Last week’s Parshah , Vayishlach, sparked a lively discussion at my Friday night table. Rashi and others comment that Yaakov Avinu (our Father Jacob) erred when he placed his daughter Dina in a box, in preparation for Jacob’s family meeting Yaakov’s evil brother Esav. These commentators say that perhaps Esav would have wanted to marry Dinah, and maybe Dina could have had a good influence on Eisav, turning him to the Good. My daughter was not pleased with this comment:
“Eisav was a known murderer and serial rapist. Of course Yaakov was correct to keep his daughter hidden, far away from this evil uncle. More so, since she was maximum eight years old at the time of this meeting”.
The answer to my daughter’s very correct reasoning , which explains Rashi’s approach, is from a combination of the thoughts of Rav Matis Weinberg and Rav Avraham Kook, Chief Rabbi of Israel :
In the famous scene of Yaakov’s ladder-dream, he sees a ladder rising to Heaven. Angels are going up and down the ladder. Our Rabbis explain that these angels were the archangels of the nations that would dominate the world: Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, etc. Each angel went up for a number of rungs, symbolizing years of sovereignty, and came down: Egypt 400, Babylon, 70, etc. However, Rome (who are Eisav’s descendants) went up the ladder, and seemingly never descended. This astonished Yaakov, who interpreted this as a never-ending rule of evil Rome.
However, G-d assured Yaakov that Eisav’s rule will eventually end. All Yaakov had to do was to ascend the ladder himself, and he would prevent this version of history from ever happening.
Yet Yaakov refused to ascend the ladder. There is much controversy in the explanation of Yaakov’s behavior. Some say Yaakov erred in not going up the ladder; the dream may’ve occurred on the night of Tisha B’av, the very night that Yaakov returned to Eretz Yisrael, 22 years after the ladder-dream. As such, the refusal of Yaakov to climb the ladder was of a kind with the sin of the Spies in the desert in the time of Moses: a lack of will to become Yisrael, the holy Nation meant to rule history.
Rav Matis Weinberg offers the approach of a Musar-nik. In this view, Yaakov is utterly consistent in both the ladder incident and in his meeting with Eisav, 22 years later. In that meeting, Eisav is the one who proposes a division of the world, with the two brothers sharing the world. And Yaakov’s answer is vintage Jacob: “My children are young, the sheep are fragile; you go ahead of me brother, I will advance slowly-and I will catch up to you in Mount Seir” (Genesis 33,14). The Midrash says that with this, Yaakov gave away the last 3,500 years of history to Rome and those who came after it.
Yaakov knew that his “children” WERE young, immature- not ready to be a nation. He was choosing to walk slowly through history, waiting for Bnei Yisrael- the Children of Israel - to develop into a mature nation (watch the Knesset TV channel, and you will see that the wait is not over). Rav Matis stresses that Yaakov Avinu was willing to suffer the pogroms, exiles, misery and degradation of what became Jewish history, rather than “lidchok hashaah”- rush the time of ascending his Ladder; most importantly, Yaakov chose to remain vulnerable to the injustices to which Egypt, Babylon, Rome , etc. would be subjecting the Jewish people.
With vulnerability the key, now we can understand what was wrong about boxing Dinah- and with the help of Rav Kook. In Midbar Shur (chapter 29), our first Chief Rabbi explained that Mother Rivka had received a prophecy that her womb was to be the incubator for two world powers that would eventually share each other’s good properties, and cooperate in ruling all Creation (in the times of the Moshiach- when Jacob would “come to Mount Seir”). Thus the Almighty was saying to Yaakov Avinu:
“So you boxed Dinah (like some Hanukkah present). Some Mr. Vulnerable, ready to suffer whatever I, the Lord, throw your way, in the trials and tribulations of history. To persuade you to put on the hairy hands of war (of Eisav; see my dvar Torah on this website: Mother Rivkah and the Draft), your Mother told you of the prophecy that she received when you two twin boys were in her uterus. Thus you knew that Eisav would eventually come around to share your good qualities. The intermediary to accomplish that, would have been Dina; perhaps she would’ve married Eisav, and turned him to the Good side. But your manipulations, your game with the box, thwarted all that- and so you will be punished.”
Moreover, THAT is the prelude to Hanukkah: vulnerability, manipulations, games, and spies. Yosef the teenager makes himself totally vulnerable to his brothers: he visits them in Shechem, knowing it to be dangerous- and in this week’s Parshah Vayeishev, is kidnapped to Egypt. In two weeks, he still has no guarantee that his brothers will not try again to kill him- yet he exposes (literally: his Brit Milah) himself to his brothers after expelling all his protecting Egyptian troops, and says: “I AM YOUR BROTHER JOSEPH” (Genesis 45, 1-3). Another incident: Yosef decides to manipulate, to play spy (i.e., to tilt the final results of the game in his favor) by asking the Egyptian Bakery Officer that when he leaves jail, to remember Yosef to Pharoah. This was a sin on the same level as Yaakov boxing Dinah- and G-d punishes Yosef with two more years in jail.
This prelude to Hanukkah returns again and again in the story of the Yosef, and in the history of the Maccabean Wars. It is no happenstance that Yosef accuses the brothers, repeatedly, of being spies (Genesis 42, 9). A spy does not do what’s right, and leaves the final results of any contest up to G-d; the spy looks for any angle to tilt the results in his favor. Yosef tells the brothers: “ meraglim atem”- YOU ARE SPIES. They never believed that his dreams and charisma could run a country - only tanks, F-35’s, big (sheep) business, oil - and they tilted the results in their favor by selling him.
That is the lesson of Hanukkah: Yehudah and the Maccabim could fight ten times as many Greek- Syrian soldiers, because they knew that they were doing what was right- so they acted, no matter what the consequences. That’s vulnerability. That’s not being a spy, but rather leaving the final results up to G-d. (For more on this, see my divrei Torah on this website, written by me before I became a Rabbi; Google Dr. Aryeh Hirsch, and - The Rule of Threes; Threes Redux; Hanukkah:Imagination; and Imagining Hanukkah).
Thus Rabbi Weinberg finishes: and that is why we light Hanukkah candles “ ad shetichleh REGEL min hashuk” (Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim, 672,2). Literally, the time of lighting Hanukkah candles starts at sunset and extends “ until the last customer (regel - literally, foot; also, SPY) leaves the marketplace”. As Rav Weinberg says :”We’ll be lighting those candles until the last manipulative spy disappears from the people of Israel”.