Fourth Night of Chanukah and the Ohr Ganuz

The 28th and the 29th of Kislev and the first night of Rosh Chodesh Tevet, which in this year there is only one day of it anyway, are the darkest nights of the year.  The nights are longest usually during Kislev with additional matter that the moon will not be seen during the entire night this late in the month at all.  It would seem to represent total darkness except for the stars that are always there since the formation of our Galaxy on the 2nd Day of Creation.  See here:  http://yearsofawe.blogspot.co.il/2005/03/science-slowly-catches-up-with-torah.html .  Here is a detailed explanation of how the universe came into existence just six 24 hours days ago in accordance with G-d's reference frame where G-d fills the universe with His Glory and therefore feels the entire gravitational pull of the entire universe at the same time.  Using Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, what for G-d was only six 24 hours days, for us time was expanded by a factor of a million million in our reference from so that here in our post Gan Eden reference frame the Creation itself has experienced those six 24 hour days as 6 days / 365 days per year = 0.0164 years x 10 to the 12th = 16.4 billion years in our reference frame.  Now Man was created in Gan Eden and expelled in the 23rd hour of the 6th day, but Gan Eden is in G-d's reference frame not ours.  So when he was expelled, Man with a neshama has existed since being expelled for another 5772 of our years since the expulsion took place on Rosh HaShana of the year One.  Those 5772 years are in our reference frame only.  The evidence is overwhelming for this.  Prior to the appearance of Adam in our reference frame there was a bipedal species called Adnei Sadeh (Cro-Magnon Man) who only had an animal soul like the rest of the animals in the world.  Other than that he looked like us in every possible way, but he left no written historical record.  All that he left behind were cave paintings, pictures and not words.  Only starting about 5500 years ago do we see the first evidence of ancient writing which is a sign of a written form of speech (Dibur) indicating that starting just before that point Man had the ability to speak and therefore had a Divine soul (a neshama).   For a further explanation read Dr. Gerald Schroeder's The Science of G-d.  For years Dr. Schroeder lectured for Aish HaTorah at the request of Rav Noach Weinberg zt"l throughout the English speaking world in order to mekarev Jewish scientists and engineers by giving unequivocal proof of the confluence between the hard sciences and the Torah.  end of that discussion, or you can read the link that is posted above..  Don't ask me questions about  the Great Flood.  I am well aware that that event took place in our reference frame about 4100 years ago.  I have answered questions about the Great Flood on other occasions.  And yes the answers are more complex, and they are not easily discernible since unlike the Creation, the evidence of the Great Flood was intentionally hidden from Noach to avoid traumatizing him with the destruction of his former world because of the Great Flood (Mabul).  He was traumatized enough since immediately after offering korbanot of thanks for deliverance and being part of the Covenant of the Rainbow, he immediately planted a vineyard and got drunk.  We need no more evidence of his trauma than that.  Here was the tzaddik of his generation turning to wine to help him cope with the loss of the world that existed before the Mabul.

 Getting back to our story, therefore what was the Great Light from the first day of Creation that is now hidden on day 6, over 15 or 16 billion years later?  This light is called the Ohr Ganuz (the hidden light).  It stretches from one end of the universe to the other, and at the End of Days, tzaddikim will know how to utilize this light to see from one end of the known universe to the other.  On the first day of Creation there was a Big Bang.  All time, space, and matter came into existence at the same instant.  Now right here we are talking about an instant, that did not have an instant that preceded it, since before this instant there was no time.  Explain that Watson or one's favorite aetheist cosmologist like the late Carl Sagan or the very much alive Stephen Hawking.  Some of these eggheads whine and hem and haw to try to justify that something can naturally come from nothing if given enough time.  But wait a second or an instant, THERE WAS NO TIME BEFORE THE BIG BANG blasted out of singularity smaller than a mustard seed.  It is not worth arguing with such folks who seek to deny G-d at every turn.  So we should now drop the subject.  They will always have their elaborate excuses which emanate from their even more elaborate evil inclinations.  When did this Ohr appear.  Well to understand that one must first understand that had we been there when the universe was a million million times hotter (in terms of the shortness of the wavelength of the blackbody heat) than it is today, we would not have seen light at first.  First G-d created several elementary particles which coalesced into hydrogen and helium nuclei (90% protons or hydrogen nuclei and about 10% helium nuclei).  The Ramban on his commentary of Bereishit called this mixture of nuclei (Hylee).  Notice that Hylee is a combination word between hydrogen and helium without their respective Latin or Greek suffixes.  And notice the word hydrogen denotes hydro- prefix as in water.  Helium is an inert gas and therefore forms no molecules even if the electrons had been bound to the various nuclei at the time of the Big Bang.  For several thousand years, (from 30,000 of our years until 380,000 of our years {I am checking this for a definitive amount of time}) the universe was way way too hot for the sea of electrons and the hydrogen and helium nuclei to be bound as atoms.  So every time a photon of light was released it was quickly absorbed by a nearby free electron which gained energy and ended the photons path.  So the universe was opaque for the first 30,000 to 380,000 years.  There was chaos (tohu) and energy with something in it (bohu) and there was total opaque darkness (Choshech) on the face of the abyss (the black hole that was likely formed at the instant of the Big Bang).  And the Spirit of G-d hovered over the face of the waters (the 90% hydrogen nuclei mixture called hylee).  Now keep in mind that there had to be opaque darkness.  Photons of light could barely move before being absorbed by free electrons.  But as the universe expanded, it began to cool.  And at about 30,000 years after the Big Bang suddenly the universe cooled so that hydrogen nuclei could absorb the floating electrons and become bound as stable hydrogen atoms at about 3000 degrees Kelvin.  Suddenly and almost instantaneously the opaque universe for the first 30,000 years was filled with light because photons of light and other forms of electromagnetic energy could suddenly travel for millions of miles and be seen since in order to react with bound electrons, only certain quanta of light could excite a bound electron in a hydrogen atom.  The rest of the wavelengths of light would just pass on through unimpeded.  The radiance of the universe was total and could be seen with the naked eye if the temperature of 3000 degrees Kelvin did not burn one's cornea to a crisp.  "So G-d said, "Let there be Light", and there was light.   G-d saw that the light (that had been there unseen since the Big Bang) was good, and G-d separated between the light and the darkness."  Now this is the light from the beginning of the universe which would be hidden over the eons in the following way.

The universe continued to expand, much more quickly first, but more slowly as the millions upon millions of years passed on.  As the universe expanded, the blackbody radiation light from the Big Bang also cooled as the wavelength of the light expanded as the universe continued to cool.  It turns out that the half life of the expansion was one of G-d's 24 hour days.  So it worked as follows. 24 hour Day One lasted about 8 billion of our years.  24 hour Day Two lasted 4 billion years.  Day 3 lasted 2 billion years.  Day 4 lasted 1 billion years.  Day 5 lasted 500 million of our years.  And Day 6 lasted about 250,000,000 of our years.  (That is a total of 15.75 billion of our years, and yes it is an approximation)  Now in G-d's reference frame these were 24 hour days, but in our reference frame because of the expanding universe, the General relativistic effect on time becomes less and less with a larger and larger universe since the effect of less intense gravity on the passage of time is to lessen the time dilation.  In the meantime, that Primordial light became dimmer and dimmer and redder and redder until as the universe was cooling because of the expansion, it could no longer be seen by the naked eye.  But all that Cosmic echo from the Big Bang is still there.  It is just that the average temperature of the expanded universe is now only 3 degrees Kelvin (2.725 K to be exact).  This three degree Kelvin Cosmic background radiation can be detected by radio telescopes at about 1.873 millimeters of wavelength.  So the light of the Big Bang is still there and detectable but cannot be seen by the naked eye.  It is truly a "Ohr Ganuz" a "hidden light".  Yet, this Cosmic Background radiation fills the universe from one end of the universe to the other.  And somehow on Chanukah in the darkest time of winter when we light our Menorahs we tap into this hidden light in the darkest part of the winter when reflected light from the moon is non-existent.   The Shekhinah does not descend lower than ten tefachim (about 36 inches) above the surface of the ground.  So try to keep your Menorah lower than that to tap into the Ohr genuz.  How will Tzaddikim use this hidden light, now 21 cm radio waves  to see from one end of the universe to the other?.....You tell me.  I am open for suggestions.