Barely two double sided pages in the Talmud are the primary rabbinic source to the foundation of Chanuka and the laws pertaining to lighting Chanuka candles. Within the context of questioning what oils are appropriate for kindling the Shabbat lights, the Babylonian Talmud (tractate Shabbat 21b - 23a) questions the source of the holiday, the laws (no eulogies at funerals, the recitation of Hallel) and a long detailed discussion about the timing and location of the lighting of the candles themselves.
The core of the Talmudic discourse surrounds the lights - who lights, how many and why - and only in passing discusses the historic source for this celebration. It is for this reason that I point our attention specifically to the timing of the mitzvah of lighting the candles.
We are taught: The time of fulfilling this mitzvah is from when the sun sets until there are no more people in the market. If that isn't specific enough, Rabba Bar Bar Channa in the name of Rabbi Yochanan teaches us that we are not talking about the shoppers, not even the merchants, we are talking about the time when the Tarmudai are no longer in the market place. Rashi explains that the Tarmudai were a people that would come out even after the merchants left and collect pieces of wood, splinters and slivers of wood, to sell later on to the home owners, so that they - the home owners - would have light in their homes.
This commentary of Rashi demands of us to pause and reflect on our life. What we are being challenged with here is the notion that the homeless are those that bring light into our home! The homeless are those that function as the closing bracket of timing for fulfilling the mitzvah of lighting Chanuka candles! The Tarmudai are not those that we will bump in to when picking our produce at the farmers market. They are not the merchants that offer us a service and we offer back to them words of gratitude, waiting to see them the following week. The Tarmudai are those that will remain in our consciousness both faceless and nameless.
Reb Shlomo Carlebach would share a considerable amount of time with the homeless of the Upper West Side of Manhattan. When he died there were numerous stories of them coming to pay their respects as the funeral left from the Carlebach Shul on 79th st. When returning there for the first time months after Reb Shlomo died I remember how proud I was that I had a teacher that the homeless missed as much as his students did. They told him that the hardest time of the day to be on the streets was the time between sunset and when the streets became empty. They said that during the day there were a lot of people on the street so they weren't alone. And late at night they would all settle into their night location. But the time when people (ish u'bei'to - a person and their household - Shabbat 21b), as homeowners/homedwellers, were rushing home - that was the time that they had no where to go. This was their hardest and loneliest hour.
Let's return to our Talmud section for a moment:
The time of fulfilling this mitzvah is from when the sun sets until there are no more people in the market... the time when the Tarmudai are no longer in the market place.
Is this not exactly the time that the homeless of the Upper West Side of Manhattan were describing as their hardest time of the day? They hold the space for our light in the time of day that contains their greatest darkness.
There is one halacha that seems to break this unbearable chasm between those who live on the inside and those who live on the outside - the location of the kindling. The Talmud, and later we will find this in the Shulchan Aruch (the Code of Law, Rabbi Yoseph Caro) that the lighting of the candles needs to be precisely where they are meant to be placed - hadlakah b'makom hanacha (lighting with they are placed) - ideally at the gates of our home, or as many practice, at a window that is seen by the passers-by. This location, the Talmud teaches us, is there to promise the spreading of the miracle of Chanuka - that people walking by will see them and remember what had happened in the time of the Macabees.
But it seems to me that there is another way to look at this location. We are taught, and thus sing, "and we have no permission to use them, but rather to only glance at them". We can't read with their light, or even sit down to a romantic dinner with their glow. They are meant to be observed, acknowledged for the memory that they hold. Their light is their one mission.
There is, though, one caveat to that law. If there is a person, a homeless person, for example, that has no home to light candles in, that has no money to purchase Chanuka candles, then they can use our candles, the ones burning in our openings and windows to say a blessing and fulfill the mitzvah of lighting Chanuka candles.
It would appear to be teaching us that while we live in a world of home-dwellers and street-dwellers, a world of insiders and outsiders, a reality that in itself tells us that the world we live in carries pockets of darkness, non-the-less, the one reality that has no room in our world is a reality in which no matter what state or condition we are in, we aren't able to say a blessing over light. Yes, we may not be the owners of the source of light, but as I remember Reb Shlomo saying, "Is it not a miracle that we can at least say a blessing over someone else's light?"
Midrash Rabba opens its commentary on this weeks' Torah portion, Miketz (in the end), with a verse from E'yov (Job 28) "Ketz sam la'choshech" - He brings an end to the darkness.
It is true that there are blessed moments in our life that are filled with light - we have a home (Ish ubei'to - both physical and figurative), we have candles to light and those to light them with. We even have the ability to share our light with those less fortunate. It is also true that there are times in our life that darkness prevails, that we feel as though we are wandering through the streets of God's world (the Tarmudai). Rabba Bar Bar Channa and the Midrash Rabba come to teach us that there is an end to that darkness - "Ketz sam la'choshech" - and they teach us to be holders of the time of lighting - as long as we are in the streets there will be candles burning. And most important - this Shabbat-Chanuka comes to teach us that there is always a source of light in our life to say a blessing over - whether our own source of light or someone else's.
May this Shabbat-Rosh Chodesh-Chanuka bring all of us internal and surrounding light. May we bask in our light and share it with others. And may the Tarmudai of our life become named and faced!
Shabbat shalom, chodesh tov and Chanuka sameach.