Beyond boundaries

   

The hallmark of a Jewish male is that he covers his head.  For some, this is all the time, while for others it is at least during prayer.  Strangely, this rule is not found explicitly in the Torah anywhere; yet, it is a custom that has been universally adopted by Jews all over the world.  There are several reasons for why Jews do this, but there is one particular reason that highlights the stark contrast between Jewish thinking and Greek thinking that is appropriate to disseminate in light of Channukah (no pun intended, sort of).  You see, Jew and Greeks share quite a few things.  For one, a Torah scroll can be written in the Greek language, and it is still considered valid.  Further, in the times of Noah, it says about the Greek progenitor, Yafeth, that he will ‘dwell in the tents of Shem’, the Jewish progenitor.  What is the intimate connection shared by the Jews and Greeks, and what is fundamental difference?  The answer is found in that circular cloth that Jews choose to wear.

                Both Greek philosophy and Jewish thinking share an equally passionate reverence for intellectual pursuits.  A Jew pines for hours of rigorous Tamudic study and enlightened Greeks believed that the philosopher lived an ideal existence.   Generally, wisdom is compared to light for just as light increases the scope of one’s reality, so too wisdom.  However, the Greek exile is described as a period of great darkness.  And the main job on Channukah is to increase light to combat what the Greeks introduced to the world.  So what is so dark about Greek Wisdom that not only does it not expand reality, but diminishes it. 

                Back to the postulate that a head covering is the key difference; a kippah represents the limit to our knowledge-  our knowledge is capped so to speak.  The paradox is that recognition of limitation is the key to expanding beyond the limitation.  By recognizing where the boundaries are it is then possible to go beyond them. In other words, a Jew knows that his premises are limited and that there is a world beyond understanding which only through great struggle could be added to the normal parameters of man.  On the other hand,  Greeks viewed the world in a way where man’s axioms were the boundaries with which all knowledge had to neatly fit.  Anything beyond man’s understanding is not real- that is what breeds darkness.  That is also why the Hebrew for Greece is יון.  These letters are all straight lines with no breadth.  The Greeks had no capacity to expand since they were the limits.  Therefore, aside from adding light with candles, Channukah is a time to recognize the boundless that comes with boundary.