On the Threshold

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January 30 2009
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The Talmud (Shabbos 22a) decides in favor of R ' Shmuel mi'Difti that one must place the Chanukah menorah at the left of the doorpost as one enters, with the mezuzah on the right. The Rambam (Hilchos Chanukah 4:7) codifies this halacha almost verbatim.
But what drove the Talmud, and the Rambam, to focus on the pesach habayis, the entrance to the house? What makes the doorpost or threshold so important in the Halacha? If indeed the point is that one must feel surrounded by mitzvos, why not declare that one must kindle the menorah while wearing a tallis , or some other way to feel enveloped in the sanctity of the mitzvos? (This is not dissimilar to the question posed by the P'nei Yehoshua , namely, why does the gemara posit that the mitzvah of Chanukah refers specifically to the home, the bayis, treating this particular mitzvah differently from every other mitzvah we must perform with our bodies and which refer to us as individuals, not to our homes?
I suggest that the threshold , the pesach habayis, is a symbol of instability and doubt, of confusion and diffidence. On the threshold , a person stands between inside and outside, undecided as to whether he is to go in or out. The threshold as such a symbol is found often in Tanach. In the Joseph story (Bereish is 43:18), the brothers are frightened as they are ushered into the palace of Joseph. They approach the official in charge as they speak to him from the pesach habayis. They are hesitant, wavering between protesting and keeping silent. When Lot (Bereishis 19:6) goes out to face the angry mob, he speaks to them from the threshold of his house unsure of how to treat this unholy gathering of Sodomites , uncertain as to whether or not he will survive the encounter. Earlier yet, when Cain is irate at the divine reaection of his offering, he is told that if he will not improve his ways, sin will be crouchmg at hIs pesach-again the symbol of uncertainty; man is always vacillating between yielding to the blandishments of the yetzer hara or heroically overcoming his lust.
So does Chanukah contain that symbol of the irresolute. The Rambam, in his Iggeres HaShemad (Mosad HaRav Kook ed., p. 43) writes of the harsh evil decrees promulgated by the Greek authorities , "One of which was that one should not shut the door of his pesach habayis lest he exploit the privacy of his home to perform mitzvos." This left the Jews of that era in deep and frightening doubt: to yield to the Greeks and avoid death, or to defy them and keep the faith? Hence the connection between Chanukah and the threshold.
To return to our original theme: the threshold now has two supports, as it were-the mezuzah to the right, and the Chanukah menorah to the left. The mezuzah represents the inside of the house, guarding all that has been taken within-thus it is affixed to the right upon entering, not upon exiting. The Halacha also insists that the entrance must contain a door in order to fulfill properly the mitzvah of mezuzah. The mezuzah, as it were, pleads for a closed door so that it may guard the interior of the home and all that has been stored in it, safe from the imprecations of a pagan world. Whereas the Chanukah lights argue for an open door policy, for its function is pirsumei nisa, to illuminate the "street" or outside with the sanctity that issues from within. This collision on the threshold, whether to shut the door and guard what we already have within, or to open the doors wide to allow us to share the blessings of Torah with the outside world-this clash of opposing tendencies is what creates within us that tension. It is only when we have the two mitzvos around us that we can properly weigh and measure and know when to open the doors to the outside world to absorb from it what is good and true and beautiful, and when to shut the doors tight against the falsehood and profanation of an ungodly world and its nefarious influences.

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    Learning on the Marcos and Adina Katz YUTorah site is sponsored today by Judy & Mark Frankel & family l'ilui nishmos מרדכי בן הרב משה יהודה ע"ה and משה יהודה ז"ל בן מאיר אליהו ויהודית and by the Polinsky Family to commemorate the 5th Yahrzeit of Gil Polinsky, Gedalyahu Gootmun Chaim ben Yaakov Dov