וּבַגֶּ֖פֶן שְׁלֹשָׁ֣ה שָׂרִיגִ֑ם וְהִ֤יא כְפֹרַ֙חַת֙ עָלְתָ֣ה נִצָּ֔הּ הִבְשִׁ֥ילוּ אַשְׁכְּלֹתֶ֖יהָ עֲנָבִֽים׃
и на лозе были три ветви; и когда он зародился, расцвели его цветы, и гроздья их принесли спелый виноград,
Likutei Halakhot
2. In accord with the lesson on Chanukah LM II #2: there he explains that via acknowledging thanks, the aspect of four [categories of people] need to recite the thanksgiving prayer, which is the aspect of the bliss of the Coming World, which then will be days of thanksgiving to H"Y, the aspect of halakhoth/Torah way, as explained there. Thereby the truth will shine, through three names, which are the aspect of Torah, Prayer, and Matchmaking and Matrimony into speech. Namely to complete the four facets of speech, the four divisions of speech, which are [1] penitent speech, [2] charitous speech, [3] the speech of the rich who are close to Malkhuth — the aspect of the "hasheloshah serigim/three branches" [Gen. 40:10] etc., and [4] the aspect of Malkhuth, the mouth etc.; see there. And thereby the sanctity of Shabbath is drawn to the six mundane days. And thereby all the various actions/events are drawn into the Simple Unity etc.; see there. Which, this is the aspect of "Halakhah kerabim/The law follows the majority;" take a good look there regarding all this.
Kedushat Levi
Genesis 40,10. “and there were three branches on the vine.” According to one (Rabbi Eleazar hamodai) of numerous allegorical explanations in Chulin 92, the vine is symbolic of Jerusalem; whereas the three branches are symbolic of the Temple, the King, and the High Priest, respectively. The words: והיא כפורחת עלתה נצה הבשילו אשכלתיה ענבים, usually translated as: “it had barely blossomed when out of it came its blossoms and its clusters ripened into grapes,” is understood allegorically by the Talmud. The reference is to the young priests who will mature and offer libations in the Temple. In order to explain this somewhat far fetched allegory, although the one preferred by the Talmud, our author quotes Yuma 29 where the rhetorical question of why Queen Esther has been compared to an אילה, a gazelle, hind, the Talmud defining the gazelle in psalms 22,1 as אילת השחר, Queen Esther as being like a gazelle in the morning, i.e. at the end of the night, sees in Esther and her experiences the last chapter belonging to the period of history described in the Bible. No overt miracles in Jewish history have been reported in the Bible subsequent to her period.
What did the Talmud have in mind when suggesting that after Mordechai and Esther, [in whose time these ”miracles,” were already not overt, Ed.] no more miracles occurred?
We must distinguish between two kinds of wars. Usually, when we speak of “war,” we refer to an armed confrontation between warring nations.
The second type of “war,” is one that originated in G’d subjecting the Jewish people to attacks by external enemies, in order to strengthen their faith in Him when He would save them from a fate which they were powerless to escape by any other means. Psalms 91,2 refers to the psalmist acknowledging such miraculous escapes of the Jewish people. It is remarkable that the psalmist, in referring to his trust in the Lord, does so in the future tense, i.e. אלוקי אבטח בו, “my G’d in Whom I will put my trust,” instead of, as we would have expected, “in Whom I have put my trust.” The psalmist acknowledges that he now understands the purpose of the “war” that had befallen his people as having been a test, teaching the Jewish people to put their trust only in the Lord. The same theme is found in psalms 118,10 כל גויים סבבוני בשם ה' כי אמילם, “all nations have surrounded me; by the name of the Lord I will surely cut them down.” The psalmist does not predict what he is about to do, but refers to what G’d had in mind by allowing His people to face such impossible odds, i.e. to strengthen their faith when they will be saved by Him. The psalmist makes it even plainer In verse 21 of the same psalm, when the words אודך כי עניתני ותהי לי לישועה, must be understood as: “I will express my thanks to You for having afflicted me so that You could demonstrate how You will be my salvation.”
When G’d “rescues” the Jewish people, this occurs in either of two ways. The most easily recognizable way are overt miracles in which His mastery over nature is demonstrated by His breaking all the “rules” that scientists have taught us are inviolate. The best known examples of this are the 10 plagues G’d visited upon the Egyptians, crowned by the splitting of the sea of reeds in which the Egyptian army drowned to a man, while the Israelites crossed the bottom of that sea safely. Although in the song of thanks by the Jewish people after the drowning of the Egyptians the text is full of G’d being lauded for His performing “wonders,” (Exodus 15,11) what are “wonders” performed by G’d in our eyes, are, of course, nothing extraordinary when viewed from His vantage point, seeing that He had made the rules, He is certainly able to suspend them when it suits Him. The Jewish people praised Him not so much for what He had done, but for having found the Jewish people worthy to be saved by such spectacular means, involving the undoing of what G’d had done during the six days of creation.
What did the Talmud have in mind when suggesting that after Mordechai and Esther, [in whose time these ”miracles,” were already not overt, Ed.] no more miracles occurred?
We must distinguish between two kinds of wars. Usually, when we speak of “war,” we refer to an armed confrontation between warring nations.
The second type of “war,” is one that originated in G’d subjecting the Jewish people to attacks by external enemies, in order to strengthen their faith in Him when He would save them from a fate which they were powerless to escape by any other means. Psalms 91,2 refers to the psalmist acknowledging such miraculous escapes of the Jewish people. It is remarkable that the psalmist, in referring to his trust in the Lord, does so in the future tense, i.e. אלוקי אבטח בו, “my G’d in Whom I will put my trust,” instead of, as we would have expected, “in Whom I have put my trust.” The psalmist acknowledges that he now understands the purpose of the “war” that had befallen his people as having been a test, teaching the Jewish people to put their trust only in the Lord. The same theme is found in psalms 118,10 כל גויים סבבוני בשם ה' כי אמילם, “all nations have surrounded me; by the name of the Lord I will surely cut them down.” The psalmist does not predict what he is about to do, but refers to what G’d had in mind by allowing His people to face such impossible odds, i.e. to strengthen their faith when they will be saved by Him. The psalmist makes it even plainer In verse 21 of the same psalm, when the words אודך כי עניתני ותהי לי לישועה, must be understood as: “I will express my thanks to You for having afflicted me so that You could demonstrate how You will be my salvation.”
When G’d “rescues” the Jewish people, this occurs in either of two ways. The most easily recognizable way are overt miracles in which His mastery over nature is demonstrated by His breaking all the “rules” that scientists have taught us are inviolate. The best known examples of this are the 10 plagues G’d visited upon the Egyptians, crowned by the splitting of the sea of reeds in which the Egyptian army drowned to a man, while the Israelites crossed the bottom of that sea safely. Although in the song of thanks by the Jewish people after the drowning of the Egyptians the text is full of G’d being lauded for His performing “wonders,” (Exodus 15,11) what are “wonders” performed by G’d in our eyes, are, of course, nothing extraordinary when viewed from His vantage point, seeing that He had made the rules, He is certainly able to suspend them when it suits Him. The Jewish people praised Him not so much for what He had done, but for having found the Jewish people worthy to be saved by such spectacular means, involving the undoing of what G’d had done during the six days of creation.
Kedushat Levi
When the psalmist, in psalms 111,4 says of G’d: זכר עשה לנפלאותיו, “He has made a memory for His wonders,” the question arises why ”wonders” need to be commemorated by a special זכר? We would have thought that their very having occurred is their memorial! The psalmist answers this unspoken question in the latter half of the same verse when he says: חנון ורחום ה', “Hashem is gracious and compassionate.” At the sea of reeds G’d demonstrated that in spite of His being compassionate He deliberately suppressed this attribute by drowning the Egyptians in order to “save” the Israelites. This “canceling” of one of His major attributes on account of the interests of the Jewish people is what are referred to both by the psalmist, and by Moses in the shirat hayam, the song of thanksgiving, as נפלאותיו or פלא, “wonderful, amazing.”
The second type of ישועה, “rescue” is when G’d garbs Himself in the “clothing” worn by nature, i.e. makes use of natural law without disturbing its normal function. A well known example of such an event is the “miracle” of Purim, which according to all that we know about it did not contain any elements that could be described as interference with the natural course of events.
Achashverosh married Esther, and due to his jealousy of Haman who he thought had tried to rape his wife Esther, he hanged Haman. A similar “miracle” resulted in the festival of Chanukah, the king or chief general of the Seleucids lusting after Yehudit and trying to rape her, resulting instead in his being killed by her, and his army becoming demoralized. In both the examples mentioned, many thousands of gentiles, antisemites, were killed in due course.
The subject becomes easier to understand by means of a parable. A King built a palace for his son; originally, he had meant for his son to live in that house. After a while, some wicked people expelled the son from this house. It would be appropriate for the house that had served as the protector of its inhabitants to not only protest this action but to take counter measures. However the house, i.e. the stones, are immobile, as pointed put by Chabakuk 2,11. Seeing that the stones of the house are immobile, they are powerless. The world was created for the sake of the Jewish people, i.e. the world is our “house,” as G’d has told Pharaoh that the Jewish people are His firstborn son when viewed in terms of the parable. (Exodus 4,22) When the gentile nations dispossess us or kill us, the “world” ought by rights to rise up in our defense. As this is not possible, the owner of the world, G’d, will do this instead. This is why the numerical value of the word טבע, nature loosely translated as “world,” is the same as the numerical value of the word אלה-ים, G’d, i.e. 86. When “nature” smites the gentile nations, it is the same as G’d smiting them. The world is the sum total of the Creator’s creative activity. G’d may be perceived as its father. The expression מעשה בראשית, a simile for the 6 days of G’d’s creative activity, contains the word ראשית, “beginning,” i.e. that the final product of G’d’s creative activity had been planned from the very beginning, i.e. as a home for the Jewish people, who are the whole purpose of G’d’s beginning the creation of the universe. At the conclusion of this process, אחרית, the Creator garbed Himself in what we are fond of calling טבע, “nature,” and all that this term entails. When Moses said in Deuteronomy 32,18 צור ילדך תשי, “you (his people) neglected the Rock that begot you,” his words expressed similar sentiments.
Before someone opens his mouth to say something, a person considers if the words he is about to utter are the ones appropriate for expressing his wish. If he wishes to make a request, he thinks about how best to phrase such a request in order that it may be granted. By changing his mode of speech, he becomes a totally new person. When G’d issued directives to create the universe, He created the whole world with these oral directives. (Compare psalms 33,6 בדבר ה' שמים נעשו, “the heavens came into existence by a single word of the Lord”.) When it comes to “saving” this world from impending destruction, using the טבע, “nature,” as His instrument, He deals with something that is established, and therefore employs a different means than the one He had employed when bringing something into existence. According to our author the word טבע is closely related to the word חנוכה, completing a training program, consecration, i.e. establishing a kind of order, norms, imprinting a form on something, as in מטבע, coin. G’d no longer needs to resort to something brand new, i.e. miracles.
When Esther is described as אילה, a strong animal, (feminine of איל, ram) i.e. fully mature, our sages referred to the period of overt miracles in Jewish history having come to an end in her time, so that the salvation of the Jewish people in which she was instrumental did not require G’d’s intervention by upsetting the rules of nature through a miracle.
[If G’d were forever to have to resort to miracles to achieve His purpose in the universe, this would reflect a basic flaw in that universe. When at the end of the Purim story the Jews are described as voluntarily accepting what they had accepted at Sinai under tremendous pressure, this too is a compliment to G’d, whose children had matured. Ed.]
The sages (at the beginning of 40,10) are quoted as seeing in one of the branches which the cup bearer saw in his dream, the young priests, the ones who would perform the sacrificial service in the Temple in due course. If we revert to the allegorical approach that the author has adopted, the פרחי כהונה that the Talmud spoke about are the sacrifices offered in the Temple, which are symbolic of how miracles become converted into norms, טבע, seeing that most communal offerings are closely tied to certain days, weeks, months, or years, and these in turn symbolise how what had come into existence as an overt miracle at the creation, had been transformed into what we call natural phenomena, i.e. manifestations in nature that are not only predictable but can be calculated thousands of years in advance.
[The author tries again to bring the subject of Chanukah into this portion, as the portion is always read around that time of year, draws on the Talmud Shabbat 21 where the subject is Chanukah. Ed.] The Talmud there stipulates that the best time for lighting the Chanukah candles is the period immediately following sunset until it has become so dark that no more pedestrians are about. (There was no street lighting in those days) Our author sees in this a symbol of the gradual switchover from G’d performing overt miracles to working through letting טבע perform most of His intervention in the affairs of man. The expression for complete darkness, used by the Talmud is עד שכלתה רגל מן השוק, usually translated as “until the pedestrians have ceased walking in the public domain.” Seeing that the word רגל does not only mean “foot, but is also directly related to רגילות, something habitual, he understands the Talmud as hinting at this “getting used to seeing no more brilliant miracles,” as the period following “sunset.” The expression used by the Talmud for sunset is שקיעת החמה, the word חמה, “sun,” referring to something overt, highly visible.
The second type of ישועה, “rescue” is when G’d garbs Himself in the “clothing” worn by nature, i.e. makes use of natural law without disturbing its normal function. A well known example of such an event is the “miracle” of Purim, which according to all that we know about it did not contain any elements that could be described as interference with the natural course of events.
Achashverosh married Esther, and due to his jealousy of Haman who he thought had tried to rape his wife Esther, he hanged Haman. A similar “miracle” resulted in the festival of Chanukah, the king or chief general of the Seleucids lusting after Yehudit and trying to rape her, resulting instead in his being killed by her, and his army becoming demoralized. In both the examples mentioned, many thousands of gentiles, antisemites, were killed in due course.
The subject becomes easier to understand by means of a parable. A King built a palace for his son; originally, he had meant for his son to live in that house. After a while, some wicked people expelled the son from this house. It would be appropriate for the house that had served as the protector of its inhabitants to not only protest this action but to take counter measures. However the house, i.e. the stones, are immobile, as pointed put by Chabakuk 2,11. Seeing that the stones of the house are immobile, they are powerless. The world was created for the sake of the Jewish people, i.e. the world is our “house,” as G’d has told Pharaoh that the Jewish people are His firstborn son when viewed in terms of the parable. (Exodus 4,22) When the gentile nations dispossess us or kill us, the “world” ought by rights to rise up in our defense. As this is not possible, the owner of the world, G’d, will do this instead. This is why the numerical value of the word טבע, nature loosely translated as “world,” is the same as the numerical value of the word אלה-ים, G’d, i.e. 86. When “nature” smites the gentile nations, it is the same as G’d smiting them. The world is the sum total of the Creator’s creative activity. G’d may be perceived as its father. The expression מעשה בראשית, a simile for the 6 days of G’d’s creative activity, contains the word ראשית, “beginning,” i.e. that the final product of G’d’s creative activity had been planned from the very beginning, i.e. as a home for the Jewish people, who are the whole purpose of G’d’s beginning the creation of the universe. At the conclusion of this process, אחרית, the Creator garbed Himself in what we are fond of calling טבע, “nature,” and all that this term entails. When Moses said in Deuteronomy 32,18 צור ילדך תשי, “you (his people) neglected the Rock that begot you,” his words expressed similar sentiments.
Before someone opens his mouth to say something, a person considers if the words he is about to utter are the ones appropriate for expressing his wish. If he wishes to make a request, he thinks about how best to phrase such a request in order that it may be granted. By changing his mode of speech, he becomes a totally new person. When G’d issued directives to create the universe, He created the whole world with these oral directives. (Compare psalms 33,6 בדבר ה' שמים נעשו, “the heavens came into existence by a single word of the Lord”.) When it comes to “saving” this world from impending destruction, using the טבע, “nature,” as His instrument, He deals with something that is established, and therefore employs a different means than the one He had employed when bringing something into existence. According to our author the word טבע is closely related to the word חנוכה, completing a training program, consecration, i.e. establishing a kind of order, norms, imprinting a form on something, as in מטבע, coin. G’d no longer needs to resort to something brand new, i.e. miracles.
When Esther is described as אילה, a strong animal, (feminine of איל, ram) i.e. fully mature, our sages referred to the period of overt miracles in Jewish history having come to an end in her time, so that the salvation of the Jewish people in which she was instrumental did not require G’d’s intervention by upsetting the rules of nature through a miracle.
[If G’d were forever to have to resort to miracles to achieve His purpose in the universe, this would reflect a basic flaw in that universe. When at the end of the Purim story the Jews are described as voluntarily accepting what they had accepted at Sinai under tremendous pressure, this too is a compliment to G’d, whose children had matured. Ed.]
The sages (at the beginning of 40,10) are quoted as seeing in one of the branches which the cup bearer saw in his dream, the young priests, the ones who would perform the sacrificial service in the Temple in due course. If we revert to the allegorical approach that the author has adopted, the פרחי כהונה that the Talmud spoke about are the sacrifices offered in the Temple, which are symbolic of how miracles become converted into norms, טבע, seeing that most communal offerings are closely tied to certain days, weeks, months, or years, and these in turn symbolise how what had come into existence as an overt miracle at the creation, had been transformed into what we call natural phenomena, i.e. manifestations in nature that are not only predictable but can be calculated thousands of years in advance.
[The author tries again to bring the subject of Chanukah into this portion, as the portion is always read around that time of year, draws on the Talmud Shabbat 21 where the subject is Chanukah. Ed.] The Talmud there stipulates that the best time for lighting the Chanukah candles is the period immediately following sunset until it has become so dark that no more pedestrians are about. (There was no street lighting in those days) Our author sees in this a symbol of the gradual switchover from G’d performing overt miracles to working through letting טבע perform most of His intervention in the affairs of man. The expression for complete darkness, used by the Talmud is עד שכלתה רגל מן השוק, usually translated as “until the pedestrians have ceased walking in the public domain.” Seeing that the word רגל does not only mean “foot, but is also directly related to רגילות, something habitual, he understands the Talmud as hinting at this “getting used to seeing no more brilliant miracles,” as the period following “sunset.” The expression used by the Talmud for sunset is שקיעת החמה, the word חמה, “sun,” referring to something overt, highly visible.