The Four Exiles is a common idea in Jewish thought. It refers to the four exiles that the Jewish people would go through subsequent to the exile in Egypt. The first exile was the Babylonian exile which followed the destruction of the first Temple. The second exile was the Persian-Median exile when the Purim story took place. After returning to rebuild the second Temple, the land of Israel was conquered by the Assyrian Greeks – Golus Yavan and finally, the Romans destroyed the second Temple and ushered in the exile that we are still facing – Golus Edom.
The Mahara”l of Prague explains why there are specifically four exiles. The Four Exiles correspond to the four directions. The directions emerge and move away from a single, centre point.
The centre point is the oneness of Hashem, the Torah and the Jewish people. The city of Yerushalayim which was home to the Beis Hamikdash in which the Shechina rested, is the centre point in space from which the world spread. Like the four directions, the four Exiles represent a departure, deviation and opposition to this oneness.
The Midrash teaches that the Four Exiles are alluded to in the opening verses of the Torah;
וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחֹשֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵי תְהוֹם וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים מְרַחֶפֶת עַל־פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם
And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the spirit of G-d hovered over the surface of the waters.
תהו (without form) - refers to the Babylonian Exile. בהו (void) - represents the Persian/Median Exile. חושך (darkness) - alludes to the Greek Exile, and תהום (the depths) - is the Exile of Edom (Rome).
The Mahra”l teaches that the Four Exiles correspond to different parts of the human psyche. The Greek exile reflects the Koach Hasichli, our intellectual capacity. The Greek empire was renowned for their intellectual greatness. They gave the world great philosophers, mathematicians, authors and scientists.
So why do the sages liken the Greek Exile to darkness? Darkness would be a more appropriate description of the backward and brutish Babylonians or the cruel and barbaric Romans, but not the Greeks, who were a people of sophistication, wisdom and illumination to the world.
Our relationship with the ancient Greeks is complicated. On one hand, the Mishna teaches that Torah scrolls may be written in Greek. This is derived from the verse יפת אלקים ליפת וישכון באהלי שם, “G-d will enlarge Yefes and he will dwell in the tents of Shem.” The Greeks descended from Yefes. The sages interpret this verse as saying that the beauty of Yefes, which is the language of the Greeks, will dwell in the tents of Torah study of the Jewish people who descended from Yefet's brother Shem.
At the same time, the Talmud teaches that on the day that the Torah was translated into Greek for king Ptolemy, a darkness descended to the world that lasted 3 days.
The Sages were not fooled by the illumination and intellectual greatness of the Greeks. They did not see their wisdom as a source and force of light in the world. Behind the façade of sophistication lay something dark and morally corrupt.
Their wisdom lacked the central point of G-d, the source of absolute truth and unchanging morality that distinguishes between right and wrong. Without this foundation of immutable truth, sooner or later, the wisdom and illumination of Yavan would become a source of darkness, confusion and lost moral consciousness.
This is the uniqueness of Torah that the wisdom of Yavan lacked. Torah is Divine wisdom, G-d-given law and truth. In contrast to the darkness of Yavan, Torah is called Or – light.
The Sages teach that if someone says that the nations of the world have wisdom, we should believe them. But if we are told that they have Torah, we should not believe them. When brought into the tent of Shem and rooted in Torah truths, human intellect is a thing of beauty. But the Torah of Ptolemy that divorces the wisdom of Torah from its G-dly nature, casts the world in darkness.
The darkness of Yavan is alive and well today.
Yavan lives-on in the hallways of academia in “top” universities. Harvard, UPenn and Columbia, for example, institutions that were once held on a pedestal as beacons of light and ethics, have been revealed as cesspools of darkness, lies, warped values and antisemitic vitriol.
The rot comes from the top, with deans who cannot condemn calls for Jihad as genocidal, saying that whether they breach university policy depends on “the context”. And the students, supposedly the greatest minds our youth has to offer and the future shapers of society, who glorify terrorists.
And Yavan lives on in the International Criminal Court that was formed to uphold peace and justice, to prosecute crimes of genocide and war crimes. An institution that is presided over by “respected people who are the best among the profession of judges” (or so says Josep Borrell of the EU).
Yet this highest secular court in the world draws equivalence between the Prime Minister and Defense Minister of Israel to the terrorist murderous leaders of Hamas. They do not see a difference between a barbaric terrorist entity that deliberately targeted civilians, slaughtering, torturing and raping women, children and the elderly - and the IDF, the army of a free, democratic country fighting an existential war to protect its citizens, who have gone beyond what any army in history has done to minimise civilian casualties.
Yavan lives on in the halls of the United Nations, an institution once revered as the champion of rights and morality. This illustrious institution is not bothered by real atrocities being committed around the world and instead focuses on Israel as the source of all evil in the world. They do not see the hypocrisy of seating representatives of the worst violators of human rights, to sit on and lead their committees, which they use to condemn Israel.
The great Sages and Torah leaders saw through this façade from the outset. They saw the darkness that lay behind the light that was projected. In 1984, when Binyamin Netanyahu served as the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, the Lubavitcher Rebbe told him “you are going to a house of lies and darkness. Remember, in a hall of darkness, if you light one small candle, its light will be seen from afar. Your mission is to light a candle for truth and for the Jewish people”. He quoted this story in the General Assembly in his speech as Prime Minister in 2011.
Like the Hashmoneans, we have to stand steadfast against the ideology of Yavan. With courage, conviction and Jewish pride, we must expose the darkness for what it is. We must take the pure oil, sealed with the seal of the Kohen Gadol that represents the incorruptible truth, holiness and Divine morality of the Torah that is sealed with Emes, the seal of Hashem. And with this oil, we light a small candle of true light.
We light our light outdoors to illuminate the dark streets of the world that perpetuate the darkness of Yavan. This small light in a place of darkness will eventually be seen by good and honest people who choose to see the truth. Like the Hanukkah lights, a single small flame of truth will grow and spread, until all of the lies are exposed and the darkness is vanquished.
When this light fills the world, the spirit of G-d will hover over the water, alluding to the spirit of Moshiach and the triumph of the Jewish people over exile. Then we, together with the entire world will return to the epicentre, where the oneness of Hashem will be revealed and recognised by all of the nations of the world.
And in Hebrew: ביום ההוא יהיה ה' אחד ושמו אחד.