First Night • Sparks of Light 5781

The Timeless Message of “Mi LaHashem Eili”

Annie Rosenblum, Kayla Saiet and Leora Tenenbaum (Grade 11) 

We all know the famous line declared by Moshe Rabeinu and Matisyahu HaCohen “Mi LaHashem Eili!” If you take a look at the context of these declarations there’s an obvious question that comes to mind. Picture the scene – Moshe had just come down from Har Sinai and he finds Bnei Yisrael singing and dancing around the golden calf. Moshe said “Mi LaHashem Eili!” and all the Leviim came to him. Hundreds of years later, the Jewish people were under the wicked Greek rulership. Matisyahu gathered the Jews to fight against the Greeks and the Hellenized Jewry and said “Mi LaHashem Eili!” Why didn’t Moshe and Matisyahu say “whoever is against Avodah Zara come here!” or “Whoever wants to fight the Greeks come here!” Moshe and Matisyahu chose their words very specifically, and they were trying to portray an important message: instead of uniting against something, it is better to unite for something. It is not enough to be against a person, idea or cause, rather we must be fighting FOR something. We learn from these two stories that instead of being reactive in a situation and acting based on our negative drive, we need to stand up, and be proactive using our positive drive to effect change. David Hamelech wrote in Tehillim “Sur merah, veasheh tov” – “stray away from bad, and do good.” It is not enough to distance oneself from doing bad, one must take that proactive step and do good. Taking a deeper look into the words of Moshe and Matisyahu really helps us understand and appreciate the significance of their underlying message. Moshe did not want to unite Bnei Yisrael by gathering those against Avodah Zara, rather he wanted to unite Bnei Yisrael by being for Hashem. Matisyahu did not want to unite the Jewish people by being against the Greeks, but rather with the determination to become closer to G-d.

To end off, we would like to leave you with a message from Rav Shach. Rav Shach was once asked why we say “Shelo Asani Goy” and not “Sheasani Yehudi”. He explained that HaShem makes you not a goy, but it is truly up to you to make yourself a Yid”. 

May all of Am Yisrael unite and be proactive to affect change to better the world. 

We want to wish everyone a Chanukah Sameach!

Increasing Emunah

Morah Efrat Burkis

Tonight is the first night of Chanukah, a holiday of light and joy.

The main Mitzvah on Chanukah is to light the candles every evening for eight nights.

Beit Shamai and Beit Hillel disagree on the order of lighting the candles. Beit Shamai says that eight candles should be lit on the first night and one candle is removed every day, while Beit Hillel says that one should light one candle the first night and add to it every night, therefore finishing with eight.

What is actually at the root of the controversy? Should the great joy, the proclamation of the miracle at the height of its glory, be immediately at the beginning or end of the holiday? Should the whole world be enlightened at the beginning or at the end?

The Halacha was determined according to Beit Hillel with the understanding that the addition of light every day further increases the magnitude of the miracle.

I believe that like the Mitzvah of lighting the candles and building the power of the lights up, we should always be working on increasing our Emunah, our love and belief in Hashem, thereby always giving room for the light to grow.

Releasing Our Inner Light

Avi Markus (Grade 9)

In Parshat Vayeshev, we follow the many hardships of Yosef. We hear of his brothers abandoning him, first in a pit in the desert and then in the hands of a passing caravan. Yosef is thrown from one test to another, surrounded by a foreign culture in the wealthy home of Potiphar and as we close the Parsha he is imprisoned, seemingly forgotten by all who care for him. Yosef was being pressured from all sides to meld with the society around him, with the final test coming from Potiphar’s wife herself to give up his father’s teachings and become one with the Egyptian perverted ways. Instead, we see him handle the situation with integrity. He remains firm in his ways and in his faith, and that leads him to strengthen his bond with Hashem. 

I believe we can see a deeper meaning to this story by looking into the miracle of the “Pach HaShemen” – the flask of oil – of Chanukah. Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook zt”l in his commentary on Masechet Shabbat writes about this miracle. Following the victory of the Maccabees over the Greeks, a single jar of oil was found to be uncontaminated. Despite the Greeks’ influence and efforts to destroy the Jewish people spiritually, this single jar was the source of their rededication to Hashem. The hidden secret to our knowledge of Torah, our will to follow in its ways, is found deep within every Jew, stored carefully in our souls and impervious to the pressures around us. Rav Kook asks how we can maximize the strength of our Pach HaShemen. He says that by kindling it with the smallest spark, we can fan it into a flame that illuminates the darkness all around us. 

As students at BAS, we have the opportunity to shed our own light for the benefit of our families and community. This Chanukah, more than ever, we need to spread that light even further because our families and communities cannot be together. Due to COVID-19, this will be a Chanukah where so many of us are disconnected from our shuls and our extended families, just like Yosef. We must take after him, and prove that even in a situation so different than what we are familiar with, we can strengthen our bonds to one another. We can reach within ourselves and use this as a positive opportunity rather than a challenge.

Chag Sameach!

Lighting During Lockdown

Rabbi Noah Sonenberg (Director of Judaic Studies)

We all know that one of the major goals of lighting candles during Chanukah is to publicize the miracle. This goal has halachic ramifications in terms of the timing of the lighting since we ideally aim to light when people would traditionally be returning home and be able to see the candles in our doorways. In our unique situation where a significant number of people are working from home and society is in a lockdown our ability to publicize the miracle seems to be significantly reduced. We are not in the ideal (לכתחלה) situation but perhaps we can learn how to maximize our performance of this mitzvah in our very unique year, from the non-ideal (בדיעבד) halacha.

Halacha deals with a situation where a person for some reason was unable to light candles and publicize the miracle to the outside world either due to dangers resulting from anti-Semitism or from an inability to get home before the end of rush hour. In these situations the focus of publicizing the miracle becomes the people who live in the same home. We make sure to gather the family together to light and if for some reason a person was delayed until after the family was asleep it is strongly recommended that two or three members of the family be woken so that the lighting will have an element of publicizing the miracle.

We are all familiar with the obligation to educate our children at the seder about our historical redemption from Egypt but often we don’t realize the potential found on Chanukah to discuss the involvement of God in our lives and the השגחה פרטית that a person can experience. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the two most celebrated holidays in the Jewish calendar are Pesach and Chanukah. Both of these holidays provide parents an opportunity to engage with their families and raise important ideas to help better prepare their children for living in a complex world. Let’s take this opportunity where we are forced to spend the holiday only with our immediate families to be conscious of this goal and maximize its potential.