I promised to take a deeper look into the Divine commandment of fringes, tzitzis, along with the significance of the lights of the Channuka menora, and an insight into a quirk of our language, as seen in the nature of any man-made item, such as a clock. Let’s start from the beginning.
In his explanation of the tzitzis commandment, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsh, zt”l, shows that the four-cornered garment symbolizes the physical world, and the “flowering” (the literal meaning of tzitz is ‘flower’) of the fringe off the corner of the garment refers symbolically to the world of the spirit which exists beyond the limits of the physical. Thus, the fringes represent the spiritual reality which “goes beyond” the limits of the apparent reality we perceive with our physical senses.
The Biblical text in Genesis tells us that when Noah was lying in his tent, drunk and naked, 2 of his sons, Shem and Yafes, came to cover his embarrassment. Rabbinic tradition explains the incident thus: In appreciation, the Almighty gave Shem and Yafes rewards according to their spiritual level. To Shem’s children, the Jewish people, He gave the commandment of tzitzis, fringes, and to Yafes’ children, the Greeks, He gave burial of the physical body after death. (Note: At the end of history, the Greeks will be involved in the battles during the world-turmoil which will precede the coming of the Messiah, and many will die in that turbulent time. As a reward for Yafes’ action, the Jewish people were charged with burying the dead Greeks of this war, as described in the Biblical text in the book of Zecharia.)
Rabbi Hirsch explains that the rewards were measure-for-measure. Yefes, who was concerned merely with his father’s physical humiliation, was rewarded with a similar concern for his progeny’s corpses. Shem, who compassion was focused on the spiritual degredation of Noah, was given a spiritual reward. But why the commandment of fringes?
To Shem, Noah was not simply a physical body, but a spiritual being within a body lying drunk. He was sensitive to a reality beyond what his senses could perceive. He saw the humiliation of the soul, lying prostrate in the body’s drunken state. Shem was responding not just to his father’s physical distress, but to the embarrassment of his Divine soul. Hence, he was given as a reward a mitzvah, a Divine command; moreover, this command would be the one which would remind his offspring of just such a reality beyond the physical.
In a similar fashion, the primary focus of the Hasmonean victory over the Greek dynasty of Antiochus in the story of Channuka was not merely a military success. It was the triumph of the spirit over the physical. Hence, it was commemorated not with a celebration of the body, such as a meal, but with the dedication of the spiritual, a kindling of lights.
When a man-made object fulfills its purpose, we say its “working.” But when it’s broken, when it doesn’t fulfill its purpose, in our vernacular we say, “ my car died”, “the computer is dead”, or—“the clock isn’t ticking—it just died.” Why do we equate in our language “death” with an inability to fulfill purpose? Perhaps, a thought, again based on the Sages: If man truly is a composite of physical and spiritual, as we’ve suggested, then the end of the physical cannot be the limit of the spirit. The soul, as it were, doesn’t die; it lives eternally, a piece of the Almighty Himself.
Death, rather, is a “borrowed” usage, referring just what we’ve seen above—a failure to fulfill a purpose. When man doesn’t fulfill his spiritual purpose, just like the broken clock, we say he’s “dead”. Bread with bread, eat to live, live to eat—this man is truly dead. He ignores what gives him a purpose greater than himself. Hence, the Sages’ wisdom:
“The Righteous, even in death are still considered to be alive, while the Wicked even when still alive are called dead.”
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