Chanukah: Dreidle: The Order of Creation

A favorite subject of the philosophers is the order of creation. They may ask why a star is worthy of being on high while other things are consigned to a lower realm. Or why lower animals are not given man’s faculties. Or why a hand is what it is, and not a foot.

Questions like these are discussed at length in many philosophical works. But this is all vanity and striving after wind. God is just and righteous, and His reasons cannot be questioned.

The world is like a rotating wheel.

It is like a Dreidle, where everything goes in cycles.

Man becomes angel, and angel becomes man. Head becomes foot, and foot becomes head. Everything goes in cycles, revolving and alternating. All things interchange, one from another and one into another, elevating the low, and lowering the high.

All things have one root.

There are Transcendental Beings such as angels, which have no connection with the physical.

There is the celestial world, whose essence is very tenuous.

Finally, there is the world below, which is completely physical.

All three have different realms, but all have the same root.

All creation is like a rotating wheel, revolving and oscillating. At one point, a thing can be on top like a head, with something else on the bottom like a foot. Then the situation becomes reversed.

Our Sages teach us that certain angels were cast down from heaven. They entered physical bodies and were subject to all worldly lusts. Other angels were sent on missions to our world and had to clothe themselves in physical bodies. We also find cases where human beings literally become angels (Targum Yonatan Genesis 5:24).

But the world is like a rotating wheel, spinning like a Dreidle. In its root, however, everything is all one.

This is why we play Dreidle on Chanukah. (Sichot HaRan)