Happy Eight Days of Chanukah Messages - Day 8
Tonight we light the entire menorah full of candles. It is hard to believe that we’ve reached the eighth night. Perhaps tonight we can take the time to truly experience the light in all its wonder.
During the past week, I’ve tried to include a wide range of source material in these Chanukah messages. One place I have not gone for wisdom is the treasure trove of Hasidic texts. These tales can be esoteric and difficult to decipher, but they are well worth the effort. Below are excerpts and adaptations from The Existential Dreydl by the great rabbi, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov. I thank my friend and colleague Rabbi David Seidenberg for pointing me to this text. If you would like to read it in its entirety, or see other mystical texts rooted in the Hasidic tradition, visit www.neohasid.org. Reb Duvid, as he calls himself, terms this site “Hasidism Without Borders.”
May the light enable you to find what it is you seek!
The Existential Dreydl
from the Wisdom of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, section 40
The world is a rotating wheel. It is like a dreydl; everything goes in cycles. Human becomes angel, and angel becomes human. Head becomes foot and foot becomes head. Everything goes in cycles, revolving and alternating. All things interchange, one from another and one to another, raising up what is low, and lowering what is high.
….
All creation is like a rotating wheel, revolving and oscillating. At one time something can be on top like a head with another on the bottom like a foot. Then the situation is reversed. Head becomes foot and foot becomes head….
For the world is like a rotating wheel. It spins like a dreydl, with all things emanating from one root: Highest Below and Lowest Above.
…Chanukah means dedication. This is the dedication of the Holy Temple, "the highest below and the lowest above."… This revolving wheel is the dreydl. That is why we play with a dreydl on Chanukah.
… The Temple was… "the highest below and the lowest above, in that God’s Holy Presence was lowered into the Temple, becoming the highest point on earth below…. The Temple's pattern was engraved on high, being "the lowest version of the heavenly heights above". The Temple is therefore like a dreydl, a rotating wheel, where everything revolves and is reversed.
The Temple refutes… logic. God is above every transcendental concept, and it is beyond all logic that God should constrict God's self into the vessels of the Temple. "Behold the heaven and the heaven of heaven cannot contain You, how much less this Temple!" (I Kings 8:27).
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One Root to All Things
But between potential and existence stand the three categories of creation: transcendental, heavenly, physical—all come from this one root. As they interchange, they all revolve around this single root.
The letters on the dreydl [coming from the words for A Great Miracle Happened There] are Heh, Nun, Gimel, Shin.
Heh is Hiyuli, primordial [from the Greek word hyle].
Nun is Nivdal, the transcendental [from the Hebrew for separation].
Gimel is Galgal, the celestial [Hebrew for sphere].
Shin is Shafal, the physical [Hebrew for fallen].
Nun is Nivdal, the transcendental [from the Hebrew for separation].
Gimel is Galgal, the celestial [Hebrew for sphere].
Shin is Shafal, the physical [Hebrew for fallen].
The dreydl thus includes all creation. It goes in cycles, alternating and revolving, one thing becoming another.
…..
Each time you play the dreydl, remember that the rotation of the earth, the changing of the seasons, the transformation of the spirit----all of this is part of life.
Happy Chanukah!