New York–Chanukah, a relatively minor holiday in rabbinic literature, is a central holiday in Chassidut. From Tuesday, December 23 to Thursday, December 25, Drisha will host its annual Winter Week of Learning on the theme of “Light, Dreams, and a Proper Container: Chanukah and Chassidut.” In the mornings, participants will study key Chassidic texts about Chanukah and delve into themes of boundaries and balance, reality and fantasy, what is hidden and what is revealed. The classes will be given at the Drisha Institute’s facilities in midtown Manhattan.
In the afternoons, they will examine Chassidut more broadly. The philosophical questions underlying central Chassidic works will be analyzed as well as why Chassidut was at first perceived as radically transgressive. Sessions will be taught by Rute Yair Nussbaum (a teacher of Chassidut in Matan, Midreshet Nishmat, Maale, the Jewish film school), Samuel Lebens (a post-doctoral fellow at Rutgers University in the philosophy of religion), and Eliyahu Stern (Associate Professor of Modern Jewish Intellectual and Cultural History at Yale University). As part of the program there will be a special collegiate track. We are looking forward to discussing the themes and questions below:
1. Chanukah is the only holiday that must be observed at home. What makes a space into a home? We will explore how the halachic definitions of home (is it where you sleep? where you pay rent?) open into a discussion in Chassidut of what it means to be at home. We will learn, based on kabbalistic and Chassidic sources, how these definitions shed a light into the essence of Chanukah.
2. As Chanukah is a rabbinic holiday, it becomes in Chassidut a metaphor for the power and potential of oral law. By lighting Chanukah candles, we become exposed not only to the unrevealed part of Torah but to unrevealed realms in our own lives and surroundings. The Chanukah lights are intended to be viewed, not used, which raises questions of intentionality and sight. What and how do we choose to see? We will explore Chanukah as a celebration of potential not yet actualized and dreams not yet made real and we will challenge some of the normative notions of “home.”
3. In order for our contact with light to be sustainable, the light must be held in a proper container, or home. We will explore the relationship between light and vessels for light, and by extension the issue of checks and balances. We will study biblical and midrashic sources that describe the catastrophic consequences of exposure to light that one is ill-equipped to hold and the redemptive possibilities when one finds a fitting container.
For more information or to register please email [email protected] or call 212-595-0307.
By Wendy Amsellem
