Little Vessels: Hanukkah 2021
Note: due to technical difficulties - we’ve all been there the last year - Rabbi Noa’s drash cuts off at the end. For the full teaching, read below.
Rabbi Noa Kushner
December 3, 2021
Little Vessels: Hanukkah, 2021
1.
Once upon a time there was a man named Jacob
Now you may think you have baggage but Jacob had a lot of baggage
I mean spiritual baggage
For example, the last time he saw his twin brother, that brother wanted to kill him
And maybe he wanted to kill him because Jacob had dressed up like said brother to trick their father
At the behest of their mother
Basically, I’ve not seen succession but I can already tell you it has nothing on Torah
And that’s just the first part of Jacob’s life
After all that he fought repeatedly and then ran away from his father-in-law, taking his wives,
That is, the aforementioned father-in-law’s daughters away
Taking everything with him
In other words Jacob has spiritual baggage but he also has actual physical baggage too
He has a huge family, four wives, children, material possessions, cattle, sheep,
It’s a lot to track, a lot to carry
And we know this because a few weeks ago in Torah
When Jacob is preparing to be reunited with that estranged brother
A moment for which he is terrified
Not to mention, of course, it is a moment right before an angel will come crashing out of nowhere and wrestle with him all night, changing him for life, changing his entire life
Right before this unplanned divine wrestling match
Torah tells us that Jacob does a strange thing
He reaches a river
And Torah tells us how Jacob painstakingly carries everyone in his family and everything he has across that river
The midrash says
He makes himself into a kind of ferryman [1]
Going back and forth, again and again
One interpretation even says he turned himself into a bridge in order to ensure everyone’s safety, letting everyone walk across on his back
וַֽיַּעֲבֵ֖ר אֶת־אֲשֶׁר־לֽוֹ
He sent across everything he had.
And Torah says,
וַיִּוָּתֵ֥ר יַעֲקֹ֖ב לְבַדּ֑וֹ
Jacob was left alone.
2.
But Rashi, who never misses anything, seeing that Jacob is alone
Now understands that Jacob must have crossed the river back to the original bank one last time
Because if Jacob didn’t cross, he would not be alone!
He would be with his family and all his possessions
But this is not the case, Torah makes a point of telling us he is alone
And we know Torah does not waste a single letter
So Rashi wants to know
What was so important that he had to cross that river, alone, one last time?
And why am I telling you this on Hanukkah?
Be patient! One thing at a time.
Rashi deduces that
b/c all the family members are already on the other side, all the important material things,
“Everything he had”
Rashi deduces that Jacob goes back to get things that are unimportant, insignificant
In fact, Rashi decides that Jacob goes back to get פַּכִּים קְטַנִּים / Small vessels, little flasks
What? You say — You mean to tell me that Jacob avinu, our father, known for planning and even scheming goes all the way back across the river, endangering himself for some pottery?
The talmud tries to put a spin on this and suggests we learn from this that the righteous take nothing for granted
Not even a small vessel
And so Jacob goes to great lengths to protects his material possessions [2]
But this does not seem especially laudable
And I’m not saying this because I’m married to the guy who keeps free peanuts from the plane long past any reasonable amount of time
And in fact, midrash rabbah has a different suggestion:[3]
Namely that Jacob went back across the river to see if he left anything behind
You see, what the rabbis are saying is that he couldn’t leave what was behind, behind
Maybe you can relate to this:
Did I leave the oven on? Did I remember to lock the door? Did I leave the tickets or my phone?
Is something of value back there?
Can I let go now?
There’s an interpretation that I love by my teacher Rabbi Ed Feinstein — regarding one of the laws relating to harvesting our fields
The law says that, if, when you are harvesting and a grape falls, you have to leave it
You can’t go back to get it
And this is, says Feinstein, unlike leaving the corners of your fields, not because that fallen grape is for a needy person who’s going to pick it up
No needy person is going to survive based on what we dropped
This one is not for the needy
This is law is to condition us NOT to be the kind of person who stays up at night wondering and obsessing, “Did I drop a grape? Is there still a grape on the ground? Should I go back and get it?”
We have the law because it is hard to leave in all kinds of ways
Sometimes it's hard to move on from what we dropped
It is hard to cross the river and not go back again
And remember on one side of the river
Jacob had experienced decades with a bizarre, materialistic father-in-law Lavan, a father-in-law who blamed him and chased him and objectified him, keeping him psychologically bound up for years until Jacob finally, finally ran away
And people like that, they’re hard to shake aren’t they?
Their accusations, as meritless as they are, can stick, they can return at night, they are hard to shake
Especially for the Jacobs in this world, that is, especially for us
If we’re not careful we can keep returning to those old arguments and trying to prove ourselves to those who only want the argument to keep going forever
So I thought it was especially astute that rabbi Rebecca Yussman suggested [4]
That Jacob goes back across the river
Not even to check to see what he left behind
But because there was a part of him that still wanted to return to his father-in-law Lavan, that old adversary
He still wanted to prove himself one last time.
So maybe the פַּכִּים קְטַנִּים / the small vessels were vestiges,
Symbolic reminders of an argument that Jacob couldn’t let go
פַּכִּים קְטַנִּים, פַּכִּים קְטַנִּים
We want to ask: Jacob, why are you going back?
There is such an important mission ahead, you need to seek forgiveness from your brother
Why are you going back for פַּכִּים קְטַנִּים
/ Little useless vessels
Jacob, what are you doing?
And you also want to ask: What does this have to do with Hanukkah?
Be patient!
3.
You see, the Ba’al Shem Tov has a different idea altogether
Sure, he says, Jacob goes back one last time
Yes, the Besht says, he goes back, exactly as Rashi says,
for פַּכִּים קְטַנִּים / Little vessels
But these are not insignificant trivialities nor are they leftovers from arguments long ago
The פַּכִּים קְטַנִּים
Says the Ba’al shem tov
are nothing less than people who are in trouble
He says people who have fallen away from God
And I think his idea is easily and legitimately expanded to
Friends who need us
Strangers who are desperate
Oh, I don’t know, I’m spitballing here but maybe its
People who deserve our immediate attention and help
because their rights to protect their own bodies are under jeopardy
By those who would argue that overturning Roe v. Wade is somehow a return to neutrality!?
Just showing that out there
Might not be what the Ba’al shem originally had it mind, but I wouldn’t put it past him
He would certainly have understood the severe spiritual peril that this supreme court decision puts us all in now
And I believe he would certainly have understood that women
Are not only vessels but people who each have a complete and perfect soul in their own right, in our own right
That we were not created, not one of us, to be פַּכִּים קְטַנִּים / small vessels alone
But rather to shine our infinite souls into the world
So maybe Jacob went back, crossed the river again in order to find
Yes, to rescue
The souls of women trapped by circumstance
That’s who he refused to leave behind
4.
Or maybe, פַּכִּים קְטַנִּים / the forgotten, small vessels
Applies to pieces of all of us
Sitting in this room tonight,
The parts of us that have succumbed to real despair
Afraid to admit what we really believe and love and admire and want [5]
Afraid to admit that we love and need each other
Maybe פַּכִּים קְטַנִּים / the small vessels
Are the parts of ourselves that need the search and rescue
Maybe, if we are willing, like Jacob, to place ourselves at risk, make some sacrifices
If we are willing to cross the rivers and fight the angels
Those vessels are still there in our lives for the taking
Or maybe
Says R. Isaac Luria of Tsfat, the Ari, great Kabbalist
We don’t know what the פַּכִּים קְטַנִּים are, we can’t know
We just know we have to go back to get them, that we need them somehow
Because God gave them to us —
And for all things that come from above, which are all things he says
No matter how useless they may seem or confusing or confounding or even painful
For all things that come from above in our lives
One must go back for them [6]
In other words, and this is my version, one must go back and recover the meaning in those things.
I know what you are going to say
Rabbi, you are going say, very politely
Very nice, yasher koach
But what does any of this have to do with Hanukkah
It is, remember, Rabbi, the 6th night of Hannukah?!
And now I will tell you, now I can tell you
That it turns out
That the word for vessel, פַּ֥ךְ — this is the same word in the phrase
Vessels of oil
The very same vessels that, you guessed it, we found in the destroyed Temple when
Everything was dark
And everything was lost
And we were exhausted beyond measure
And we knew we had to light the hanukkiah and rededicate the temple but there was not enough oil but then we tried anyway and the oil lasted
THAT oil
Those kinds of vessels are called
פַּכִּים הַשֶּׁמֶן
Vessels of oil / small, vessels, cruises of oil
The kind of vessels that once, long ago, gave us just enough hope to try to change everything in our world
Just enough hope to get us to the next miracle
And so, this Hanukkah
I believe it is entirely possible that what Jacob went back to receive
Crossed the river to receive
Was those same vessels of oil
The פַּכִּים הַשֶּׁמֶן that would someday become the Hanukkah light in the Temple
And somehow make up these Hanukkah lights here tonight
What I’m saying is that it is possible that these lights are none other than a Hanukkah present from Jacob our father.
And so my Hanukkah beracha for us this shabbat
Is that just as Jacob went back to seek this light to find it and give it to us
That we too make ourselves into bridges
Cross rivers and go back if we have to
Find that light again, remember it and guard it and protect it
In ourselves, in each other, in all who need it.
(BR 76:9)
Chullin 91a
BR 77:2
[via sefaria source sheet re: Gen. 32:25]
(Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, p. 7-8.)
source sheet, safaria, Brahm Weinberg, “Yom Kippur, a Quiet Place Where we can Reason Undisturbed”
