Description
Twenty-Four Days: Journey to the Awesome Light of Chanukah – By Rabbi Pinchas Winston
There are twenty-four days between Rosh Chodesh Kislev and Chanukah. No big deal, right? Wrong. And not just because they lead up to Chanukah, but because they are the lead up to Chanukah, the only Jewish holiday to fall on the twenty-fifth day of a month.
The Zohar alludes to this here:
[The eighth sefirah of] Hod is the eight days of Chanukah, [which occurs after the] twenty-four days [of Kislev during which the Chashmonaim battled the Greeks]. They correspond to [the twenty-four letters of] Boruch Shem kevod Malchuso l’olam va’ed. (Tikunei HaZohar 29a)
That is a very insightful connection between the first twenty-four days of Kislev and the second verse of the Shema, especially after knowing this:
Ya’akov had wanted to rectify [the Malchus below] b’sod the [lower] unity and established the [unity of the] twenty-four letters, which is, Boruch Shem kevod Malchuso l’olam va’ed. He did not complete it with twenty-five letters [like the Shema] since the Mishkan had yet to be built. (Zohar, Terumah 139b)
When we say the Shema twice a day, we start with the Shema and then say Boruch Shem. But in Kislev, we reverse the order, at least conceptually. Instead, the first twenty-four days of Kislev correspond to Boruch Shem, and they lead to the twenty-fifth day, which corresponds to Shema Yisroel.
It makes sense. Each verse is considered a yichud, which causes and proclaims the unity of God, but with a very significant difference. The Shema is the yichud of alma d’ila’a—the upper world of angels and spiritual purity, and Boruch Shem is the yichud of alma tita’a, the lower, spiritually murky world of man.
This is why if you subtract the gematria of the first verse of Shema (1,118) from the gematria of the second verse of Boruch Shem (1,358), you are left with 240, the gematria of Amalek and suffek—doubt. It is the intellectual and spiritual doubt that resulted from eating from the Aitz HaDa’as Tov v’Ra that transformed the world of man from one of angels to what it is today. Remove Amalek/suffek from the equation, and we return to the level of the clarity of the Shema.
That is the goal therefore of the first twenty-four days of Kislev, to get to the level of the Shema, which has twenty-five letters, by the twenty-fifth day of the month, and Boruch Shem is the key. It is the level of the Ohr HaGanuz, the light which God created on the first day of Creation and subsequently hid from the evil of history:
God saw that the light was good, and God separated between the light and the darkness. (Bereishis 1:4)
He saw that the wicked were unworthy of using it, and therefore set it apart for the righteous in the Future Time. (Rashi)
This primordial light is also associated with the number twenty-five, and it is said to be hidden in the Ner Shel Chanukah:
The original light of Creation was hidden in the thirty-six candles of Chanukah. (B’nei Yissachar, Kislev)
The question is, what does it mean that the first twenty-four days of Kislev correspond to the twenty-four letters of Boruch Shem? In total, or literally letter-by-letter, so that the first day of Kislev corresponds to the Bais of Boruch, the second day to Raish, etc.?
No one says, which makes it difficult to use the twenty-four days in any specific way to prepare for Chanukah, other than cleaning your chanukiah and buying your wicks and oil. That is what millions of Jew have done now for millennia.
What follows is based upon the other approach, starting with the Bais of Boruch on Rosh Chodesh Kislev, and ending with the Dalet of va’ed on the twenty-fourth day of the month. At the very least this will help a person to prepare for Chanukah and greatly enhance their appreciation of the key to the final redemption.
