The Yehuda-Yehudis dance
Chanukah is an exquisite choreography of masculine and feminine energy harmonized into a unique dance of beauty and holiness. Both the laws and the story of Chanukah express the deep, quiet, inner power of the feminine as well as the assertive impact of the masculine.
The Greeks forbade the study and practice of the Torah (a primarily male activity) and they also legislated the defilement of Jewish brides by the emperor. The Maccabi brothers, led by the hero of the story, Yehuda, battled the Greeks and the Hellenists to reclaim the social fabric of a Jewish nation and the sanctity of the Beis Hamikdash. There was another hero, or rather heroine, with a name similar to Yehuda: she was Yehudis, the daughter of Yochanan the Cohein Gadol (MIshna Berura 670:10). Yehuda and Yehudis are the male and female heroes who share the stage of the Chanukah story.
The male-female duality of the story also reflects in the halachos(laws) of Chanukah. Although men light the candles, women are rewarded with the custom (mentioned in the Shulchan Aruch 670:1) to refrain from work while the candles are alight (at least for the first half hour after lighting them). He transmits the message of Chanukah to the world while she observes, enjoys, and grounds the radiance of the light in their home. Together they represent the male and female energies, Yehuda and Yehudis, 'dancing' against the backdrop of the Chanukah lights.
The contrast between the two core mitzvahs of Chanukah, hallel veHodayah (praise and thanksgiving) and the lighting, also reflect masculinity and femininity. Praise and thanksgiving are inward, personal and private mitzvahs. We do them in the inner privacy of our sanctuaries, our Battei Kenessiyos. On the other hand, the lighting is an unusually public mitzvah; we light outside our homes, not in them. We light at a height of under 10 tefachim (ideally) so that the lights are positioned in reshus harrabim (the public domain). We light specifically at the time that people are out and about in the market place and can see our lights. Once people have left the streets and gone into the privacy of their homes, it is technically too late to light.
Hallel veHodayah is feminine in its inner power and quiet strength. The lights are masculine in that they are meant to shout the miracle out loud and to impact the public. Together these two mitzvahs create the Chanukah experience.
Illunination
Chanukah is not the only time we have a mitzvah of lighting candles. We light every Friday and Yomtov night. The idea of candle lighting as a mitzvah also contains both male and female components.
Women (primarily) light the Friday night candles and men (primarily) light the Chanukah lights. Light represents the wisdom of Torah, and both men and women are active in its propagation. Women focus their propagation of Torah wisdom (primarily) on their homes and children. Men transmit the wisdom of Torah to the outer world whether by formal learning and teaching or informally by a being a living example of it in their workplaces and public interactions. When both men and women take their respective mitzvahs of illuminating the home and the world seriously and transmit the energy of Torah wisdom effectively, it affects the quality and scholarship of the children they raise together. (Rav Hunah in Shabbas 25b.)
Two domains and a gateway between them
There is a further, very beautiful Chanuka image of the Yehuda-Yehudis dance. The home is primarily the woman's domain, she is the queen of the home, sets its tone and gives it substance. The home is a reshus ha'yachid (a private domain), the space in which we develop and nurture our sanctity, spirituality, depth, meaning and values. It is our place of being. The mezuzah, placed inside the doorway, marks the gateway to the home.
The menorah, unlike the mezuzah, is not placed in the doorway but outside the doorway, in the reshus harabbim (public domain). It represents the world outside of the homewhere we express ourselves, impact the world, do our business and fight our battles. The reshus harabbim is primarily the domain of men.
The gateway is the space between the reshus ha'yachid and thereshus harabbim. It is a space of partnership, accommodation and mutual respect. Menorah and mezuzah do not compete for space or attention; each has its own role and its own space - the mezuzah on the right, the menorah on the left. The mezuzah guards the private space of the feminine home stopping negative forces from entering. The menorah on the other hand, is not about protection; it is a masculine force projecting light out into the distance. These two mitzvahs, the feminine mezuzah and the masculine menorah each fulfill their respective purposes sharing the doorway that belongs to them both.
My parents z"l
The dance I have described was the dance of my parents whoseYahrzeits are now. (My father's was 12th Kislev and my mother's is on Friday, Rosh Chodesh.) My father honored my mother's royal reign over our home as she honored and revered his reign over his community. But the beauty was in how they maneuvered the gateways of their lives, the spaces that belonged equally to them both. In these spaces each had their own place to shine, each putting the interests of the other before their own, each honoring the other.
My mother guarded our home. She made sure the values in our home were the values they chose and not those of the street, the media or the fads of the day. My father radiated those same values outward enabling us to see them consistently lived irrespective of their acceptance by others at the time. My mother was the mezuzah, she was Yehudis protecting the home. My father, like Yehuda the Macabbe, took the battles of Torah out into the public domain, and taught the community about the majesty of the Torah. Et they always looked out for one another and always supported one another's work and role. Always, like the Yehuda-Yehudis idea I have described, they danced in the radiance of the lights they lit together.
