Unearthing A Deeper Light
By Yochanan Gordon
There are paradoxical properties to the time of year we now find ourselves in. Our feeble human minds often feel overwhelmed by paradox, though that only happens when we allow our faux sophistication to get in the way.
G-d manifests through paradox. Avraham is promised that Yitzchak will be his progeny and, in the same breath, is commanded to offer him as a sacrifice. The parah adumah purifies the impure while rendering the pure impure. Examples abound.
Chanukah is known as the festival of light. Oil is a metaphor for Torah’s wisdom, the candle, for mitzvos. Yet Kislev and Teves contain the longest nights of the year. Ironically, Chazal teach that G-d created long nights precisely to increase Torah study. King David writes, “Yomam yetzaveh Hashem chasdo, u’valaylah shiro imi,” and the Gemara explains, “Kol halomeid Torah balaylah, chut shel chesed nimshach alav bayom.”
Thus, darkness and light do not strain Torah study—they amplify it. It mirrors the first day of Creation, when ohr v’choshech mishtamshim b’irbuvyah, not in confusion but in harmony, each contributing uniquely to revelation.
Chanukah, the holiday of Torah She’baal Peh, is preceded by Yud–Tes Kislev, the Chassidic Rosh Hashanah—when Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi was freed after 53 days of imprisonment for allegedly sending funds to Jews in Ottoman-ruled Israel. Chabad tradition recounts that the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid visited him in prison, explaining that his arrest was for disseminating the hidden light of Torah too freely. When he asked whether he should limit his outreach after liberation, they responded, “On the contrary. Increase exponentially. The decree will have passed.”
Here too, light emerges from darkness.
It is no coincidence that vision emerges from the black of the eye, not the white.
The Alter Rebbe’s name—Schneur—is famously read as “Shnei Ohr,” “two lights,” referring to the revealed and hidden dimensions of Torah. Through the Shulchan Aruch HaRav he illuminated the revealed Torah; through Tanya and his vast corpus of Chassidus, he illuminated its inner soul. Both lights continue to transform those who immerse themselves in them.
This juxtaposition—Yud–Tes Kislev leading into Chanukah, framed by the long nights of winter—invites not merely more learning but deeper, more inward learning. Just as Torah contains body and soul, each of those contains its own body and soul. One may study nigleh in a soulful, penetrating way—the “soul of the body”—or one may study Chassidus superficially, grasping only its “body.”
In Chassidus these dimensions are described as pnimi (internalized) and makif (surrounding). Our avodahis to continually internalize what was once a makif, allowing an even higher makif to emerge.
For someone grounded in the “body” of Torah, going deeper can feel easier. But for someone raised within Chassidus—immersed in its teachings, niggunim, customs, and hiskashrus—the challenge becomes finding a way to go deeper than the familiar.
In a recent episode of Homesick for Lubavitch, Bentzi Avtzon interviewed Rabbi Menni Even-Israel (Steinsaltz), eldest son of Rabbi Adin Even-Israel. Much of the conversation centered on Rabbi Steinsaltz’s intellectual independence alongside his unwavering hiskashrus to the Rebbe. Rabbi Menni observed a narrowness within Chabad—learning only Chabad—to the detriment of broadness. He noted that the Rebbe himself drew broadly. His advice to shluchim was: keep learning. If you repeat the same sicha year after year, “there will always be that guy in the back” who notices.
While I, too, value a broadened curriculum, I want to offer a different path: learning the same sichos and maamarim, but learning them more deeply. Keeping them new, fresh, and exhilarating by discovering layers that were always there, waiting to be unearthed.
The rebbeim taught with unfathomable depth. Beyond the pshat of a sicha or maamar lie endless strata of meaning, much of which can be excavated even if it was not the explicit intention at the moment it was delivered.
When it comes to stories of the Rebbe, people innovate constantly—new angles, new insights, new anecdotes. But when it comes to the Rebbe’s Torah, many treat it as static: exactly what he said, only what he said. What happened to our creativity? Our willingness to learn like Rabbi Akiva?
The Gemara recounts that when Moshe Rabbeinu ascended heaven, he saw Rabbi Akiva teaching Torah and was overwhelmed by the depth of his interpretations. He asked where Rabbi Akiva learned such things. When he heard the answer—halacha l’Moshe miSinai—he was comforted. This teaches that Rabbi Akiva plumbed depths in Toras Moshe that even Moshe himself did not initially recognize.
We refer to the Rebbe as the Moshe Rabbeinu of the generation—yet we often learn his Torah in a way that does not allow for new depths Moshe himself might not have recognized at first glance.
A similar story: The Alter Rebbe and Reb Zusha learned Taz by candlelight. The candle repeatedly extinguished and reignited. The Taz appeared to them, asking whose Torah they were studying. When they answered, “Yours,” he felt reassured. They had revealed depths he himself had not accessed.
The Rebbe Rashab explains that the Alter Rebbe’s imprisonment occurred because he had not revealed enough. The Baal Shem Tov had said he revealed too much. How can both be true? Because what he revealed was “too much” in the realm of measure—hishtalshelus—but “not enough” in the realm of the infinite, where revelation is beyond prosecution.
Our task is to reveal the infinite within the finite—to learn the Rebbe’s Torah in a way that elevates it into that realm, where even he might not recognize it immediately, but would be proud of what we’ve uncovered.
To me, that is the deeper lesson in the convergence of Yud–Tes Kislev, Chanukah, and the long nights of Kislev and Teves: an invitation to uncover the etzem—not merely the revealed lights.
Yochanan Gordon can be reached at [email protected]. Read more of Yochanan’s articles at 5TJT.com.
