 back to ThinkTech. And this is, of course, this is why this Hanukkah is different from all others under our series called How the World is Changing, and why Hanukkah may never be the same with Rabbi Ishel Krasnjansky of Chabad, Hawaii. Welcome to the show, Rabbi. Thank you, Jay. As always, it's a pleasure to be here. The war in Israel and the anti-Semitic protests here in the U.S. are having an effect on the meaning and celebration of Hanukkah, it seems to me, because it's happening. It happened a few days ago. It's very fresh. Rabbi, we'd like you to help us understand what the effect is here and in Israel, the effect of the war at this time of year, the Hanukkah time, and whether it is something that will be remembered this moment in history going forward. So can you help us understand what Hanukkah is and what lessons and parallels we can draw between Hanukkah and where we are in this Hamas war? Sure. Actually, the similarities are very striking, and that does make this Hanukkah different than last years and the years before. Just for a little history, Hanukkah celebrates and commemorates a military victory on the part of the Jewish people during the Second Temple Era over 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem when they were attacked by the Assyrian army, which is the Greek Assyrian army, who wanted to that's the term that they used to Hellenize the Jewish people and to absorb them into the Greek culture. The prejudice and the oppression that the Jewish people suffered then, interestingly, is very different than the oppression and the terrible attack that Israel suffered today this year on October 7th. The Greeks did not want to annihilate the Jewish people. They actually saw in the Jewish people something very, very favorable that they wanted to absorb into their culture, but what they wanted was for the Jewish people to buy into the Greek culture. The problem is that the Jewish culture is really diametrically opposed to the Greek culture, so it was a clash of cultures. How was it different? The Greek culture deifies the human being man as the apex of creation. First of all, logic and reason and philosophy that was seen as the highest that man can aspire to. Aristotle and all the other philosophies that came out of that culture. Also, the physical prowess, Hercules, strong and fit, that was the aspiration. The Jewish people actually, while was recognized that they were very, very intelligent people, we are very intelligent people, very wise people, but at the heart of our belief is a total surrender to God, which is higher than reason. Reason is not the highest level. The highest level is actually beyond reason to go to accept and to embrace something that's beyond reason. The emphasis is on the spiritual, not on the physical. So to the Greeks, this was really very opposed to their core beliefs. So the battle was an ideological battle, which spilled over into an actual war. The Greeks were very, very happy and agreeable for the Jewish people to continue practicing Judaism, Torah, but in a different way, basically to take God out of the picture and just embrace all the otherwise teachings that are found in the Torah. The terms that the sages use is that the Greeks came and they defiled the oil. They did eat the oil that was necessary to burn in the temple to light the menorah. It doesn't say they destroyed the oil, but they defiled the purity of the oil, which means they wanted to inject and for the Jewish people to accept the Greek value and the Greek belief systems and have the oil, the oil is a symbol of light, a symbol of wisdom. They wanted to inject their values into the Jewish wisdom of thinking. And our sages recognized that that purity, so to speak, is really what sets the Jewish people apart from the other nations. So that was the problem that the Greeks had with the Jews. Hitler, going closer to our generation, he didn't like any Jew, not their philosophy, not their being. He wanted to annihilate men, women and child and to just rid the world of the Jewish people. This is Hamas today. Hamas is the current day Nazi. It's not that they have a problem with the ideology of the Jewish people and their belief system. They have a problem with the Jew and the Jewish people. And it's not just a problem with the Jewish people in the land of Israel, it's the Jewish people all over the world as they say themselves that they want to start in Israel, but then march on and take over the entire world. So in that sense, it's different, but it's the same idea that there's a battle here, there's a war. And it could be said that this is the war between what's moral and what's between light and darkness. And this is an age old battle throughout civilizations and there's a battle within each and every one of us. So what does Hanukkah celebrate? Hanukkah celebrates a miracle. The miracle was that against all odds, the Jewish people prevails and they preserved their culture and they were able to rededicate the temple. It was against all odds. First of all, in numbers-wise, the Greek Syrian army was much greater in number and they were a trained army. The Jewish people were not, but nevertheless, we were victorious on the battlefield and we were victorious in terms of the spiritual victory of retaining the pure oil. So in this way, Hanukkah this year resonates very, very deeply because what is the definition of a miracle? And why do we celebrate miracles? So God created the world and we have the natural order of things. The natural order of things is just systems that God put into this world. When something happened that defies the natural order or that supersedes the natural order, it's a clear expression or manifestation of God stepping in and fixing or doing what has to be done in order to make things right. So this is an expression of love from God to whomever the miracle occurs and when a person experiences a miracle in their life, it's basically that person feels an overwhelming feeling of gratitude to the one who performed a miracle for them and only God can perform miracles. The story of Hanukkah is a national miracle that happened to all the Jewish people. So Hanukkah actually celebrates God's love for the Jewish people and that's why Hanukkah is perhaps one of the most celebrated of Jewish holidays throughout the calendar. We have many holidays, but Hanukkah strikes a very deep chord through the whole Jewish community whether you're more religious or less religious. Hanukkah is a very, very special time. Can you talk about the oil? Can you talk about the miracle of the oil? So the full story is that the Greeks came into the temple. They defiled the oil by touching it and impurifying it and it was the practice in the temple to light the menorah, which is the candelabra every single afternoon. So there was a dilemma because there was no pure oil which to light the menorah because all the oil that was in the storage houses was defiled by the Greeks and it would take a total of eight days for them to replenish the oil and make new pure oil because they have to follow a certain procedure. But they searched and they searched and they only found one jug of oil enough to burn for one night and that's the story in the miracle of Hanukkah that it poured this jug of oil into the menorah and even though it was only enough to last for one night it lasted for eight days until they were able to replenish it with pure oil. So that's why we celebrate Hanukkah for eight days. That's the miracle of the lights. The oil represents, like you said before, the intellect wisdom and the pure oil represents the purity of the ideology of the philosophy of the Jewish people and in that way the miracle was an affirmation of God's love for the Jewish people and the reason why I think that's so important is because today Jewish people in America, surely outside of America, are not feeling safe or feeling threatened because of the anti-Semitic call, the calls from the anti-Semites, you know, for Israel to be destroyed, for to support Hamas, etc., etc. And now it's very almost like understandable for Jews to fear, to feel, to be afraid, and to feel very, very uncomfortable. So we have to remember that the celebration of Hanukkah, we have to remember the celebration of Hanukkah, it demonstrates God's love for the Jewish people. And just as there was a miracle in Hanukkah and people have never forgotten that for hundreds, even thousands of years, this war where Israel is defending itself against terrorists who are sworn to destroy it is also memorable. And I suggest to you that this war and this Hanukkah and this challenge will be remembered just as the original Hanukkah was remembered, is remembered. What do you think? Yeah, I think it is definitely the case, especially if you watch closely what's going on, you see and you read what's happening, what's coming out of Israel, you see open and revealed miracles. The soldiers on the front lines are sharing stories of open and revealed miracles that I'll tell you one that I just heard recently and I heard it from a talk from a general in the Israeli army. And he and a group of soldiers were in Gaza. No, not in Gaza, they were on the border on the southern border immediately after a massacre. And they got there. And shortly afterwards, they were ambushed by many, many Palestinians and there was like a battle ensued and they were out numbered. And after a little while, they ran out of bullets, they ran out of ammunition to defend themselves. And there was a couple of people there, I forget how many he said, and they all felt that the end was very near for all of them. And one of the members of this platoon or this brigade said to his friend that if God provides a miracle and they come out alive so he took it upon himself to observe the Sabbath. He was a very secular Israeli Jew that never observed the Sabbath or any of the Jewish rituals, but he felt at that moment that if God would save him, he would come back to his religion and observe the Sabbath. And the person who was telling the story said that he knows that this fellow was very far away from religious practice. He was Jewish. He was born Jewish. He was proud to be Jewish. He was proud to be an Israeli, but he never really practiced Judaism. And he was shocked to hear this from his friend. But the story was that he said within minutes, friends saying that, all of a sudden, they got quiet. There was no more shooting. And they heard the terrorist like just receding and going away. And after a while, they crawled out, they walked out, and no one was there. And they escaped and they survived. So today he said, there's no other way for him to explain what happened other than this was a miracle. And countless stories like this are coming out that they're experiencing a great miracle in Israel. Israel is being forced to fight a battle under impossible circumstances because they embed themselves among civilians, which forces them to fight it in a very dangerous way, up front and close, which is very, very dangerous. There were thousands and thousands of rockets that flew into Israel since October 7th. The amount of damage that it inflicted, the amount of casualties that it caused, is so miniscule that there's no other way to explain other than God's protecting the Jewish people. We see that one rocket that the terrorists lodged into Israel that didn't make it over the border and landed in a parking lot of a hospital kills 500 people, whatever the real number is, but it was a lot of people. If you imagine if all of these missiles flying into Israel, how many potentially how many casualties there could be, and thank God, there's God's protection. So this is really what's fun to celebrate. So to experience it in real time today, I think is a very, very amazing thing. That's memorable. In fact, it leads to the next question I was going to ask you Rabbi. So as you said, Israel is in large part a secular state. There are Jews that don't practice. The army is a civilian army, and in large part it's a secular army. And yet they are in harm's way. Those young men, and women, they're late teens, early 20s, most of them, and they had to leave their jobs, their families, their occupation, their lives in order to come and do this. They've been doing it for 65 days. And it's troubling at the least that they would come and have to put themselves in harm's way, but they do. And I keep thinking of some of the photographs I've seen of the Israeli soldiers waking up and doing to villain, praying in the morning. And I think it's probably an extension of the story that you told, how a very secular Jew can find religion that he didn't find before or she, and that it brings them together. It makes them strong or stronger as an army. Am I right? Yes, I think you touch upon a very, very important point. So first of all, the truth is, and this is really at the core of the Fabbaz philosophy that the Rebbe taught us, is the truth is there's no such thing as a secular Jew. Every Jew, because of the soul that we possess and the Shema that we possess, every single Jew, whether more conscious or less conscious, is very connected to God, very connected to everything that's good and beautiful. It's world. You know, one of the things that we see, if you look, if you bother to look objectively, the contrast between these young Israeli, so these soldiers, like you say, they're young kids, they're college age kids, some a little younger, some a little older. And the terrorists on the other side, we're hearing things that is just boggles the mind how these young Israeli soldiers can arise to such moral heights and such moral strength that you wonder, where's this coming from? Where's this depth of holiness coming from? This young kid wrote a letter and sadly, he was killed, but they found what he wrote. Basically, he writes that if he should die or if he should be captured, he doesn't want for anyone to negotiate on his behalf and to offer up some the release of some of these terrorists from jail. He doesn't want for them to, for the Israeli army to come into harm's way and put themselves in danger to save him. His ultimate aim was to protect the Jewish people and if it's meant for him to die, he would die. I mean, how does a 21 year old, 22 or 25 year old young man or woman have such noble feelings and sacrifice? I mean, it's unbelievable. And you contrast that with the murderous aspirations of the terrorists. They just want to murder and kill and inflict as much pain and harm on innocent people. The contrast is just beyond anything. And that's what makes it all the more maddening and frightening when so many people are out there supporting Hamas. Yeah, it's really, it's hard to believe. And I remember a comment made, I'm so impressed by the Israelis who are on YouTube and anyone wants to see them. You can see them all day. As one fellow's name is Levi, who is probably the most incredible commentator. And he has the facts, he has the figures, he answers questions, whatever questions are put to him. And he gives you an accurate statement. There's a lot of misreporting going on. There's a lot of stress on the humanitarian aspect of what is happening to the Palestinians, which I think is misreported. But this fellow is very accurate and very matter of fact. And he's every day, he reports and I have come to watch him every day. But what I have seen in the people who report from Israel is that they are morally strong. They are factual and honest to the extent they can be. And they are impressive in their, what do you want to call it, level of civil society. They represent the civil society of Israel, a democracy. And through them, you can see that. Anyway, one of these reporters, I mean from the Israel government, a spokesman, was asked, why do you continue to fight? And he said, and I just sat back, I was struck by his answer, because we have to. We have no choice. This is defending our nation from obliteration. We have no choice but to fight. There's only one thing we can do. That's what we must do. We must defend ourselves because the alternative is so completely disastrous. And I don't think the kids on the American college campuses understand that at all. But I think those kids who are in the Israeli army, IDF, they understand it. They're defending their nation, their people, their religion. They're defending their moral persuasion. And that's why they're so strong individually and as an army. At first, I was wondering, what are these kids' things? They're in harm's way. They could be shot and killed at any moment. But they're strong enough to deal with that. They go out there on the battlefield and they deal with it and they are not afraid. They understand and they are committed. That's what I see. That's me. And I think we're touching each other on that very point with those kids. You know, just to contrast, you know, this war, the war that Putin is leading in Russia. So when the Russian government came out to conscript all young men from such and such an age that they have to show up and go fight in the army. So what I read is that hundreds of thousands of people, Russian young people fled the country. They didn't want to fight an unjust war or whatever. You know, they didn't want to fight. And Putin had to release prisoners from jail and recruit them as fighters. When Israel came out with what they called Saf Shmona, which is rule number eight, which is calling up all the reservists and calling everyone in, more people presented themselves to come fight than the Israeli army was able to take. And even till today, I know a friend of ours, the doctor here in Hawaii, and he sent to the channels in Israel, you know, he has 30 years of experience. He's a trauma specialist. He offered if he could help for them to let him know and he would drop everything and he would fly over. There's tens and tens and hundreds and hundreds of people like like that throughout the country. Yeah, well, and there are a lot of young people, men and women in the United States, who have gone over to Israel, presented themselves with one specialty or aspiration or another. They're not all accepted, but some are and they're trained and they're on the battlefield and they enjoy that same motivation that the Israeli young people have. It's very impressive and it's memorable and it's just another thing that makes this Hanukkah different. Yes, indeed. So, you know, we know we have challenges here. We have challenges of people and students in the United States protesting in favor of Hamas as an article in the paper yesterday about the Bronx. I don't know if you saw this, the Bronx public defender. They're in favor of Hamas as a public defender because they're very, very super liberal and they're responding to, you know, the Palestinian call. And, you know, we have various organizations. It's not just the students in the universities who are protesting in favor of Hamas. And then in the United Nations General Assembly, they got it backward. And I really enjoy when this spokesman, Levy, lets him have it in his daily reports. But, you know, other people from Israel go to the United Nations. By the way, someone pointed out that the United Nations is never, ever in agreement about anything except when it comes to condemning Israel. All of a sudden they're all in agreement. So, then you have, you know, you have, may I say, you have various Arab countries that are attacking Israel in every way they can. You have the entire, you know, Islamic establishment attacking Israel in every way they can. And you have members of Congress who are refusing to provide further aid to Israel and putting pressure on Joe Biden, who is responding to some extent to that pressure. So, I wanted to give you an opportunity, Rabbi, to speak to them, all of them. To the students who protest to the General Assembly, that, you know, is so backward and, you know, unsupportive. And to the members of Congress, who are interested in other much smaller and inconsequential political issues than supporting what Israel is trying to do to help itself, to defend itself. If I could give you a moment, Rabbi, to speak to them all, if they were all here watching the show, what would you say to them? I think I would say that you have to ask yourself a question. Are you a decent human being that values life and respects the rights for other people to live? Or is there some kind of dark side to you that is okay with other people being slaughtered and raped and suffer for no good reason? And this is what this fight is about currently in Israel. That the Hamas, their charter and their aspirations are to kill any Jews as possible. This is what they did on October 7th in the most brutal way. And I would say to everyone that you, you know, you should really look and see what they did and seeing good conscience. Can you support that? And by being silent or worse, by saying that maybe they were justified is really giving aid to this evil force of the Hamas. And you're really part of it by not protesting it. So that's what the battle is between light and darkness. Hanukkah celebrates light. Are you part of light and the solution of good and kindness? Or are you part of the evil force of darkness? Yeah, it's about human decency. And I'm reminded of some of these protests where if a Jewish person or organization wants to participate in the conversation that takes place in and around the protest, they are yelled at. They are shut down. They are threatened. Sometimes they're beat up. And it's worse than just the people in the protest supporting Hamas and shouting from the river to the sea, let's eliminate Israel, is that they do not let the Jews or the people who would oppose that view even speak in the conversation. I find that even worse. Anyway, and I have to say that I did not like what happened in Congress a few days ago where those university administrators kept saying, well, it may or may not, this kind of support of Hamas and terrorism and killing Jews may or may not be in violation of our rules against harassment, but it depends on the context. And I said to myself, I wish I was there because I have a few questions I would like to put to them. What do you mean by context? Let's examine that. Anyway, it was really outrageous. So here we have kind of established that there is a parallel source, a connection between this Hanukkah now and what is happening in the battlefield in Hamas and elsewhere at the borders of Israel. And we found common points there between Hanukkah and, for that matter, Passover and, of course, what's going on in the Gaza. And so it's likewise, it's unprecedented. And here you're a rabbi for a lifetime. You travel hither and yon. You talk to Jewish people hither and yon in person or by media. And you think about this all day long because you're charged especially with preserving the culture, the religion, the connection with the Jewish God. And I wonder how you feel. I never asked you this before. How do you feel about this personally? It's unprecedented. It's shocking. How concerned are you for Israel, for the Jewish people, for the Jewish people all over the world, for Chabad? Not only in Chabad of Hawaii, but Chabad globally. And for the Jewish clergy, the rabbis, like yourself, how do you feel? I don't think it's just as a rabbi, I could say this, but I think any person, surely any Jewish person that has studied or knows Jewish history and the Jewish people are an eternal people. This problem is anti-Semitism. The pogroms and the slaughter, unfortunately, has been with us for a very, very long time, from the beginnings of time. And we, the Jewish people, have survived all throughout in a miraculous way. Ben-Gurion once said, any Jew that doesn't believe in miracles is not a realist. The reality of our existence is that we are an eternal people because we're connected to the eternal God. The land of Israel is God's gift to the Jewish people, so it's the eternal land of the Jewish people. Nothing will change that, not the United Nations' approval or disapproval or the Hamas's attempts or any other anti-Semite demand. We will be victorious, there's no doubt about it. We only pray to God that it happens with as few fallen soldiers as possible and that it happens as quickly as possible, but there's no doubt about that. So while it's very disconcerting the anti-Semitism, especially here in America, for us American Jews, which thank God we didn't have to, we haven't felt anti-Semitism. For a very, very long time, and that's why this country is really a blessed country for the Jewish people. To be honest with you, it doesn't throw into question whether we could survive this or whether we're going to be able to overcome this. We definitely will, as we've done time and time again because, like I said, as long as we're connected to God, the eternal God, we are the eternal people. Yeah, and you mentioned before we began the show that Steven Spielberg, who did Chandler's List, which is a really remarkable piece of filmmaking, and has the Shoah Project, which is about the Holocaust where he interviews the survivors of the Holocaust to memorialize their testimony and what happened to them and others. But now he's doing another project and guess what? It's about the massacre of October 7th. Can you talk about it? Well, I just heard it like yourself. I know that he announced the last couple of days that he's going to put together the exact same program that he had that's collecting interviews from survivors of the Holocaust. You can do this for those who survived the October 7th massacre and those who were eyewitnesses, et cetera, for the world to see and to record the atrocities that happened on October 7th. We need him to do that. We need him to do that. We need YouTube, which provides a remarkable community service of allowing people to post their testimonies about what's going on and what did go on on October 7th. And there's a wealth of information actually on YouTube. And one of the things, and I watch it, I can't believe how valuable the reporting is on YouTube. It's much more factual, much better reporting than you see on cable or even the print press. But what I wanted to mention is the movie that is now, I guess it's on Netflix and or Prime, and especially it's on YouTube for free. And it's called Golda. It's a story of the 1973 war where Israel was attacked from multiple sides. And it was a surprise attack in the same way. They didn't see it coming. They didn't respond as quickly as they should have. It's the one that Moshe Diane was involved in. And Golda Mayer saw how upset he was, how self-critical he was about what happened. And she supported him. And at the table, the strategic table in the Prime Minister's office there, she was as caring as any Jewish mother would have been. And this is a very interesting movie. And it is, again, a parallel to what is happening today. I hope everyone gets a chance to see that movie. Closing comments, Rabbi. This is one of the last show, the last show we're going to produce this year. So I wonder if you have any remarks you'd like to leave with our viewing audience. Yeah, sure. And that is, as a Jew and for the Jewish community here, as well as throughout the country or whoever gets to see this, it's important to know that what's a blessing of being Jewish is the positive things of being Jewish. Our deep connection to God, all the good that the Jewish people do throughout the world. And that's really our identity. The fact that there is anti-Semitism around the world should not shape our identity, should not be the influencing factor in how we live our lives. We should learn and explore the positive beauty of being Jewish. And then we will feel less frightened by what's happening around us. Thank you, Rabbi. The phrase keeps bouncing around in my head, but I don't remember the translation and it goes this way. Am Yisrael Chai. What does that mean? Yeah, it means that the Jewish nation lives and will overcome. Thank you. Thank you, Rabbi Yisrael Krasnjanski here on Think Tech, and we really appreciate your coming on. Thank you, Jay. It's always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. Thank you. Good luck. Aloha. Shalom.