2nd Shabbos of Chanukah 5770

I am bouncing a ball. It hits the floor bounces above my head and lands in my out stretched palm. I repeat this over and over. What do you think are the odds that the ball will hit the floor bounce above my head and then stay there? One in a million? Zero? If those are your answers those are Greek answers. The Jewish answer is ‘the ball will do what G-d wants it to do’.
Once upon a time that would have been everyone’s answer. Then came the Greeks packing Pythagoras, Euclid and Archimedes. Not only could they tell you why something happened they could prove it. They could use their theories which became laws to make things happen. Wondrous things, helpful things. If one understands gravity they can maneuver a rocket ship to Mars and let a rover rove on it. How can we argue with that?
The Torah however teaches that every time I bounce the ball on the floor G-d makes it fly up and then G-d brings it down. He repeats that action and repeats that action with such regularity that an observer might come to think that the movement of the ball is governed by some independent rule or law. This law will continue to be believed until one time G-d decides to do something else as He did for the children of Israel at the sea. When G-d changes His predictable patters we see that there was not an independent rule but it was G-d all along. Of course some are so wedded to their beloved rule that they simply modify it to accommodate the exception.
Does G-d keep repeating his actions just to see if we will continue to believe that he is behind it all? No. G-d repeats his actions with predictable regularity so that we can perform mitzvos in our physical world. If He did not repeat his actions in such a way as to let us form laws of thermodynamics we could not bake a matza. If we had no “laws” of gravity or hydraulics how could we build a mikva? G-ds intentional predictability allows us to function in our world. Defining this predictability was not the sin of the Greeks. Even offering mankind an alternative to a G-d based understanding of life was not the worst thing that could happen. Their real crime was that their system caused man to believe that he is limited by the rules that they formulated. After the Greeks can we couldn’t do things because they were impossible. This is a tragedy because it denies the underpinning of the G-d system.
The beauty of G-d system is that the more we use his predictable “laws” to serve Him the less we become governed by those laws. As time goes on the servant of G-d sees the physical world conforming to His will rather than to the perceived “laws”. This is illustrated by a story in the Talmud (Taanis 24b). R’ Chanina ben Dosas' daughter was sad because she had put vinegar in the Shabbos lights instead of oil. He said to her “He who commanded the oil to burn will command the vinegar to burn” We are told in a Braisa that the vinegar burned until the end of Shabbos.
Today is the eight day of Chanukah . The eight day has a special name derived from the Torah reading for the last day of Chanukah it. The name is zos Chanukah / this is Chanukah. This story is the message of Chanukah . We utilize the predictability of G-ds actions to perform His will. Doing this frees us from those perceived “laws . Ultimately it is G-ds will that carries out all functions and G-ds will is never limited by “laws “ based on human observations . Zos Chanukah / This is the essence of Chanukah.