Afraid of The Dark

Afraid of The Dark I vividly remember when I was a young child that I was often scared to sleep in the dark. Thankfully I no longer have that phobia, having conquered it a few years ago after my wife kept complaining about not being able to sleep with the light on in the room. In all seriousness, I remember like it was yesterday that I would lie in my bed with my eyes open and look around the room at the various silhouettes of the numerous objects in my bedroom. The lamp in the corner, the dresser and the bookshelves – all were transformed in my imaginative mind into different monsters of all shapes and sizes. I would tell myself rational thoughts that it was really only the lamp, dresser, bookshelves etc. In an effort to relax but I would still lie uneasily in bed until I would get up and turn on a light and confirm with unambiguous knowledge that those items were in fact just that. While we are on the topic, I remember an even more terrifying experience I used to occasionally have at night. When I would have a bad dream I would want to go to my parent’s room for some comfort. The problem was that I used to sleep upstairs and their bedroom was located on the first floor. Compounding the matter was that when I would get to the bottom of the stairs I would have to cross the area situated between the living room and dining room in order to reach the area of the house where my parents’ room was, a distance of about 15 feet. I would stand at the bottom of the stairs, in the quiet and very dark house, and carefully weigh my options. On the one hand, upstairs my bad dreams and evil monsters disguised as my bedroom furnishings were lurking, and on the other hand I had to cross the Great Divide to get to the safe haven that was my parents’ room. I would look to the right at the dining room and see a monster in the shape of a dining room table, and then to my left at the monster that was cleverly camouflaging as the couch (though if you had seen our couch circa the 70s you would be sure no monster would want any part of it). I would take a deep breath, steel myself and dart across the Great Divide faster than Usain Bolt at the Olympics. (In retrospect, I probably watched too many scary cartoons as a kid.) Looking back, I am not sure why I went through the agonizing and stress. My parents, being no more interested in being woken up in middle of the night any more than I am when my own kids wake ME up now that I am a parent, pretty much did the same thing every time. “Say Hamalach Hagoel” (a paragraph from the bedtime Shema recital), my father would always say. “Ok,” I would dutifully respond, never once thinking to myself, “This is why I came down and risked being eaten by the dining room monsters?! For this advice? I should have known he was just going to tell me to say that, since that’s what he told me the past 20 times I came to him.” I guess I wasn’t the sharpest kid on the block. Why do I mention this? Simply to air my dirty laundry? To let you readers know that despite the brave façade I put on nowadays, I was really a wimpy kid? No, I am getting to a point. I just need to remember what that point was. Oh yes, I remember. We are now concluding the holiday of Chanukah. The Talmud refers to the Greek exile as a period of “darkness.” This begs the following question. The struggle between the Greeks and the Jews was that the Greeks did not want us to follow the laws of the Torah and to worship G-d in the way we had been doing since Mt. Sinai. The Greeks wanted us to follow their way of life which was a life devoid of spirituality and godliness. Instead it focused on the physical world and man’s place at the center of that universe. In fact, the Greeks were at the forefront of culture and civilization. They were pioneers in philosophy, medicine, science, art, sport and so many forms of aesthetic beauty that we enjoy even till this day. It seems incongruous that the empire that brought so much modernity and advancements in human progress should be referred to as “darkness,” an appellation that connotes primitive and archaic lifestyles. Call them “dictatorial,” “oppressive,” “anti-Semitic,” “wicked” – or anything similar. Those seem to be more appropriate than “darkness” which just doesn’t seem to fit. Why was that name chosen? The answer lies in the Torah perspective of the role of the Greeks and their roles in contributing to the world. The ancestor of Greece was a man by the name of Yefes, one of the three sons of Noah. He had a brother named Shem who was the ancestor of the Jewish people. These two brothers were blessed by their father Noah. “Yefes will be granted abundant beauty by G-d and he should dwell in the tents of Shem.” In short, Noah blessed Yefes and prophetically foretold of the day that Yefes will contribute great beauty to the world, words that we see came true indeed. The problem lies in the second half of the blessing. Yefes (Greece) was, per the blessing and advice of Noah, supposed to channel those contributions and view them through the prism of “the tents of Shem.” The tents of Shem refer to the perspective of the Jews who are descended from Shem and who view the world through the lens of the Torah and represent and embody its ideals. To explain, the beauty that Yefes was going to innovate would be good only inasmuch as they would be guided by a spiritual component. The classic books of mussar talk about how we Jews are supposed to use and enjoy this physical world by infusing into it a spiritual component. The problem with the Greeks was that they were only willing to beautify and enhance the physical world, all the while rejecting the notion that there exists a spiritual being called G-d and thereby depriving the injection of any element of spirituality into that physical world. This basic difference in weltanschauung was the underpinning of the fight between the Greeks and Jews. The Greeks were content with allowing us to live in our land, a land of beauty. They were even willing to leave the Temple standing because they appreciated the aesthetic beauty of the edifice. What they could not tolerate was the Jewish belief in making sure that all of the beauty of the physical is only truly beautiful if there is an underlying component of spirituality in it. Going back to our earlier question we can now understand why the Torah refers to the Greek exile specifically as “darkness.” You see, for all the façade and bravado that the Greeks portrayed as being the leaders in bringing “light” to the world in the form of civilization and human progress, the Torah is unequivocal in teaching us that all the beauty in the world is meaningless without a spiritual foundation and hence, what the Greeks and others call “light” is in fact very much “dark.” Perhaps we can suggest that the mitzvah of the Chanukah holiday is specifically to light a candle (besides for the obvious reason that the miracle of the menorah occurred with the oil). When a room is dark we lose clarity. We can’t see our surroundings. Things appear to be different than they are. Dressers and lamps look like monsters and bogeymen. We are confused and scared. But then we light a candle. Even a small flame will light up a dark room and provide much needed clarity and comfort. On Chanukah we are commanded to take a small light and begin shedding light on our surroundings. The world around us may sometimes appear to be full of progress and enlightenment but if there is no spiritual aspect to it, it is actually darkness. It is up to us to light the flame, represented by the menorah on Chanukah but equally applicable the entire year through the holy Torah which is our instruction manual for infusing G-d and spirituality into the world, to pull ourselves out the darkness which surrounds us and begin living with the clarity and comfort of light. This is the lesson of Chanukah and we should merit carrying it with us long after the last doughnut has been digested. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to get my 5-year-old back to sleep. Seems she had a nightmare and is scared. I think I’ll just tell her to say Hamalach Hagoel. Works every time. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Yosef Koval