Chasidut for Shabbat 311:4

‎Genesis 23,1. “The years of Sarah’s life were one hundred years, ‎etc.;” I believe, G’d willing, that I have understood the reason ‎why Sarah is the only woman in the Bible of whose age at the ‎time of her death we have been told. The Talmud Nedarim ‎‎64, in referring to Rachel’s outburst (Genesis 30,1) that unless her ‎husband Yaakov would give her children she considered herself as ‎‎“dead,” is quoted by Rashi on that verse saying that seeing ‎that a woman’s primary task in life is to mother children, any ‎woman who has not given birth to a live child is considered as ‎dead. We also know from Shabbat 156, that when G’d took ‎Avraham outside (Genesis 15,5) that He showed him that ‎according to the constellation of the stars, Sarai was not slated to ‎give birth to children. This ‎מזל‎, astrological prognosis of her life, ‎could be changed only due to merits she would acquire during the ‎years to come. She did indeed acquire such merits, as our sages ‎conclude from a comment they made in Shir Hashirim ‎Rabbah, 2,32 where the phenomenon of all the matriarchs ‎originally being barren is discussed. Among a variety of answers ‎offered there, one is that G’d was desirous of listening to their ‎praying to Him to be granted children, just as He is desirous of ‎listening to the prayers of the righteous, generally. In other ‎words, Sarah, (after a name change) both due to her merits and ‎her supplications, was “lifted” out of the limitations predicted for ‎her by a zodiac sign she had been born under, so that she could ‎conceive. When the Torah refers to her “life” as being 127 years ‎long, this means nothing less than that she had spent all these ‎years accumulating merits for the good deeds she performed. ‎Expressed somewhat differently, the Torah states that it was ‎Sarah, who with her good deeds gave “life” to her years.‎

When the Talmud in Shabbat 156 states that ‎אין מזל ‏לישראל‎, commonly translated as “the Jewish people’s fate is not ‎subject to the influences of zodiac constellations,” the true ‎meaning of the statement is that when a person considers himself ‎as insignificant to the point of ‎אין‎, as amounting to nothing, then ‎he does not need to worry about negative zodiac constellations ‎spelling trouble for him. According to our author the word ‎מזל‎ in ‎that context does not really refer to zodiac constellations, but is ‎derived from a root meaning ‎השפעה‎, G’d’s largesse, as we read in ‎Numbers 24,7 ‎יזל מים מדליו‎, “water may flow bountifully from its ‎buckets;” when a human being disregards the limitations imposed ‎upon him by nature, then G’d can bestow upon him unlimited ‎amounts of His largesse emanating in transcendental regions. On ‎the other hand, as long as he is “firmly rooted” in nature, seeing ‎in nature the bulk of his supply of sustenance, this limits G’d in ‎His ability to make available to him the bulk of His largesse. The ‎relationship between man’s receiving G’d’s largesse and his ‎depending on natural sources for his needs, is in direct ‎proportion to his reliance on the one or the other. If follows that ‎when a person is an atheist, he will not become the beneficiary of ‎any of G’d’s largesse. The reason is that such people consider ‎themselves as in command of nature rather than as recipients of ‎G’d’s generosity.‎
Seeing that we –the rgihteous- are not entitled to view ‎ourselves as ‎צדיקים‎, who may eschew the natural elements into ‎which we have been born, we must not be arrogant enough to ‎always wait for external divine stimuli such as we receive on our ‎festivals, but must rather endeavour to generate such spiritual ‎stimuli ourselves.
This brings us back to the discussion in the Talmud as to ‎whether a kid tastes better than a lamb. The king who said that ‎the kid tastes better understood the word ‎גדיא‎, i.e. “kid,” as ‎related to the word ‎מזל‎, a word which, as we explained, alludes to ‎G’d’s largesse. Such largesse is earned when the human being ‎considers himself as “nothing,” i.e. denigrated his ego completely. ‎This state of ‎אין‎, “nothingness,” is the result of Divine influence ‎as a reward for one’s ultimate humility.‎
The queen who had said that ‎אימרא‎, sheep or lamb tastes ‎better, used a word derived from ‎אמר‎ alluding to speech, alluded ‎to worship of G’d in the commonly accepted way by mortal ‎human beings. She credited these people with having generated ‎their own spiritual elevation without having been “awakened” to ‎do so by a heavenly assist. When both the king and the queen in ‎the story agreed to let the High Priest become the arbiter of their ‎disagreement, and the High Priest raised his hands and waved ‎heavenwards, he meant to point to the source of heavenly ‎inspiration, and pointed out that such inspiration occurs rarely ‎and that therefore it is far better to rely on self-generated ‎inspiration. The moral lesson is that we must not be content to ‎wait for the advent of the festivals to be awakened into ‎worshipping our Creator.‎‎

In the writings of the Ari, z"l, regarding the secret of the 36 candles of Hanukkah and the connection with the 8 shamashim, behold that makes 44, which corresponds to the name Ehyeh אהי"ה in degrees, that is, א' + א"ה + אה"י + אהי"ה + - which is in gematria 44, and adding the name itself, 45, and behold it is 88 with the kollel (?), which is the first letters of "to light the Hanukkah light"; up to here are his words. And on a general overview it is not understood, what is the idea behind adding those two names to the issue of Hanukah light? I think it can be explained as follows: