Bar Mitzvah, The Maccabees, and Chabad

Ma’ale Gilboa weekly blog- Parashat Vayeshev/ Joel Weiner

Apart from Shabbat, Thursday is my favourite day of the week, so I thought I’d write a little about what went on in the Yeshiva yesterday:

We started the morning with the Bar Mitzvah of a boy from a nearby Kibbutz in the valley, whose family had decided they wanted it to take place in our Beit Midrash (a good choice, I might add!). It was wonderful to be able to join in the family’s celebration.

This year we are learning Masechet Ketuvot in our Iyun (in-depth Talmud-study) Shiur, but for the week preceding Chanukah we’ve made a slight diversion to learn what the Talmud has to say on the matter of Chanukah in Halachah. What’s particularly interesting is the way in which Chanukah is perceived in the modern day to be a fairly important festival, and yet in the Gemara there are almost no references to it at all (interestingly, Sefer Hamakkabim, which tells the story of Chanukah, was one of the books left out of the Tanach). We studied the main source for the laws of lighting Chanukah candles, which appears in Masechet Shabbat as a side point to the central discussion on the Shabbat candles. In my Shiur, we argued about why the Gemara allocates so little space for the discussion of Chanukah. We came up with a couple of possibilities: Either the events in the story of Chanukah were fairly recent at that point, and therefore the ‘laws’ that we have now were little more than minhagim (traditions) then; or, because the Rabbis weren’t the biggest fans of the Maccabim, who after the story of Chanukah anointed Kings from the tribe of Levi (even though the Priesthood and the Royalty were meant to be kept separate) – and therefore the Rabbis tried to belittle the miracle of the war against the Greeks.

Yesterday we also marked “Yat Kislev”, the anniversary of the Ba’al Hatanya’s (the first Lubavitcher Rebbe’s) release from prison in the 18^th Century. For Chabadnikim, this is a big calendar event; in Ma’ale Gilboa, we did our bit by singing Nigunim, eating (a necessary part of the celebration), and telling stories late into the night, and ended off with our traditional Thursday night ‘Spontaneous Dancing’ (normally at 10pm exactly, but a little late this week). Afterwards, we had our weekly Yeshiva-wide Sicha with Rav Bigman, who spoke about his own thoughts on the Ba’al Hatanya and his world.

And hence, we brought to an end another week of learning at Ma’ale Gilboa, and in that spirit we prepare to welcome the Shabbat bride.