashe in Yosef’s time with the Ner Shel Chanukah from the Chashmonaim’s time, is telling us that there is a common thread that links the two, and that link is the heart and soul of Chanukah. And it doesn’t hurt that the story happens to occur during the holiday itself almost every year.
In fact, rather than learn about Yosef and his story from Chanukah, we can learn from Yosef about Chanukah. Yosef’s insistence on making the food kosher for his brothers, even though the Avos did not keep the mitzvos outside of Eretz Yisroel, was a message to them. It was a last-ditch effort to hint to his brothers his true identity so they could have reunited then and there and avoid the pain of what was to otherwise follow with Binyomin and the goblet.
Obviously, it didn’t work because the episode with Binyomin did happen, and Yosef had to hold off revealing himself until Parashas Vayigash. That is when the inner reality they had ignored came to the surface and overtook the outer one they had been living. That is when the bigger, hidden truth about God and His plan for the Jewish People knocked their version of it out of the park.
The details of this are the basis of my latest Chanukah book, “Enlightened: The True Light of the Holiday of Light,” available through Amazon. Also, the video series based upon the book is now complete (three sessions), and you can purchase them by writing to pinchasw@shaarnun.org.
Anyone interested in being a dedicator in “Enlightened” can do so here: https://www.matara.pro/nedarimplus/online/?mosad=7014140.
Good Shabbos and Chanukah Samayach,
Pinchas Winston
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