Why does forgetting frustrate us?
What are the benefits/disadvantages to forgetting something?
Originally from Warsaw, Hutner first studied the Torah in Slabodka. He then traveled to Mandatory Palestine where he became a student in the Hebron Yeshiva, and narrowly escaped the 1929 Hebron massacre. After this, Hutner returned to Europe, where he befriended Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Menachem Mendel Schneerson. he moved to the US in 1942 maintaining friendships with both long after they had all established their own institutions in the United States.
Translated by Aryeh Bernstein
Opening Context
One thing which is special to Hanukah, and only to Hanukah, is its presence at the end of the whole order of establishing holidays for the ages. The inner understanding of this fact is that with the establishment of the holiday of Hanukah, the roots of the whole order of holidays for the ages were closed off until the End of Days. "Az egmor be-shir mizmor Hanukat haMizbe'ah" – "Then I will complete, with song and psalm, the dedication of the altar." (from the first stanza of Ma otzur)
That is, until the establishment of the festival of Hanukah, we were missing one pillar on which could stand the bridge leading to the End of Days. With the establishment of the festival of Hanukah, the path is ready to walk on toward the completion in the future dedication/Hanukah, which will complete the song and psalm.
What is the holiday of Hanukkah completing according to this text?
Do you agree/disagree with this claim? Why?
What is Greece being accused of?
What do you think was the context/argument of the dispute?
In this way, a superficial glance leads one to perceive the proliferation of opinions and dissenting positions as a remaining holdout from the redemption from Greece, for even with the whole redemption and salvation of the Hasmonite victory, the very same sorrow which was born in the polemic with Greece still rolls with us."
Pachad Yitzhaq Hanukah, Essay 3 (Rav Yitzhak Hutner, 20th c)
What began with Greece and has continued throughout Jewish history?
What emotion is evoked by the "forgetting of Torah"?
שביטולה של תורה זהו יסודה דכתיב (שמות לד, א) אשר שברת אמר לו הקב"ה למשה יישר כחך ששברת
Hew for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write upon the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which [asher] you broke” (Exodus 34:1). The word “asher” is an allusion to the fact that that the Holy One, Blessed be God, said to Moses: Your strength is true [yishar koḥakha] in that you broke the tablets, as the breaking of the first tablets led to the foundation of the Torah through the giving of the second tablets.
Pachad Yitzhaq Hanukah, Essay 3 (Rav Yitzhak Hutner, 20th c)
What could this possibly mean?
Why would the rabbis suggest that God praised Moses with Yasher Koach when Moses broke the first set of tablets?
How is breaking the tablets an act of fulfilling the Torah?
And, lastly, Rabbi Eliezer said: What is the meaning of that which is written: “And the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved upon the tablets” (Exodus 32:16)? This teaches that had the first tablets, the subject of this verse, not been broken, the Torah would never have been forgotten from the Jewish people, as the Torah would have been engraved upon their hearts. Rav Aḥa bar Ya’akov said: Had the tablets not been broken, no nation or tongue would ever have ruled over them...
Pachad Yitzhaq
What is the connection between the breaking of the tablets and forgetting Torah?
In what ways did breaking the tablets create space?
Go out and see what the Sages said, that "300 Halakhot were forgotten in the days of mourning for Moshe Rabbenu...and Othniel ben Qenaz restored them with his dialectics" (TB Temurah 16a).
Those words of Torah in the dialectics of restoring halakhot – those are themselves words of Torah that were proliferated only via the forgetting of Torah."
Pachad Yitzhaq
Why would we be given a Yasher Koach for forgetting Torah?
How does Torah proliferate if it is forgotten?
What are some examples of the proliferation of Torah?
-Pachad Yitzhaq
-Pachad Yitzhaq
What does this text intimate about future generations and Jewish law?
-Pachad Yitzhaq
What do you understand the bolded text?
On first glance, these words come to teach us the Revuta in the size of the strength of the love connection embedded in the words of Torah, that is, that the strength of the love connection is so great that reliable friendship is promised even to those who previously hated each other.
According to this understanding, the revuta is that despite the hatred of the hour of dispute, love will come at the end and resolve it, and they won't move from there until they love each other. However, since the point was clarified to us that the war of Torah is a level of new, additional creation, beyond the level of general words of Torah, this clarification teaches us to know that the issue is not that the love at the end comes despite the previous dispute, rather, that that is the way love grows, that it is born and grows specifically on the ground of the previous dispute.
For all love reaches its highest peaks when two sides share a creative partnership, and two sides conflicting in halakhah are partners in creating a new Torah value, whose name is the War of Torah."
-Pachad Yitzhaq
In what way do you agree/disagree that act of dispute is how love grows?
How do you feel about the idiom "War of Torah"?